Retreats: Encouragement
![]() Your Ladies Retreat or Ladies Day is a perfect time and place to encourage your sisters. Two big ways you can do that is through writing notes to each other during your day or weekend, and then through recognition of the blessings your ladies are for each other.
Combine these two ideas with your creative theme, and you have a double blessing! Writing Notes The two things you need when planning on sharing notes with each other is something to write on, and a way to deliver the notes. Depending on the size of your group some methods of each may be easier than others.
First, what you use to write the notes. You can decide how involved you want to get here.
Check the sidebar for a PDF you can use to create notecards for a couple of different themes.
As for the delivery:
Have a separate table set up along the wall of your meeting room for the note bags, or store along the wall. If you don't have the space for that, here are some other ideas.
I have kept notes from several past years, and they still make me smile when I stumble upon them even now. |
Courtney Kendall Steed
I'd love for you to join me at my blog, where I want to keep the encouragmeent and inspiration of my fellow sisters going. See you there!
Fresh Ideas:
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Giving Recognition
Women of God are servants by design. So often the Good Work of our sisters in Christ is quiet, and hardly recognized by those they serve. Ladies Retreats and Ladies Days are wonderful opportunities to give some public credit. Again, there are few ways to do this and can be adapted for your theme. Here are some ideas we have used.
Be creative! There are lots of reasons to praise each other. Take the time to do it when you are together. It will bless all involved I promise!
- The Hat Awards - This one words well with Clothed with Christ theme. The "award" is a hat of some sort. Have your planning committee discuss beforehand the ladies who they would like to honor and find hats that go with their reason for recognition. For example, have a jester's hat for the "silliest" gal, a crown for the "queen of the church office", a nurses/doctors cap for a lady who had been noted to be compassionate, etc. It is fun matching hats with people. And so fun to give out!
- The Yearbook Awards - For the Holiness School theme you can give out awards like "Most Likely to be Put in Jail" and "Class Clown". Let the group nominate each other using a simple "ballot" early in the day. During lunch break one of the planners can count up the votes. During the presentation, your "students" will be howling. This can be adapted in lots of ways to fit any number of themes.
- Their own words - One simple way to get everyone involved is to place preprinted cards on the tables with ques like, "______________________, you reflect Christ for me..." Or, "________________________, you are an example of compassion because..." Then, collect the cards, then redistributed them to everyone in the group. Take time to read them aloud. Having someone else read something like that lends itself to a different feel, than if everyone just reads their own. Of course, this would work best with a smaller group. For a larger group, a few can be chosen to read aloud. Make sure to take the time to place those cards in the personalized gift bags or somehow given to the gals mentioned on the cards before closing out the day.
Be creative! There are lots of reasons to praise each other. Take the time to do it when you are together. It will bless all involved I promise!