a fun and relaxing weekend
A different (but good) retreat! It has been a long time since I have attended a church retreat that has been so relaxing and non-pressured. New Church Ministries out of Atlanta, IL is a relatively new church for the McLean/Atlanta and surrounding region. Our daughter and her husband attend there and invited us to go to the Church Retreat at the Circle Z ranch near Platsburg, MO. Circle Z Ranch is owned by the family of the pastor’s wife and is a truly lovely ranch with 3 lakes that are teeming with fish.
I took Friday off of work so we could caravan down with our daughter and son-in-law (Nikki and Tim Goggin). We left bright and early from Atlanta (around 4:30 a.m.) and took I-55 down to U.S. 36 at Springfield, IL, this took us to Hannible, MO (home of Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain) where we stopped to have breakfast at McDonalds. Breakfast was uneventful and we were soon on the road once again to run into 52 miles of road construction on U.S. 36. Tim of course was overjoyed by the prospect of being stuck behind a semi-trailer for almost the entire 52 miles of construction (we heard about this on the 2 way radios that he had purchased for the trip)! Finally we made our turn off on highway 35 then on down to highway 116 to Plattsburg. Once through Plattsburg we made our way along the backroads to the ranch along a gravel road (which we found out later that we did not have to take, thanks Ed!).
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