I moved from Ohio to Knoxville, TN to go to the University of Tennessee.  One day in the weight room I met a guy from Canada.  His name was Ian and his sister and brother-in-law were in a Christian campus ministry.  That fall they were going to a college and career retreat to a camp called The Wilds (www.wilds.org) in Rosman, NC.  I went with them and had a great time both spiritually and activity wise.  Through the years of going to The Wilds I went from attending C/C retreats to couples retreats, to family camps to father/son retreats. 

One spring I sent my registration in 3 months early to a father/son retreat.  They were filled up.  Peggy said why not do your own retreat?  Well that birthed a ministry for me.  We had our first f/s where we were living.  We had about 15 attend.  The next retreat we did had about 18 attend plus plenty of rain.  They seemed to be a great success and I had a lot of good comments about them.

When we bought the property I decided to move the f/s retreats to there.  My thought was would men travel that far for a retreat? 

Most of our advertisement was through homeschool e-mail.  More and more people were contacting me about the retreat.  We charged a fee for the retreat basically to cover the cost of food.  We feed them real well.  Peggy did all the cooking and did a great job.  Our first retreat at the farm we had 25 attend.  That fall we had another retreat and had 28 attend.  A guy from our church came up to help Peggy cook.  With this many men and boys it was stretching our ability to feed them and also bring and store the food for two days. 

In our retreats we would have a guest speaker speak three times to challenge the dads and sons to grow in their relationship with the Lord and with each other.  We also provide plenty of activities for the dad and sons to work and do things together.  I guess one of the activities the boys like most is to get into the 40 foot wide creek on our farm. We always tell the dads to bring plenty of extra clothes as they will need them. 

The next retreat we had about 60 scheduled to come.  The boys and I went up on Thursday to get things ready.  We spent about 3 hours putting up a huge tarp which we use in case of rain.  Well, during the night I heard it raining … and raining … and raining!  I got up about 5 and looked outside.  Our tarp was flat on the ground and the creek was about to come over it’s bank.  The weather forecast was for 80% chance of rain on Friday.  Our creek empties into a river about 2/10^th of a mile down the road.  The river backwashes and floods some of our bottom land where we had the retreat planned.  I made a decision for safety reasons to cancel the f/s.  I called Peggy and had her e-mail everybody and call several.  It was such a disappointment for us and I know for a lot of the other dads and sons.

One thing we had decided to do different for this f/s was to not charge anything, but have each dad bring their own food.  Bringing the food and cooking for 60 people would have been almost impossible for Peggy.

We rescheduled the retreat for the fall and had about 38 showed up on Labor Day.  That was a real surprise for me.  This spring we did another f/s and had 51 show up.  The dads that have been coming to the f/s retreats asked about doing a father/daughter retreat.  So we did our first f/d retreat and had 41 show up.  Not having any daughters I was surprised about how rugged some of them were.  We always do a gun safety talk at our retreats and then let the dads and sons do some target shooting.  We did the same for the daughters.  I must say, I think the daughters were better shots than the sons.

When the Lord blessed us with our farm we knew He wanted us to use it to ministry to others.  The retreats have been one way the Lord has allowed us to do this.

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Posted by HSBFrontPorch

What a wonderful idea/ministry/blessing!
~Nancy

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Posted by tnfarmgirl

Henry and Peggy, it is evident that God's hand is upon your family and your ministry - it is so encouraging to read about what He is doing in your lives!

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