At the beginning of February of this year, I was informed that I had to attend the Church of the Brethren General Board meeting in Elgin, IL on the weekend of 7-10 of March. I have been there before last October but this was a different situation. The BVS retreat landed on the following weekend and rather than flying back to New Windsor after the board meeting, I stayed in Elgin the rest of the week. When I went to the GB meeting the first time in October ’07, I only stayed there for 5 days. During that time, Francie was supposed to go but had to back out the last minute for family emergency. I had the option of weather I wanted to go or not. I wanted to go. I was looking forward to seeing some of my BVS unit members for the first time since orientation. During the October meetings, the field staff dropped off their laptops to the I.S department for virus protection updates and scans on their laptops. Tim and Tom were busy at the meetings making sure that nothing goes wrong during the General Boards presentation. I stayed back and finished the field staffs laptops because here in New Windsor, Francie is in charge of all field staff people’s computer equipment. I really enjoyed my time there in October.
However, this time around was totally different. I worked on two field staff laptops on Friday the 7th and Sunday the 9th. Saturday the 8th, I had to go with everyone to the Elgin Holiday Inn for the big meetings. The General Offices were closed. The meeting lasted from 8:00am to 3:00pm. The meeting was about the Association of Brethren Caregivers (ABC) merging with the General Board and people wanted to change the General Board name. Also, people had an issue with the General Board being acting more like a corporation then being a non-profit church. I find those two topics very interesting and so I look forward to seeing the outcome of this meeting. On Sunday, I went to work, back at the general offices and had to sit in on two other meetings. One meeting I sat with Tim and the other meeting I sat with Tom. My job was supposed to back up Tim or Tom if there was an issue with the projector or laptop during a presentation. Everything went real well and there were no issues. I had taken care of the laptop jobs that I had and I was just chillin with the I.S office the rest of the time. On Sunday evening before leaving work, I started to feel real weak and cold. The only thing I wanted to do was lay down and sleep. I got to give some love to the house because the house showed me love and support during my sick period and I won’t ever forget it. I had checked my temperature and it read over 100. So I just stayed in my room the rest of the night and in the morning I went to work because I usually go to work sick. I stayed until about noon when the I.S administrative assistant asked me to go home. It was a good thing to because I wasn’t getting any better. As of matter of fact, I was getting worse. I stayed at the BVS house for the rest of the week. Thursday night I started to feel a little better and I decided to go to work on Friday. On Friday I didn’t do anything at work but it was just good being there. Throughout the week, I did get a chance to go to a few restaurants while I was there in Elgin for a week. Tom and I hit up this steakhouse which was cool. The rest of the time I spent watching movies that I had brought. That was my week in Elgin.
On Sunday, the day of the retreat, I packed up everything waited to everyone to come here at the house. It was great seeing everyone again. From there we packed up everything into the vans and headed out to Dickson Valley camp. We got there around 3:00pm and we unpacked the vans and headed to our rooms where we were going to stay. I stayed in a room with 10 other guys. Not everyone came at the same time. The German’s came around Midnight because their original flight was cancelled so they had to take another flight. The German’s were at another retreat before they came to our retreat. It was great seeing Steve, Ben, Leo, and everyone else again. So they came in around midnight like I said above and we greeted them. After around 15-20 minutes of talking with them, I was getting tired and went to bed. I got up around 8:00am to get ready for the day. 8:30am we had breakfast in the camp cafeteria. After that we came back to the room and chilled until devotions. The people that did devotions came up with different topics for each devotion, just like orientation. After each devotion we had a session. A session is about 1-2 hour discussion about the environment of our projects. We had a morning session and we had an evening session. We had free time in the afternoons, which I spent chillin in my room because I felt already drained out for having to stay in Elgin for a week prior to retreat. The good thing about writing this line in my blog is I don’t have to worry about my father’s comments regarding what I was feeling at retreat (just a personal thought). That is been pretty much the whole retreat there for me. The key things that I will take from the retreat is that I got a chance to hang out with my unit members all at once. To me that is the most important thing. I also got a chance to meet new people from the unit 277. I like the unit 277. They are really great people and I look forward to seeing some of them in the future. The next thing I am going to take from the retreat is that I had the opportunity to get information about becoming a camp counselor at one of the local brethren camps around my area. I loved being a camp counselor at Foothill Horizons in California. The opportunity to do it again is exciting. I just have to ask Francie about it. I am sure she will feel the idea of it but I just have to see. I am going remember the last night together when we all watched a movie. That was really cool. We watched this movie called “August Rush”, a good movie to see during retreat. They had watched another movie but I went back to my room and chilled the rest of the time. Nothing unusual in the last day. We had breakfast and then we packed our things and loaded the vans. We had our last devotion of the retreat and after that it was off to Elgin. When we got to Elgin, everyone had lunch in the BVS office, but I just chilled in the I.S room checking on my email and checking out the Lakers are doing because I haven’t had any internet connection for the past 4 days. After lunch was over, we headed to the airport and now I have returned home (well, home away from home). If I think back to the retreat, I would say it was a good trip. I just wished I didn’t have to go to the board meeting before hand; I would’ve had a better time I think.
My overall trip I believe was a good trip, other than the fact that I got sick. There were plenty of times I wished I was back home and I am glad to be back but spending time with the unit was important to me and it was a very special time to do so. I don’t know if we’ll ever get a chance to hang out all at once again but it was something to remember.
JCI
BVSer; Unit 275
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