Veteran Retreat Schedule for 2010

January marks the fifth year of our free retreats at the Merritt Center in Payson Arizona. These workshop weekends are the vision of the retreat founder, Betty Merritt. The entire weekend, food and lodging and workshop material is free to all combat veterans of all wars.

While the original outreach efforts were targeting just the men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the directors and veteran mentors discovered in the third year that the mixture of the very broad demographic base of veterans, meaning WWll, Korea, Panama, Bosnian, Desert Storm, Vietnam, afforded a rather magical setting. War is war, and its psychic residue does not change much through time. Much of what Shakespeare and Steven Crane wrote about could be laid upon the soldier from Baghadad or Kabul.

The Soldier, Sailor, Marine, will not find anything like the Merritt Center in the conventional world of transition programs. One vet tagged this set of workshops as “a very fine dessert, after a superb meal.” I concur, having had the honor of participating for the past four years.

Warriors simply leave this place as a new and improved version, with tools in their psychological and spiritual arsenal that they heretofore did not even know they had available.

The mentors are not third party helpers either. They are all men and women who have been steeped in combat and have an uncanny ability to bond with others. Frankly, they just know the meaning of love.

This is not a Church program, and no one need fear any messy evangelizing. While many of us are affiliated with our own churches, we are not in the conversion business. This program is, straight away, focused on leaving the veteran with a healthy life soul and healthy life style and does so in ways where cognitive therapy leaves off. And did I say it is FREE?

Thanks to a stable of benefactors and grants the Merritt Center Board has been able to maintain this gratis offering. We pray that remains, and are always open to other grant and philanthropic opportunities.

The 2010 schedule is as follows:

January 15-17

March 5-7

May 14-16

July 9-11

The veteran may enter at session #2, after that it is closed. For applications go to the website at “MerrittCenter.org” or call Mike Brewer/USMC at 520-360-6933

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good nights sleep!

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