Come on Down...

... Come on over, Come on in to the Lighthouse..... A place where God's love shines bright for everyone, playing in the sand, laughing in the su-un...

That's the Lighthouse song, for those of you who are thoroughly confused now, and it's been in my head all day! (It hasn't helped that my mom bought the CD for me right before we left, and I'll probably be listening to it constantly for the next few weeks).

So, we're back. We're exhausted, tanned, and ready to go back as soon as we can. It was an incredible experience, and I highly recommend it for all of you people who would like to do missions without passports and exotic diseases! I'll go ahead and start telling what I can tonight, but may have to do this one in segments, since it's late, and I have so much to tell.

We arrived in Watercolor, Florida on Tuesday evening (after a few wrong turns) to settle in and get to know the other volunteers. Watercolor is a 5-star resort right next to Seaside (which is the community that The Truman Show was filmed in). Both Watercolor and Seaside are right next to Destin, FL to give you some perspective on where we were. This was the last retreat of the season, so Watercolor donated all of the houses, the use of their restaurants, beach umbrellas, chairs, food, massage parlor for the moms, golf course for the dads, bikes for everyone... the list goes on and on. They have sort of taken the Lighthouse on as their charity, and really go all out to make the final retreat extra-special every year. We got settled into our own house, which was an adorable two-story cottage with plenty of room for us to be comfortable. We had dinner, where Cline and I got to visit with Melinda, who is the nurse who started the Lighthouse Family Retreat. She told us a little more about the inspiration for this program. She was shopping one day after a series of lavish trips and expensive dinners, and she bought a pair of flip-flops for $130. She realized that she needed some help learning how to use her resources wisely, and signed up for the Crown Financial Ministries class that I wrote about in the last post. As she said, God had other plans for her, and here she is today.

We ended the evening with "Nightcap" which would become our nightly gathering to recap the goings on and go over instructions for the following day. There was a very gifted woman there named Muriel, who was a long-time mentor and Sunday school teacher to Melinda. Muriel ended each night with a quick word on biblical principles that we could reflect on and use to enrich our experience. She is one of those ladies who seems to have a direct line to God and can quote nearly any verse from the bible word-for-word, complete with the book, chapter, and verse numbers. Tuesday night, she spoke about heaven, and how the bible says that God is preparing a place for each of us to live. The bible mentions mansions and houses with many rooms, kind of like the beautiful houses we were staying in, but presumably on a much larger scale. I loved that comparison, because it made heaven almost tangible for a little while. It was so surreal to drive over the brick roads and see only beauty all around us, and realize that THIS was where we were spending the next 5 days. Our sole purpose for being there was to serve God by loving some of His people, and we were so excited and ready to do just that. As we oriented ourselves to our new surroundings, everything that had been on our minds prior to that just melted away. The tax paperwork and bills and health problems and economic crashes that were back at home didn't matter in Watercolor. It was really cool for a hands-on learner like me who can read about heaven all day long and still have no idea how to describe it.

All this excitement, and the families hadn't even arrived yet! We knew we were in for a great week.

I can't keep my eyes open any longer.... to be continued...