Daughters of Destiny! (With Pictures!!! :)

Hi Everyone! I am here to do a post about our wonderful week at Daughters of Destiny! First off, this Daughters of Destiny is most certainly NOT the feminist one that often comes up on search results, so don't worry! :D I will keep this to a more general post about the week, because Sarah is not here, and she and I will probably later on share some thoughts gained from the week or something! :) Anyhow, Sunday morning, we all piled into several cars, and began the long and arduous journey to Pinnacle, NC. From our meeting place, it was about 5 1/2 hours....okay....perhaps that was partly because some of Alaina's younger sisters needed to make pit stops all along the way! :P The GPS gave us quite a few adventures! When our destination was "near", we began to go on un-named gravel roads! The mountains were beautiful, and we arrived at the top of "Dead man's ascent" unscathed! :)

Sarah and I were sent to cabin 5, where we had a lovely group of cabin mates! (Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to post pictures of us with our friends!:( You'll have to be content with scenery and odd-and-ends :)

Home Sweet Home ;)

Ga-Ga....a very interesting, original game that seems to have evolved to quite a sport at this camp! It's fun, it scrapes skin off your knuckles....and the girls still love it! :D This is the Ga-Ga pit! :)

On Monday, classes began...Sarah and I took scrapbooking, cross-stitch, and encouragement/ministry/missions. All three classes were lovely, and I very much enjoyed them! :) The daily schedule was jam-packed and went something like this:

7:30 a.m. : Wake, shower, get dressed, make bed, etc.

8:15: Personal devotion time

8:30: Line up for breakfast, and file into dining room to eat

9:15-9:30: cabin clean up

9:30: Bell rings for morning session

10:30: first class

11:30: free time before lunch (I usually went to the Bible Study held at this time)

12:00: lunch time

1:00: rest time on beds....we memorized verses during this period

2:00: Group rec. usually some large outdoor game like capture the flag, link, volleyball, etc.

3:00-5:30: Two more classes

5:30-6:15: free-time, music-practice time, prayer meeting in dining hall

6:15: line up for dinner, eat dinner, mail-call

7:00: Group rec

8:00: short free time period....shower, change, etc.

8:30: evening session

(after that) return to cabins, get ready for bed, cabin devotion, lights out



As you can see, there was a very tight schedule, but that was great! The cabin inspector was very thorough too! :) We were all overjoyed when we got a 100 score! ;)

Wednesday, we all hiked up the mountain. From up here, there was so much to see and admire! God's handiwork was awesomely present! :)

The Upward Trail....an easy part of it, obviously! :)







The view of Pilot Mountain! :) Lovely view up there!





You can see the drop-off over the edge.....we girls were more daring than you'd think we'd be! Many of us went to the very edgiest edge that we could go....(they blocked off some with a rope)

Thursday night was Talent Night. The King's Daughter and I sang "Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go?" and Michelle played guitar for us! :) Bethany, a good friend, gave an extremely touching testimony, and since we were all girls, yes.....we all ended up crying profusely, and having to be quieted down with a bonfire! :)

Friday night was the Banquet! This is one of the most fun parts of the week! Sarah wore a beautiful combination of blues and black that left the impression of royal-blue butterflies! :D Leah wore a gorgeous plum colored silk and mock amethysts, and I wore my Colonial dress that Grandmama made for me! :) One girl dubbed me "Rachel Antoinette", and I suppose I could have looked a tad like that famous queen with one long curl over my shoulder and a red rose in my hair! ;) I love dressing up! Any how! The banquet night also doubled as Sacred Music Night. This event is where all the girls get up use their musical talents for praising the Lord. It was beautiful.

Here is the cake that the cake-decorating class made! :)

We then danced till almost midnight! Thanks SO much Josie! :) (That girl has the patience of a saint! <3 )

The cabin with the highest score (Yay Cabin 6) got an ice cream party afterward, and the rest of us occupied ourselves staying up far too late Christmas caroling to everyone, and having a pillow-fight! :)

Saturday we all went home, thoroughly tired, but blessed. I was challenged in SO many ways throughout the week, as well as refreshed and inspired, but as all that won't fit into this post, I'll say goodbye now! Thanks for reading! :) -Rachel

Good Bye for a week!!! =)

Exactly 12 hours till we leave for camp!!!!! We thought we'd do a challenge for you guys while we're gone! :) Sound fun?
So.... Here are the rules:

You answer the questions below as accurately as you can.
You get 1 point for each right question, and extra points for participating, if you add our button to your sidebar, enter in the Inkpen Authoress' Autumn Writing Contest, or vote on our poll. Just leave a comment telling what of these you did and with your answers. :)
So here are your questions:

• Which thing is true about our family? We go on a vacation every year, extended family members own a ranch in California, or we've never gone on a family vacation
• What 3 pets do we own? A dog, guinea pig, and cat, or a cockatiel, dog, and rabbit.
  
• Do we like McDonald's?
  
• Did both our parents grow up in VA?
• Have we ever been to NYC?
• Have we seen the movie Titanic?
• Which BBC movie have we seen the most? Wives and Daughters, P&P, S&S, or Emma.
• Do either of us own a iPod or mP3 player?
  

Okay!! I hope when we come back we'll be pleasantly surprised with all of our entries! ;)
-Sarah

He's Gone :(

Let us now observe a moment of silence in honor of Daniel who has gone the way of.. *breaks down* (whispering) iGovern camp.

*SILENCE*

Yes, Daniel is gone. He left around 8:30 this morning, and is now on his way up to Patrick Henry College as a counselor for iGovern. It is a camp basically where Generation Joshua members go and learn to be congressmen (and women) for the week. They hold elections, vote on things, have challenges to do, etc. Very cool. I've never been, but it sounds great! We'll miss having Daniel around! No more escapades this week. No late-night trips to the Royal Intersection for Dairy Queen.....no going over on the spur of the moment to the T.'s house for volleyball......no taking walks in the dark and being saved by him from the evil dogs that come to attack us....*drops a big tear*. By the way. The Royal Intersection (that's what it is called by the "locals" ;) is an intersection in town, (the main one) which has a Dairy Queen, a Burger King, and North Prince Blvd. :) And what are we going to do in church on Sunday? Our singing will sound awful! Daniel always leads worship with his guitar and keeps us on track! Well, I guess Uncle David will have to do it! We really will miss Daniel! I mean, he has been so busy the past couple of weeks with working with Dad and everything else that I have barely seen him! Well, we'll just have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, I'll have to assume the position of oldest child, and not just oldest daughter, and we'll have to go from there! :'( Have fun Daniel! (There really is no good way to spell what we always call him: "Danj" or something like that. :)

The Gentleman From Virginia's Own Utterly "Desolated",
Rachel

Back From Camp

Hi Everybody! Wow! Seems like forever since we have written on this blog! Thanks Oliver and Katie for joining up as followers! Now if we can only entice someone else to join, we shall be even with Daniel yet again! No, really, it's great to be home! I had forgotten how sweet baby kisses are, how nice it is to take a shower in our huge bathroom, and what great food we cook every night! The week was so blessed. It surpassed everything I had hoped for. I was challenged and supported in my walk with Christ, and calling to be a stay-at-home daughter, and it was so wonderful to have a week of fellowship with other girls who are striving for the same thing. I met lots of new people that I hope to keep in touch with, and the Lord gave me an answer to something I had been praying about by bringing along a young woman who hopes to start a magazine for girls soon and wants me to write for it. I took creative gift making, smocking, and the art of letter writing. The latter was my favorite, for letter-writing is a passion of mine, and we got to sit around a huge fireplace and talk of "...ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings."
Mrs. Foster, our teacher, dressed as a Victorian lady every day. But our class was rather disrupted Wednesday, when the aforementioned lady who is co-director of the camp got a call that her married daughter Stephanie was in labor 6-weeks premature! She was gone all the rest of the day and half the night after that, and the baby was fine! 5 pounds, 9 ounces which, from what I've heard is a whopper for a baby that premature! His name is Gideon Davis.
That day in letter-class we wrote letters of congratulations.
We had a talent night. Sarah, Alaina W. and I sang "Hallelujah, I'm Ready to Go", and then the T. girls, Alaina, and Sarah and I sang "Edelweiss"and "So Long, Farewell". The last two sounded really good, (If I do say so myself :) There was so many really talented girls there! Three sisters played "The Orange Blossom Special" on their fiddles. Friday night was a banquet, and after that we had a sacred music concert. When all that was over, we went downstairs and two of the sisters played for us while we did the Virginia Reel, and the Gay Gordon. That was the last night of camp, so after, several cabins traveled around till midnight Christmas caroling to the other cabins and staff. Then our cabin proceeded to stay up till two. Not a good idea if you don't want to be zoned out all the next day!
We got home in safety, and spent yesterday partially recovering after going to church. I shall spend some of today writing letters hopefully, and I also want to get more into "His Chosen Bride". Which is a book I bought at the camp that is excellent so far. Well, I'm sorry this is just a cursory sketch of our week, but hopefully we shall have some deeper thoughts coming based on some of the things we heard! -Rachel