We had a wonderful time at our retreat this weekend! The retreat center was absolutely amazing. It was several buildings connected together, right on the edge of a beautiful lake. It certainly made for a very peaceful atmosphere.

The retreat format was different that what we have experienced in past retreats, but it was really great. Friday night thru Saturday at lunch time, we spent in silence. It was pretty hard to do, but was a very neat experience. We had 4 different conference sections and then afterwards we had 20-30 minutes for silent personal prayer time and then 20-30 minutes for discussion time with our spouse. The retreat was led by Fr. Larry, a Jesuit priest who has been blind since childhood. He was definitely inspirational and it was really neat to attend a mass where the priest is reading from a brail bible. Sister Bernadette was the other leader of the retreat and she came from a community in Winnipeg, Canada. She too was absolutely wonderful and shared lots of special personal stories that related to the conference topics.

Everyone at the retreat was the typical "Minnesota Nice" as they call it. We were by far the youngest couple there. We were a little surprised there weren't any couples near our age, but at the same time the retreat wasn't really geared towards mingling, etc. It was more a personal growth retreat for married people. But the couples we did talk to were so nice and we even got a couple of phone numbers and invitatons to attend their churches! They told us about several churches near us that have a large amount of young, traditional Catholics like us. :) So, we look forward to trying out those churches soon.

So to sum it up, we had a GREAT weekend. We are so thankful for this opportunity we had and for the graces we received as we continue to grow in our faith.

Here are some pics from the weekend:

Christ the King Retreat Center - Buffalo, MN


Beautiful flower/rosary garden.


Walking path of the Stations of the Cross.


Amazing sunset over the lake (Buffalo Lake).