Operations Dominate Frisbee

AKA Fall Fellows Retreat

Mission: Fellowship and Edification (and play some serious Frisbee)

Location: the beautiful Camp Oakhill

Time of Occurrence: 7 November- 9 November: 2014

Theme: Justice-- Micah 6:8

Status: Completed

Results: SUCCESS

Earlier in November, the Raleigh Fellows had the opportunity to hit the road with the Crutchfield family and head to Camp Oakhill in Oxford, North Carolina for the annual Fall Fellows Retreat. The weekend was amazing. For starters, we got to meet the other Fellows groups! As you can picture, it was wonderfully awkward at first then incredibly fun and interesting. It was nice to get out of our Raleigh bubble, meet all these incredible people, and remember how big and widespread God’s kingdom is. The other Fellows programs are all over the place and more are popping up each year, what a cool testimony in itself. As we were taken out of Raleigh, we were able to hear and see what God is doing all over the States. Then to top it off, we were taken out of the States and mentally transported to India when we spoke about the abolition movements there. Talk about broadening your horizons. The focus of the weekend was Micah 6:1-8 and specifically about God’s call “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8b).” I personally have heard sermons and conferences on justice many a time, yet I gained fresh perspectives on justice and great insight from the weekend. We had the privilege of hearing from John Richmond, a passionate follower of Christ, previous director of IJM’s slavery work in India (aka a man risking his life to free slaves), and now federal prosecutor serving as the Special Litigation Counsel with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. He was a truly great speaker and story-teller, and what he had to share about Micah 6:8, his personal experiences working with slavery in India, and now in the States was 100% a blessing and 100% convicting.

As you can see, we learned tons and talked about some difficult topics. We also had a ton of fun and got to be silly and ridiculous (a Raleigh Fellow specialty as the other groups learned quickly). We made a camp fire, played corn hole, took crazy golf cart rides, took walks around the camp, jump-roped, etc. Saturday afternoon was the infamous Frisbee tournament that our lovely and talented director, Ashley Crutchfield, looks forward to every year. There is this wonderful, playful (yet actually semi-real) rivalry between the Raleigh Fellows and the Trinity Fellows in Charlottesville, VA. Lets just say that they often beat the Raleigh Fellows in this highly competitive tournament. Let’s also just say that the Raleigh Fellow’s class of 2015 does not mess around and we brought our A-game. We beat Trinity 15-2 and it was a highlight of the weekend no doubt.  We also just had a really great time working together as a team, encouraging each other and sharing together in victory and loss. The weekend was short, but super sweet for sure.

Over and out.
Kelsey Riggs.