miango rest home

The kids spring break is coming the week after next (basically March 29th through April 2nd). A ministry that has been based here for many years takes this time during the students spring break to host and serve their community with an annual retreat at a location called Miango Rest Home.

It is a retreat center that has cabins, volleyball sand court, a snack bar and then it has dining facilities so one does not have to worry about preparing food while there. It is about a 45 minute drive from where we are located and as a family we have had the opportunity to go there a couple of times.

John and I and Jason and Emilee have been invited to go there and host a retreat for their youth (12th grade down to 1st grade) while their staff have a retreat of their own. Here are some pictures of when we were there last summer with a few of our "all summer" interns. What I enjoy most about this place is that it is truly located in a beautiful area, lots of trees and flowers, an old volcano is about five minutes down the road that you can hike in and out of and a pretty waterfall is down the road as well. It is also extremely quiet.

Located on the grounds sporadically are some open air shelters. In Mexico, we would have called them palapas, but these were much smaller. Just big enough for a few people to spend some time in them on their own. Two of these pictures are my children spending time with the Lord before we began our own retreat with our summer staff and interns.

There are lots of areas to meet for "talks" and lots of areas to roam around in. The picture to the left is a large play structure/treehouse that is large enough for kids of any ages to play in. There is actually a rope ladder on it that I could not climb up; whereas, my children had no problems whatsoever.... a humbling experience I must admit.

We look forward to the time away from our own home during these few days, but the few experiences we have had of the place have been kind of funny. Both times we arrived, there was no running water and the power was out most of the time. So, in John's mind, why go somewhere to deal with the same stresses we have at our own home. So, he affectionately calls it miango stress home. He is funny!