Great Retreat feedback from one of our Gap Year Students.
On Wednesday the 2021 Gap year participants went on a retreat to The Home of Compassion in Island Bay, Wellington.
The retreat was three days and was filled with many sessions and activities. We also had a few sessions and discussions based on how our beliefs in God have changed over the years, and Pa Eddie took us through some meditation exercises.
On Thursday we had a session with Kitty about “Rocks in our shoe or in our backpack” – This analogy was based on when you get a stone in your shoe it’s uncomfortable and holds you back and becomes your major focus. In this session we had to think of some of our own rocks, what holds us back and what we think we need to let go of. We then wrote them down and went to the beach and burnt them and as a group let go of those “rocks” and reflected on what we wrote and let go of what was holding us back. This session personally was a favourite! Some of us also threw other rocks into the sea.
We also learnt about Suzanne Aubert and her life’s journey. We visited her in the chapel and reflected on the hardships and challenges she went through just to help others. This really put things into perspective and made quite a few of us think about our own lives and what we are doing to help others and how we treat others.
Overall this retreat was an experience that was challenging, reflective, wholesome, beautiful and overall one for the books. I can’t put into words the way we all felt leaving after the experiences we all went through personally, emotionally and spiritually.
