So for Transparent this year, our young adult retreat decided to make t-shirts. 
And they would be based off of our theme “Band of brothers and sisters”. Somehow, everyone on core was thinking more like “Band of Brothers” the world war 2 movie.
Instead the idea turned out to be Musical Band.
I am writing this blog a month later, so my thoughts and feelings are not as clear as they would have been. Which is one thing I am working on.
Anyways, lets go over the retreat and see what I learned. The feature of the retreat was learning how to live in unison as a community.
This is the 2nd time at this place, and we usually get the place called shepard’s lodge. Which holds a good number of people (30-40).
One of my favorite memory of retreat was my sleeping arrangements. I was in the room with all the heavy sleepers, and snorers. However, I guess nobody ever sleeps in the same room as this one guy name benson. There are 4 guys in my room, and 3 of us would go to sleep first, then benson would come and sleep later. I would go to sleep with the two other guys in the room, and when I woke up, there was only benson in the room. The other two guys could not make it to level 2 snoring. 🙂
We had our sessions with Pastor Josh Chien in this conference room. He is a very fast preacher in terms of what he talks about. It is like shooting a firehose at us, and if you are not ready, you just miss stuff.
But it was mostly about learning how to just have humility and love for each other. Mostly learning how to treat everyone else around you better than yourself. Which does sound like you are putting yourself down, however, it was more based on realizing how much God loved us. How since God can humble himself down to our level, we have a model for what to strive after, that allows use to love others as much as we love ourselves.
My sharing group in the kitchen, that place had a dutch door. So people would come knocking after we were done asking us to give them stuff from inside. 
Like all retreats, we had a time of reflection at campfire. What was amazing, was how everything worked out so well thanks to God. Core had not fully figured out how to do campfire until 5 minutes before it started. It ended up being really awesome, unless you count Nathan injuring his foot.
Overall, what did I think of the retreat? I found it a little refreshing, and it was mostly a reminder to me to continue to work with others.
I think one of the things I am starting to feel is the concept of just being old. Like a super senior in college, especially with Transparent about to start up young families fellowship. A lot of the people I grew up in Transparent are going into there. 
Now I know I have to engage the younger ones and that I am in a different step now.
What does that mean? I think it means my clock at Transparent is starting. Especially serving on core. From what I see, I think I will be on core for no more than 2 years. When I turn 31, I will be off transparent core.
So after the retreat I drove out to walnut creek for dinner. I walked around the Walnut Creek Library.
Then I ended up eating dinner at some cuban restaurant. A lot of tapas.
My favorite part of ordering was the waitress. I asked the waitress how much food is too much, so she looked at me and said “I’ll tell you when you have too much”. So I started to order from the tapas, mussel, friend plantains, and several other items. When I started going to far, she looked at me and shook her head. After dinner, I thanked her, because I finished 95% of what was ordered.
