MIT Girls Retreat

Kelsey is part of a group at church called MIT (Missionaries in Training). They have the girls separated from the boys and it's grades 1-5. This was her first year to participate and she's loved it. Every week they learn about a new missionary or missionary family, where they live, the culture that they are involved with, etc. Every Spring, the girls go on a weekend retreat and this was our first year to do this. It was cold, but a lot of fun. We spent the weekend learning about a Japanese missionary family and the culture. In the first picture, Kelsey is creating her own personal zen garden.

None of the girls wanted to do this, so 2 moms stepped up to sumo wrestle each other.
Getting ready to take a canoe ride. This is all the girls that stayed in our cabin. They are all 1st graders.

Kelsey, with her friend Katherine and Katherine's mom, Laura.

Here are the girls again. Laura is such a sweetheart. She also has a son that is Cole's age and they've grown up together. It's nice having friends with children the same age as mine.

Japanese tea ceremony. I learned that it's proper Japanese etiquette to slurp your last sip of tea if you enjoyed it.

Fish imprinting. The Japanese fisherman don't photograph their fish the way we do to prove the size of our catch. Instead, they paint the fish and use a sheet of paper to take an impression of it before they carve it up. The girls used rubber fish.

I don't honestly remember what activity the girls were doing here, but Kelsey and Katherine paired up to do everything together. I thought that was pretty neat. They never left each others side.

All the girls up on one of the bunks before bed. We didn't pack pjs...go figure. Next year we'll know better.

Smores at the campfire.

It looks like they're singing praise songs, but they were actually doing silly songs with hand motions.

We had a great time and look forward to next years retreat. Cole will no longer be an MIT kid next year, he's moving up in the world.