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 2025!
In late October 2024, I once again had the privilege of teaching 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.
In 2022, when I spoke at JCNWR, it was just a couple of months prior to my 30th wedding anniversary, so my husband, Scott, 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 last year and this year, too.
It’s two full days of driving from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Hyannis, Massachusetts, and, praise God, we had a fairly uneventful trip. We stopped at the visitors’ center in Trenton, Georgia, which we thought was going to be one of those big, fancy rest stops that you find near the state line on the interstate, but the Dade County Visitors’ Center was more like a small tourist information center in a charming storefront in the middle of town. Shoutout to Ms. Patricia who practically adopted us and saved us a bundle of time with an alternate route around Chattanooga traffic.
It is my personal belief that every visitors’ center should have adorable stickers like these to give out. :0)
The next day we stopped for gas at a way-off-the-beaten-path town in New York, in a somewhat sketchy looking neighborhood, and a gentleman saw the military stickers on our van, thanked my husband for his service, and let us go ahead of him in line at the gas pump.
Nothing extraordinary, but meeting nice people like these around the country is such a blessing and makes the trip more fun.
The following day, Wednesday, we caught up on some much needed rest, and after a leisurely lunch together, I boarded the ferry for Nantucket Island.
The ladies began to arrive that evening. 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 biblical womanhood. The sessions were not recorded, but I’ve taught the same sessions before at other conferences:
God’s Design for Biblical Womanhood
God’s Design for Biblical Manhood
Holy Mothers (and others) of God’s Word (There are substantial differences, but Session 4 was about 60-70% drawn from this teaching session on holiness)
Thursday’s teaching started with God’s Design for Biblical Womanhood. We explored the value God places on womanhood and the unique place women hold in God’s plan for Creation, the home, and the church.
We finished things off for the day with God’s Design for Biblical Manhood. Manhood isn’t toxic. It’s a captivating part of God’s good design in Creation for men to lead their families, their churches, and to lead the way in exercising dominion over the earth. Each session was followed by a time of Q&A and discussion groups.
Friday, we kicked things off with Walking in Biblical Womanhood. The Fall led us to crave reversing roles with men and with God. But when we stand firm against the schemes of the devil, our homes and churches can truly flourish.
Our last session was Biblical Womanhood: Our Sisters in Scripture. God has given us excellent examples of pursuing holiness as godly women in the stories of many of our sisters in Scripture.
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!
Friday afternoon, Darcy’s apiarist (beekeeper), Anton, came out, showed us High Point’s hives, and gave a fascinating talk about the lives of bees. I love to listen to people who are both passionate and knowledgeable about their field and I think you would be hard put to find anyone more passionate or knowledgeable about bees than Anton was.
Sunset made for some gorgeous pictures!
Sweet fellowship…
Fire pit and s’mores!
All too soon, it was time to say goodbye, and I boarded an early morning ferry back to the mainland.
It was a wonderful time of fellowship in the Lord, and I hope to return soon! 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 arrived on the mainland mid-morning, and we promptly hit the road for Maryland to spend a little time with some of my husband’s family, whom we hadn’t seen in quite a while. It was a nice visit.
Next on the itinerary was the Pigeon Forge / Gatlinburg / Sevierville area of Tennessee. To get there, we had to go through Virginia. All day. Diagonally, I think, from the northeastern tip to the southwestern tip. That’s a lot of Virginia.
(Actually, I love Virginia. My parents used to live there and I’ve done more conferences in Virginia than any other state, including my own. I don’t think there’s a part of that state that isn’t beautiful.)
We finally pulled into Sevierville that evening and stopped at the Sevierville Buc-ee’s, which, until recently, was the largest Buc-ee’s in the world.
It was close to election day, and we couldn’t resist! We don’t care how hick anybody thinks we are! :0)
Exhausted, we checked into our hotel in Pigeon Forge. While there, we met a celebrity. I thought you might like to see the star of the new reality TV show, “Real Pigeons of Pigeon Forge”.😂
We spent our honeymoon in the Gatlinburg area have always wanted to go back. I figured it had probably changed a lot in 32 years, and we were only going to be there for a few days, so I asked my followers for all of the “must see” sights. They did not disappoint.
The overwhelming majority of respondents said we simply had to go to Cades Cove, and they were so right! Cades Cove is the remnant of a 19th century community in the Smoky Mountains with homes, a grist mill, and three preserved churches (you know I was all over that!). We would highly recommend you go, but that you go on a day when a mama bear is not blocking the road for three hours in order to protect her cub. For that same reason, we’d recommend you not go when it’s hot, cold, raining, or when you have to go to the bathroom. Late October was perfect and the fall foliage was gorgeous.
Our first stop along the trail was the Primitive Baptist Church. The ranger (who we suspected might have been a deacon at his own church!) gave a captivating talk on the building itself, as well as the practices of the church and the community.
The church was the center of life and the “invisible government” of the community. The ranger talked about the practice of church discipline, using as an example, a lazy man who wouldn’t work to provide for his family. The elders would confront him, then, if he didn’t repent, disinvite him from church, and if he still didn’t repent, they would excommunicate him, which included shunning and refusing to trade with him.
The ranger also talked about how the church would provide for widows, and for people experiencing catastrophic illness or events.
When someone died, the church bell would be rung the same number of times as the age of the deceased. Everyone would drop what he or she was doing and immediately come together at the church. The men would dig the grave in the church’s graveyard, and the women would tend to the bereaved.
When an issue or proposal arose in the community, the elders would consider what Scripture had to say and reject it if it didn’t measure up to Scripture.
In other words, the church was being the church.
The Methodist church…
If you’re a musician and you’ve ever been in an old church like this, I don’t have to tell you, the acoustics are phenomenal. We had to give them a try.
Please extend me a little grace. We hadn’t sung this in a while and I was having trouble finding my note. :0)
Next up was the Missionary Baptist Church. They split off the Primitive Baptist Church because they wanted to send out missionaries and the Primitive Baptist Church didn’t.
Acoustics, I said.
After the aforementioned three hour delay, courtesy of Boo Boo and his mama, we moved on to “Aunt Becky” Cable’s home, mill, and outbuildings.
On our way back through the mountains to Pigeon Forge, we stopped at a few charming craft shops (Providentially, one of them donated part of their profits to Reformed missionaries!), and ended up at another reader recommended spot, The Old Mill Restaurant and shopping district, where we learned a lot about the history of Pigeon Forge, visited some quaint shops, and had a huge and fabulous supper (for a surprisingly low price!).
After a good night’s rest, the Titanic Museum was next on our agenda. The building is designed to resemble the ship itself, and is quite fantastical looking. When you “board,” you’re issued a “boarding pass” with the name and information of a real passenger who was aboard the Titanic. Some of these passengers are mentioned in various exhibits. At the end of the tour, you find out whether or not your passenger survived. (Mine did, Scott’s didn’t.)
I found it interesting that several pastors and missionaries were aboard ship. All gave up their seats on the lifeboats to others, and I appreciated the little area that was a tribute especially to them.
In the iceberg room, which the bridge overlooked, it was very cold, and you could put your hand in 28 degree water to experience the cold of that night.
Genuine artifacts from recovery missions to the site of the sinking were plentiful. We found it fascinating.
Our next project was to attempt to locate the lovely chalet we stayed in for our honeymoon. I still had the directions in my scrapbook, and we gathered our courage and drove up the harrowingly narrow mountain road. But, alas, it was not to be. We could not locate the chalet or even the road it had been on. We suspect it burned down during the catastrophic Great Smoky Mountain wildfires of 2016.
Our last stop for the day was another reader recommendation, The Apple Barn, a charming little shopping and restaurant district centered around a cider mill. We had a wonderful time shopping at the general store and other shops, snacking on fried apple pies and apple doughnuts, and eating another fantastic supper at the Applewood Farmhouse Grill.
When we got to the bakery, I spied a loaf of blackberry bread that looked awfully familiar, and whipped out my phone to find it was the same bread I’d been given by a dear attendee at a conference in Tennessee over a year earlier.
L- 2023 Tennessee conference gift, R- 2024 trip to The Apple Barn. If you can’t read the caption, it says, “…I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the best fruit bread I’ve ever eaten in my life. Ever.”
It was an amazing find – one of the highlights of the trip, for me – I was giddy, and my husband got really tired of hearing about it.
The next day was spent shopping and walking around in downtown Gatlinburg like we did on our honeymoon.
And finally, happily, we headed back home, thanking God for another wonderful time together.
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 and Scott Lesley
