My year started off with training. I was incredibly fortunate to serve with a wonderful and gifted group of women who made up the executive board. A group of us traveled to the Europe PWOC Leadership Conference, where we received training in our positions and quickly bonded! We were given a fabulous theme for the year which was "Shine in the Light of His Glory."
We held a Fall Kick-Off night last September and we sponsored weekly Bible Studies which began around that time as well. We had a few Girls Night Outs during the course of the year, and even began a book club that met every couple of months.
At the beginning of December, we held our second-annual women's Christmas brunch. Since last year's brunch was so successful, we decided to hold the breakfast at a bigger facility.
We had an incredibly talented woman in our midst (Kate W., who by the way, is now the current President-that's her playing the guitar).
She and her husband Joe, transformed what is typically a cold, concrete-floor facility, into a Western mountain lodge, 
complete with a chuck-wagon to serve the meal from. 
It was a lot of work, but it looked incredible!!! I wrote a skit and gave a talk about why God chose the shepherds and a star to pronounce the birth of his son. The skit was really cute! I had my two friends Alicia and Amanda play the parts of angels holding a casting-call for the birth-announcer. Here's a picture of the cast.
The brunch was just wonderful! I loved seeing how so many women used their gifts and talents to make it happen... and with such attention to detail. It was great!
For me, the climax of the year had to be our winter retreat.
I kind of took this on as my project for the year, enlisting plenty of help from my board. We decided to hold the retreat at a youth hostel in the sea-side fishing village of Whitby. The facility turned out to be amazing! Yes, it was a youth hostel, but it was a 4-star youth hostel that overlooked the harbor and the incredibly picturesque Whitby Abbey! 
The itinerary for the weekend was closely modeled around retreats that I had been on with my previous church back in MD, allowing for plenty of time on Saturday afternoon for sight-seeing and shopping!
The title for the retreat was "How Clean is Your House?." I was inspired to write a 5-scene skit about a woman who has a maid service come to her home and give it a good cleaning, metaphorically speaking. 
Each scene found the women in a different part of the house: the attic to look at her past, the bedroom to evaluate how she saw herself in the mirror, the kitchen to see what she was feedng herself, and the basement to see what dark secrets were lurking there. Each session for the retreat included some worship, one scene of the skit, and a brief talk. There were a few small group sessions scheduled throughout the weekend, and lots of time for game-playing and socializing in the evenings.
I left the retreat feeling completely fulfilled and utterly exhausted! Once again, it was an incredible amount of work. But it was so satisfying seeing a vision and passion becoming a reality! I suppose the same could be said for the whole year. It was incredibly challenging, but I learned so much... prayed SO much, and really experienced the goodness of God in so many ways.
