As the Year 8s arrived at D block with smiles and colourful clothes on a beautiful Thursday morning, the bell rang to start our second Reflective School Retreat, organised by the Year 8 Teachers and the Logos team.
All the Year 8 homerooms walked without a sound towards the Gym, where they were greeted with reflective speeches from Mr. Piggin, Mrs. Oliver, and some of the Year 8 teachers about the topic/theme of our retreat day, Celebrating the Uniqueness of Ourselves and Others, and its importance to life today.
The activities that we did during the retreat were all related to the theme. The fun and reflective activities consisted of affirmations (writing good things/skills about our classmates), drama (where we acted based on a scripture relating to the theme), recognising God-given strengths (where we wrote down our God-given strengths and what we could do to help others with them), the Maze Challenge (where we had to trust our classmates to get us through a maze blindfolded; the maze was filled with obstacles and e had the aim of reaching the goal of candy) and Made in the Image of God (where we learned about the uniqueness of ourselves and the Father’s Love Letter). All these activities related to the same theme which ran through the whole retreat.
Throughout the day, we learned more about how God made us unique and special in His image. None of us are “perfect”, we were made by the Father to have some skills/talents we and others lack. We must accept the uniqueness God gave us, and the uniqueness of others. There will never be another one of us in this planet.
At the end of our fourth activity, we had a huge, scrumptious pizza lunch for all the classes.
At the end of the day, we came out of the retreat knowing we were all unique in some way. It was a great day and I’m sure the Year 8s would love to do this Retreat again!
Jermaine Daclan
