Stronghold Builders 2023

I would like to thank you and everyone at Craig Lodge for last weekend's retreat. I felt so blessed to be there. From start to finish it was a deeply spiritual experience that no one could attend and come away the same.

Last night our eldest picked out the gold vestment he wants for when he is a priest. Let’s just say you are doing something very right if their little imaginations are drawn to such thoughts! Can’t quite put into words the joy we experienced of staying in the same house as where The Eucharist is present. It’s such a gift!

Me, Maddie and Helena were just out in the school yard, on the soccer pitch, and a group of maybe 12 or 13 year olds approached us. They were kind of joking, “our friend has a broken arm - would you pray for healing for him? So we said, “yes, absolutely.” We were going over to pray with this boy who had a broken arm, and Maddie said, “why don’t we all pray for him, not just us - so does everyone want to extend a hand?” So everyone put a hand on the boy. I led the prayer and they repeated the line after me. We all prayed together. It was about a group of five or six of them around this boy. After they were all kind of giggling, and the boy didn’t really do anything. So we said “move your arm and see, check it out.” He checked it and said, “I couldn’t move it that far before. I don’t feel anything!” We said, “you’ve seen healing. This is a miracle!”

I felt the Lord just say really strongly: "turn around I’m behind you." I don’t know what I expected. But I turned around, and there was this lady behind me walking towards me. She’d been there before but I had not seen her - she just came out of nowhere. I turned around and I was like, okay, well, I don’t have a word for her so I’ll just go up to her. So I went up to her and it turned out she was a fallen-away catholic, and she had been slowly coming back to the Lord. And she had this deep love for the Lord that she didn’t even know about. She ended up experiencing physical healing in her fingers and her feet. She was a musician and she hadn’t been able to play. So she got physical healing to be able to play again — but it was far more than that. The physical healing is always so good when it happens, but when you see the inner healing that comes with it! She encountered the Lord and the Holy Spirit was not missing a trick.

What a wonderful weekend. What a beautiful way to spend time with God and each other. Your openness to prayer and the work of God in your lives is transforming and something that I want to bring back with me and build on here.

Craig Lodge is our go to for holidays. It is our home away from home, our place to recharge, feel refreshed and come away renewed. There is no other place like Craig Lodge, it is truly a gift from God to his people in Scotland and beyond.

It was such a blessing and it really touched my heart and soul - the fruits of that prayer were almost immediate.

I wasn’t sure if my children would want to come back now they are older but my daughter said it was the only place she felt free to live her faith. So we had to come back!

You allowed me a place to begin to heal, learn, reconnect and grow and I’ll be forever thankful.