Lee Family Retreat 2016

For the first time ever, the Lee Family Retreat was held with every member of the Lee family! This year, Emery and Matt joined us as we reviewed what God did for us this past year. The retreat wasn't quite the same with them joining us!

 What a year 2015-2016 was! Some of the highlights included: Andrew's baptism and great 8th grade year including his being chosen to be a finalist in his school citizenship award, Matthew's great 5th grade year and soccer and drums, Emery's last year of homeschool and violin playing, we all served together at church with Children's Church and we hosted 5 Safe Families children in 3 hostings, just to name some.

God was gracious as usual in using our trials and joys to show us more of how magnificent and glorious He is this past year. We got back on track with verses and memorized the following verse this year:

• 1 Corinthians 2:1-2
• 1 Timothy 4:12
• John 3:36
• Romans 14:7-9
• Hebrews 11:6
• 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
• 1 Peter 2:24
• Isaiah 53:4-6
• 1 Corinthians 10:13
• Philippians 4:19
• Acts 4:11-12
• 1 Peter 4:16
• Psalm 91
• 1 Peter 5:6-11
• 2 Timothy 1:7
• Philippians 4:11-13
• Proverbs 6:20-23
• Galatians 5:22-25
• Luke 12:32-34
• Deuteronomy 6:4-7
• Ephesians 4:29, 31-32
• Psalm 86:11
• Psalm 103
• Romans 15:1-2
• Psalm 16:11
• Romans 10:13-15
• Isaiah 40:8

The boys and girl have so many verses they have memorized and that we continue to review it's crazy!  They memorized 92 verses this year. In addition to that, Andrew has already memorized 238 verses bringing his total to 330 verses! Matt and Emz have 161 additional verses bringing their total to 253 verses! This is the fruit of years of disipline as they practice daily, and we review these verses regularly. I can only hope that they continue this practice and recall these verses for the rest of their lives.

We also read through the following books of the Bible in our family Bible times:

• 1 & 2 Kings
• Mark
• Proverbs
• 2 Samuel

It was a year of more healing for me. More progress on that front. It was a great year for our family. I was very proud of the boys and girl for how seriously they took this retreat and how well they did this past year in growing in maturity. We also had plenty of fun as you can see. Praise God for another good Lee Family Retreat!

And we even got some good family volleyball in! Emery didn't get a bump in on this shot, but she did great too!

Emery's concert and recital

Emery has had a busy summer with her violin. She played in an "orchestra" concert in town.

She was the lone student playing the violin 2 part, but the conductor played the part with her.

Emery has improved quite a bit since last year.

Here she is from her recital just a few weeks ago.

Acts 4:11-12

It's a terrible thing to reject the only One who can save.

Acts 4:11-12
¹¹ He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the chief corner stone. ¹² And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

Champs!

Our church has a volleyball outreach ministry that they have been doing for 30 years over the summer. Every week, the kids practice with their team on one night and then play games on another night. Every practice and every game, someone teaches a message and preaches the Gospel. Hundreds have heard the Gospel over the years and many have come to Christ through this ministry. It's pretty awesome!

This year, Andrew got to play quite a bit on his team, Flight Force. He's still learning a lot of the nuances of volleyball, but he's got the basics down.

He's definitely got the encouraging part down.

At the end of the summer, there's a tournament for all the teams and a champion is crowned. It's pretty intense by the championship game and the level of play is pretty high. Flight Force were crowned 2016 champs. Nice job guys.