Lighthouse Family Retreat

We had the privilege of attending the Lighthouse Family Retreat for a week in June. (I've waited to post about it because I was waiting to get some pictures in the mail.) It was one of the most wonderful weeks our family has ever had together! The LFR describes what their mission is as:
    "Lighthouse Family Retreat serves children with cancer and their families at a seaside retreat to help them laugh, restore family relationships and find hope in God."

We had heard from other families how great the retreat was, but we had no idea how much fun it would be and how good it would be for each one of us. There are no words to describe how amazing the volunteers were! We were assigned two families as our personal volunteers and there were many more there to cook, serve, do the music/worship, play with the kids and help with activities. There was a whole group of Summer Staff volunteers. These were college students who had given their entire summer vacation to serve the families at these retreats. This is a picture of just some the volunteers entertaining us at dinner:

We definitely had the best family volunteers assigned to us. Here is us with Nate and Lindsey:

We somehow didn't get a picture of us with our other family volunteers, Bob, Barb and their granddaughter, Molly. (I'm very sad about that!) Lauren and Hannah quickly became great friends with Molly.

Lauren and Hannah fell in love with one of the college volunteers, Carly. She spent hours playing with them and was so incredibly sweet! All of the volunteers took a week of their vacation time and paid their room and board expenses to serve families like ours for a week. Who does that? We are blown away from this and the love that was poured out on us!

Our kids had the best time playing with the children of the volunteers and other retreat families. They had lots of time to play on this big open area. There were games of football, nine-square and tag going on all the time.

This is the group photo of all the retreat families. Look how many people were blessed by this ministry!

We are so thankful to this ministry for allowing us to have a week to relax and have fun at the beach! Each morning the kids went to their fun activities and the parents went to a group time. It was such a unique and healing experience to be in a room full of parents who are also walking through this journey of childhood cancer. We enjoyed every minute of our week and hope to be a volunteer family one day!