Report Back: Jesus Camp Nantucket Retreat 2023

If your church or organization is ever in need of a speaker for a women’s event, I’d love to come share with your ladies as well. Click here for more information, or to find an upcoming event near you!
Now is the time to book an event for 2024!

It brought me such joy, recently, to share with another great group of ladies at the Jesus Camp, Nantucket Women’s Retreat on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. Conferences are super for reaching out to women in your community and surrounding areas, but retreats provide an intimate atmosphere that’s conducive to both formal instruction and informal, one on one discipleship. And we had plenty of time and space for both! Many thanks to Darcy Creech Marelli for opening up her lovely homes and hosting this biannual time of refreshing for women from all over the country this past October.

Last year when I spoke at JCNWR, it was just a couple of months prior to my 30th wedding anniversary, so my husband and I decided to drive to the retreat and treat ourselves to a “working second honeymoon,” visiting some fun “touristy” places on the way back home. We had such a great time, we decided to do it again this year.

It’s two full days of driving from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Hyannis, Massachusetts, and things were off to a great start. Our hotel in Virginia the first night was free due to some rewards points I’d forgotten I had.

The second night, when we arrived at our inn in Hyannis, we checked in and discovered that, for whatever reason, they had upgraded us for free to a room with a bay view.

As we unloaded our luggage in the parking lot and prepared to head to our room, I heard a man’s voice calling out a greeting to me in French. (Brothers, can I just say, unless you want to completely terrify a woman you don’t know, never call out to her in a dark parking lot – in French or otherwise.) It turns out he was from Baton Rouge, too, had seen our Louisiana license plate, and was glad to see some home folks. (We ran into an oddly inordinate number of people from Louisiana, or with close ties to Louisiana, in Massachusetts this year.)

Wednesday night, the ladies began to arrive. We shared a delicious dinner, and then had the opportunity to hear everyone’s “two minute testimony”. Our backgrounds varied from those of us who were born and raised in church and came to know Christ at an early age to those who had survived abuse, or walked on the wild side, or were involved in heretical church backgrounds before coming to Christ later in life. There is no such thing as a “boring” testimony. Every new birth in Jesus is a miracle of His mercy and grace.

This year, I taught a four lesson series on the topic of suffering. (No audio or video available.) Suffering is something we will all eventually experience, and God’s Word has so much to teach us about how to endure and respond to it in a biblical way.

Thursday’s teaching started with Christ, the Suffering Servant, discussing Christ’s suffering as the lens through which we view our own suffering.

We rounded out our instructional time with The Theology of Suffering, examining some common “Christian” misconceptions about suffering, and what the Bible actually teaches. Each session was followed by a time of Q&A and discussion groups.

Friday, session 1 was Rejoicing in God’s Promises During Suffering. Though suffering can be difficult and painful, God has made so many good promises to us and given us ample reason to rejoice, even in the most challenging circumstances.

Our second session was The Christian’s Response to Suffering. We always want to be sure we’re responding to suffering in a godly way, whether it’s our own suffering or we’re ministering to someone else.

Both teaching sessions were again followed by Q&A and discussion groups. All of the ladies were very gracious and receptive, and we had many edifying moments of discipleship.

Of course, there’s always time for food, fellowship, and fun! The ladies enjoyed working out, chatting around the dinner table, relaxing in the pool and hot tub, and trips into town and to the beach.

Retreat swag! Darcy kindly provided these resources and gifts for retreat attendees, and gave me a special treat of honey from High Point’s hive!

All too soon, it was time to say goodbye. It was a wonderful time of fellowship in the Lord, and I’m looking forward to going back next year! Many thanks to Darcy and her assistant, Otilia, who worked so hard to host a great retreat, took care of all my needs, and made me feel so welcome.

---

If your church or organization is ever in need of a speaker for a women’s event, I’d love to come share with your ladies as well. Click here for more information.

---

I was starving when I got off the ferry and onto the mainland, so we stopped at a trendy local restaurant for a late lunch before hitting the road for a few fun stops on the way home.

Fish tacos, New England style. Every Louisiana woman who travels knows to
carry Tony’s in her purse. Sometimes, when you’re away from home,
ya just gotta kick it up a notch! :0)

First on our itinerary was Dayton, Ohio, so we headed west.

I keep hoping to visit New York City one of these days. Last year, this is as close as we got.

This year we got a little closer. We actually drove through the city on the interstate. Here are the sights we saw (pretty thrilling, huh?):

Finally, we arrived in Dayton, home to the National Museum of the United States Air Force. My husband served in the Air National Guard, so this was a special treat for him.

We got in early enough to spend a couple of hours at the museum before it closed. Next on the agenda was Skyline Chili for supper. I was first introduced to the idea of eating chili on top of spaghetti noodles a few years ago on Twitter. To which I promptly said, “Gross. How could anybody ruin chili that way?”. But my Ohio followers swear by it, and there was a Skyline Chili practically across the street from our hotel, so I thought, why not give it a try? Besides, I love sampling the local fare when I travel. I ordered it “4 Way” (noodles, chili, beans, and cheese).

The verdict? I love you, Ohio, but my initial reaction to chili spaghetti was spot on for me. It’s just not my cup of tea. Sorry.

We spent the next day seeing the rest of the NMUSAF. To me, a plane is a plane (Don’t tell my husband I said that! :0), and there must have been hundreds of them, but even for someone like me, there were plenty of things to hold my interest, and I highly recommend that you visit if you get the opportunity. I’ve been to a lot of great museums, including the Smithsonian, and the NMUSAF is definitely one of the best. And not only that, admission and parking are both free, it’s open 7 days a week, and the grounds are lovely as well. If you love planes, plan to spend a few days. It’s huge.

One of the planes I enjoyed seeing was the C-47. This is the plane my grandfather flew during WWII, back when the Air Force was still the Army Air Corps.

There was a very sad exhibit on the Holocaust.

Disney lent its art and artists to a number of planes and units.

Major General Claire Lee Chenault was a long time Louisiana resident and former LSU student who formed and led the very successful American Volunteer Group – the Flying Tigers – during WWII.

Other exhibits I enjoyed included: walking through the “Air Force Ones” of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy (the one that flew his body back to Washington after the assassination), a giant, floor to ceiling quilt commemorating Air Force bases that have closed, the evolution of the Air Force song, and Ham’s – the first chimp in space – uniform and simulator. Ham was trained at Holloman AFB, not far from where I grew up in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

We finished up the Air Force museum early enough to drive on to our next destination, just an hour away – northern Kentucky.

After a good night’s sleep, we headed for the Creation Museum! What a joy to be in a museum having anything to do with science and hear a biblical perspective on it instead of having to consciously ignore all the evolution stuff (or correct it to your children). And all of the exhibits were so gospel-centered! We watched two brief 3D movies- one on the six days of Creation, the other, a Genesis through Revelation presentation of the gospel. There was also a small exhibit from the Museum of the Bible, which we hope to visit next year. It was too cold to spend much time outside, and the animals in the zoo seemed to agree, so we didn’t see many of them. When we got done with the museum, we took a quick look-see at downtown Cincinnati (it reminded us a lot of downtown New Orleans) and saw Paycor Stadium, where the Cincinnati Bengals play.

The final stop on our trip was the Ark Encounter, which we thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend, along with the Creation Museum. My favorite part was the exhibit with all the Noah storybooks that explained how harmful the “kiddiefication” of the Noahic narrative is. We also got to meet Ronda, a follower who has been such a faithful supporter of my ministry and A Word Fitly Spoken. Ronda works at the Ark, and was so kind and gracious to meet us and give us a behind the scenes tour of the hydroponic gardens and greenhouses in her department, where decorative plants as well as plants that feed the animals in the petting zoo are grown and maintained. Thank you, Ronda!

This trip was such a blessing. We are most grateful to God for providing it for us!

---

Photo Credits

Thank you to all the retreat attendees who generously shared many of the photos you see above in the retreat section.

All other photos by Michelle Lesley