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Rooming Option Lesson Learned

When we book a hotel for our retreat, there are often two queen-sized beds in each room.  In order to bring the price down for the ladies, we offer a “four-to-a-room” option, which means that two ladies would need to share a bed.  This could be a difficult situation for ladies who don’t know one another well.  So we adapted over the years, and we now require that a woman who wants the lower-priced option must designate one roommate on the registration card (the one with whom she will share a bed).  This way, both ladies sign up knowing with whom they will be sharing the bed, and thus prevents the awkwardness of  sharing a bed with a stranger.  It is best if these ladies sign up together, each designating the other as their roommate, to avoid the possibility of designating a roommate who never actually registers for the retreat (and believe me, that has happened!)

Posted in: Lessons Learned, Retreat and Event Planning

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The Missing Star

One year at our retreat, the women returned after their Saturday afternoon free time for a late afternoon session.  This session was to be kicked off by the third act of the retreat skit.  As we began to set up–oh no!  Our lead performer and main character was nowhere to be found.  We had people running all over the hotel searching for her, since we didn’t know her room number or have her cell phone number on hand.  Finally, unable to delay the session any further, we had to rearrange our schedule to fit the skit in later.  Of course, we soon found our star, and the show went on, but we learned something.  Now, we make sure that we have a list of each person involved in the skit and their cell phone number with us at the retreat AND, upon their check-in, we make sure that we have their room number.  It is easy for someone to get confused on the time, fall asleep during free time or be otherwise distracted.  But shame on us if we don’t know how to reach them.

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Unfortunate, But True

Over the years, we have recognized an unfortunate fact:  a woman will appreciate the retreat more if she has made a personal investment in order to attend.

We used to go to great lengths to provide scholarships to women who couldn’t afford the expense of a retreat. If we had the means, we provided full scholarships for them to attend the retreat. Over the years, however, we observed that those women who were given full scholarships were the ones more likely to let a minor difficulty or hindrance keep them from attending the retreat, while those who had made a monetary sacrifice to attend the retreat made more of an effort to come, despite difficulties.

As a result of this observation, we made a change to our scholarship policy.  While we still want to provide financial help to those without the means to attend our retreat, we provide this help in the form of partial scholarships.  As a general rule, we now require that those who have expressed the need for scholarship help make some amount of personal investment–by paying whatever they can afford, or, at the very least, paying the non-refundable deposit.


Posted in: Lessons Learned, Retreat and Event Planning, Starting Points in Retreat Planning

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Distractions

We had an “interesting” experience one year at a retreat.  We were in our assigned meeting room in the hotel.  A large wedding was also being hosted  in another banquet room.  Unfortunately, the liquor cabinet was located in our meeting room, and hotel personnel were coming in during the evening to get more liquor.  Apparently, they had seriously miscalculated the amount of wine/liquor that the wedding would require.  Talk about a distraction!  Obviously, our enemy at work.  Lesson learned:  Before and during the retreat, be praying against distractions of the enemy!  He can use just about anything or anyone to distract women from hearing God’s message.

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