Guys Retreat: Camp Nazareth, Pennsylvania

Well, hopefully all the guys had fun this last weekend. I've got a few pictures to share and will give a brief recap of our trip.

First, we all met at the church at 1:00. That is, all of us except the McDonald crew, who decided to arrive around 1:40. But as we've all learned, "A McDonald is never late. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to." (I've got a pat on the back for the first person to name that movie)

We made a few stops on the way to get some grub and gas, then to make things interesting, we decided to get lost when we were five minutes away from the camp. Paul is to blame for this, as he was the one who made us turn around (after we were already going the right way).

When we got to the camp, we met Fr. Michael (who runs the camp) and ate a few snacks. Jeremy ate a few more snacks. Unfortunately, we were the only guys to show up for this retreat. Very disappointing. I was really looking forward to hearing other guys do R2D2 impressions, but oh well.

It was already around 11:00, so we decided to go to bed. Michael kept most of us awake for the next three hours with his continuous fog-horn snore and frequent screaming-himself-awake nightmares. He kept screaming something like, "Cupcake? Bunny-slipper? NOOOO!!!" I have no idea what that was about.



In the morning we got up bright and early for Matins. Those of us who hadn't met Fr. Calinic got to meet him. The little church they have is awesome. I have a few pictures, but they don't do it justice. Here it is from the outside:



This is the outside door:




You'll have to wait for inside pictures from our Vespers service.

After Matins, we had breakfast and they served sticky buns. They were good, but Fr. Michael talked them up so much that we were almost disappointed. The way he described them, we thought eating them would allow us to transcend time and space. He (Fr. Michael) was also very enthusiastic about serving us seconds. I remember saying that I felt like one of those little yippy dogs where the owner gets the dog all excited. Fr. Michael was like, "Hey boys! You want more food! Come on! I'll hook it up! Let's go boys! Do it up!" I was so excited to eat. Anyways, the food was good.

After breakfast we had a couple teachings from Fr. Calinic. He spoke to us about the life of King David. The one thing he told us to remember for sure is that "human opinion does not matter." If only it were that easy to believe. I wish I could tell you how important it is to remember that, but I can't. So, just know that the sooner you can learn that, the better off you'll be.

Lunch was more of the same. We had some shrimps that were tasty and Fr. Michael coerced me into eating about ten too many. After lunch we were given lots of free time. We used the majority of it playing ping-pong and various games. The game room had ping-pong, pool, foosball, air hockey, video games and a quarter-devouring pinball machine. Unfortunately, these games were not free. We had to pay fifty cents for every ping-pong ball, fifty cents for every game of pool, a dollar for the air hockey, fifty for the foosball, fifty for the driving game, and fifty for the pinball machine that eats your quarters so you can never really play it anyways.



Here's Matt playing the driving game. It looks like he's doing very well, but I'm pretty sure he crashed into that cactus right after I took the picture.



That's Jake trying to play pool. After getting his hind end kicked in ping-pong, he thought he'd try some billiards instead. I'm pretty sure he missed that shot. In my opinion, Jake stinks at pool and is even worse at ping-pong. But then again, human opinion does not mattter...



Jeremy and James playing some pong. Look at the form on that backhand! It's a thing of beauty!

After our free time, Justin (a guy we met who is in seminary, I think) talked to us for a while about living the Christian life. The highlight of this talk was hearing about a "silent retreat" that Justin took for eight days where he wasn't allowed to talk. Except for like 30 minutes a day to talk with their priest (I think), they did not talk for eight days! A few of us were actually interested in doing something similar, so we'll see what happens. James was actually the biggest advocate of doing our own silent retreat. I don't think I need to explain the irony here.

We had another small break and then Fr. Calinic was brave enough to do an anonymous question and answer session. He answered all of our questions with wisdom and grace, and I can assure you that I will never give my own Q&A.



After this we had Vespers. A few of us got there a little early and thought we witnessed a weeping icon. Daniel rubbed some of the "tears" into his hands, hoping it might improve his ping-pong skills. Unfortunately, we were informed that what we were witnessing was merely some run-off from an icon being annointed. And of course, I'm kidding about Daniel.



Here's all of us at Vespers.



They had a beautiful iconostasis. You can barely see Fr. Calinic behind it, at the altar.



This is the icon of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, the namesake of this little church.



A close up of the iconostasis.



All of us after vespers. Yes, that's Fr. John in the middle there.



Confession at Sts. Cyril and Methodius. You can kind of see the chandelier in this picture. It was awesome. I have a better picture of it somewhere, but can't find it right now. I'll keep looking.



This icon hangs over the door as you leave the church.

After Vespers, we had dinner. Some spaghetti with sauce that reminded me of Spaghetti-O's. I had finally learned my lesson and refused seconds and thirds. We were given more free-time and decided to set up a ping-pong tournament.



This is Matt and Jonathon in the midst of a heated battle during the tournament. Luckily, Fr. Calinic and Brian McDonald were disqualified from the tournament. Ever a McDonald, I think Brian convinced Fr. Calinic to show up late, thereby ensuring his removal from the tournament. With those two out of the way, I easily breezed through the competition and was utterly victorious. Proving once again that youth and speed is no match for being smarter than a rock.



Since the games were too expensive, we took to inventing our own. This is quad-pong. I think Paul is spitting out the ping-pong ball to begin play.



This one is air-pong. A cue stick is used as the net on top of an air-hockey table.

After our tournament, we watched a video on the Shroud of Turin. It was very interesting and I wish you all could have seen it. I wish some of the guys had stayed awake to see the whole thing too. Here's a picture of the shroud:



After that, we went to bed. In the morning, we went to Fr. Calinic's church for liturgy. This is the same church that Fr. Joseph Morris used to be at, Holy Cross in Hermitage, PA. They were gracious enough to feed us after the service, and then we were on our way home.

Many thanks to Brian McDonald and Brett Zimmerman for doing the dirty work- driving. Thanks also to Fr. Calinic for sharing his time and wisdom with us. Thanks to all you guys for going, hopefully we can do another retreat sometime soon. Please leave your own comments on the weekend in the comment section of this post. Thanks!