It’s 7:00 in the morning, and the fall weather is chilly and daylights savings is just around the corner. The sun is just peaking over the trees and the school building early on Saturday, October 18. Students in the high school are gathered around in the parking lot right in front of the football field and by the gym. Everyone is wrapped in some sort of heavy, warm clothing to keep warm for the next 30 minutes in the 40º weather. After loading everyone’s light luggage in the buses, the large group of high schoolers make their way to New Frontiers.

The high school retreat to New Frontiers was truly an exciting, spiritual filled weekend with a large handful of the high school students and faculty members. Shortly after arriving at New Frontiers and unpacking all sleeping supplies for the night, the students and faculty were divided into multiple groups for the day to do some team building exercises. The entire day, and weekend, on the mountain was colder than usual, making it tougher to do some of the team building activities, but everyone continued to stay positive and pushed on throughout the day. After a couple team building exercises, everyone returned to the main patio where everyone was divided into their groups to do the first activity they chose: Aerial Quest, laser tag, or caving.

Aerial Quest was a very popular choice for the students, especially the athletic ones. In Aerial Quest, participants must climb a rope ladder, either to the first or second level, and complete a series of high ropes course obstacles while wearing a safety harness and connecting 2 carabiners to a wire high above the ground. Such obstacles include tightrope walking across a long wire with only the support of a couple ropes to help you across, walking across several swinging planks, and other difficult challenges. Senior Parker Goodson, for example, was one of the fast paced challengers who made it around the course without a problem in the span of only several minutes.

Laser tag was another popular choice. Participants trekked down to the former paintball field in the woods where the field is covered in man-made and all-natural obstacles and hiding spaces, like trees, rocks, barrels, metal bunkers, and many more. Those who played laser tag carried around a realistic gun with a scope on top and wore a headband with 3 LED light sensors for the enemies to shoot and to eventually gain the victory for the game mode.

Finally, caving was a somewhat popular choice, but mostly for the more daring people. Those who went caving got muddy and dirty, but also challenged themselves greatly. Senior Katey Baggett, who went caving, explained, “Once people realize they have to climb up and down different parts and squeeze through gaps in broken rock, they usually realize what they’ve gotten into.” She also said, “One challenging part was a place in the cave called the corkscrew, and we usually have to convince people to try it instead of taking the easy way out.”

Even though the retreat is super fun and entertaining, it’s also about coming together as a family. Saturday night, featured a devotional and everyone around the fire pit in the freezing cold night. Students discussed what they liked so far and what they learned about the people here. Many people either made new friends or simply learned more about someone when getting a chance to hang out with them. Some students even woke up at 5 or 6 on Sunday morning to sit on the patio to talk for a couple hours until breakfast time.

By Sunday afternoon, it was obvious that the Nashville Christian family grew even closer than before. It was bittersweet weekend especially for the seniors, for it was their last school retreat they could attend, but was a very memorable weekend, as well.