IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL

 East Central District (ECD) held a women's retreat on Saturday, April 6,2019, at  Warren W. Willis United Methodist Camp in Fruitland Park.

 The theme for the day was It is Well with My Soul. Peggy, Glenda and Sharon had appropriate shirts to wear for the occasion.

 26 women from First United Methodist Church, Clermont attended.

 Janet Blume, Education and Interpretation chair for ECD, helped with the  registration and giving everyone a name tag.

 About 100 women gathered for the meeting.

Anne Winn, ECD President, welcomed everyone and lead us in song, even though there was some technical difficulty getting the words on the screen.

 Pam Anders, ECD Social Action chair, shared readings from the prayer calendar.

 Lisa Oelschlatger, ECD Communication chair, gave a nice talk about resting and restoring our soul using examples and scriptures from the Bible.

 There were 6 very interesting workshops. On the back of our name tag were the four we were attending and the session we would go to each one.  A good pull pork and bean lunch was served by the camp.

 A Tai Chi instructor from  Plantations lead a workshop.

 What a nice place to be outside for this activity.

He lead the music this morning and then had a workshop on how music touches our spirit. We can learn many of the stories and scriptures from songs that are sung.  The background of how some hymns were written was shared.  Many of them are poems and he suggested that you think about looking at what you write and see if music might be added to it for a song.  " It is Well With My Soul" was written by Horatio Spafford after losing all he owned in the Chicago fires, and shortly after his  four daughters drowned at sea when their ship sunk on the way to Europe. After the news,Horatio sailed to join his wife, and as his ship approached the area where the ship had sunk he penned the hymn.

Another workshop was Praying the Psalms. The instructor talked about spending more time in prayer and what we gain from praying.  We read Psalms 25 from different translations of the Bible, wrote down words that stood out to us, and then wrote our own prayer following that Psalms format.

Sandy shared the prayer she wrote.

One workshop was a mission project. Cathy and Ann cut plastic bags into strips about 2 inches wide. Each strip formed a loop.

Andrea tied the loops together to make a ball of plarn ( plastic yarn).

The plarn was then used to crochet a mat that when finished would measure 4 feet by 6 feet. The mat was to be used by someone who is  homeless to sit and sleep on to protect them from the wet ground. It takes a lot of bags, a lot of time and a lot of work to make a mat.

Joyce and Diane took some time to catch up with a woman from another church. It was a very  enjoyable day of fellowship, workshops, and relaxation.