🏡 Home Experience Retreat

The weekend was amazing! Originally my mom called the 4 day weekend, a Home Experience Intensive, at the “Mentoring Mansion” in Youngstown, Ohio USA.

Then in the next season it became the “Titus Home Experience” and mom and I were co-hosts in her big house in the Dallas, Texas USA area.

Now as I continue my mom’s vision, I have the same format and schedule as always and with the same purpose…I’m now calling it the Home Experience Retreat still in the Dallas Texas area. A smaller, more intimate home. I can really get to know and relate to the women who have come for this very special weekend.

It's a new season and I've really enjoyed experiencing it with so many precious memories of my mother while using her beautiful dishes and home furnishings to host our guests.

On Thursday night we started with a delicious Italian evening with a dinner made by Chef Claire Comparato, who started cooking at the Mentoring Mansion in Ohio, USA in 2002. She hasn't been with us since the pandemic, so it was really wonderful to have her return to cook at the Home Experience Retreat. She prepared all three dinners. On Friday it was the traditional lamb chop recipe, on Saturday it was Steak with a delicious mushroom gravy, dauphinoise potatoes, asparagus and a creamy chocolate mousse for dessert served in my mother's antique crockery. Breakfast and lunch were prepared by me, exactly as I do at home for my family.

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. - Titus 2:3-5 ESV

I really enjoyed welcoming the volunteers and my friend and co-teacher Glauca, to host these six women who felt inspired and loved with us during these days. For me it was very special and a time of great connection and communion around the table with incredible women. I believe they all went home with the desire burning in their hearts to become mentors, opening their homes to spread the Gospel of Christ. All the women were Brazilian, but they came from different states in the USA…Florida, Missouri and South Carolina.

Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. - Acts 5:42 NIV

I also brought all the women to my personal home, where I did a home-tour and taught some classes, how our life is organized and how everything works around here, using the two houses for mentoring. It was really a lot of fun, I loved it!

Testimonial from Mentor Glauca

These days we had our first Home Experience, in the format of a 4-day retreat, since the pandemic.

I have to confess that I was really looking forward to it because it would be the first one without our dear Devi Titus here with us. But legacy isn't about someone leaving, it's about the message that remains!

And not only does Trina Titus carry this legacy in her DNA, she has also masterfully taught us that what is eternal never dies!

I could see the expectation in the eyes of each woman who arrived on the first day, and the explosion of joy in their hearts when I said goodbye as they returned home.

With each ministry, it was as if a weight was being lifted off them, and they realized that it doesn't have to be heavy if it's done with love. It doesn't have to be heavy if I understand my calling.

It doesn't have to be heavy if I just be who God has called me to be:  

Woman, wife, helper, friend, daughter, mother... 

And if it's heavy, there's something wrong!  

The Home Experience shows us that the journey can be light if I use what I have and if I apply basic principles from the Word in my daily routine.  

Many thanks to my dear friend and sister in Christ, Trina Titus, for the honor and privilege of making us realize the lightness of being who God has called us to be! Thank you for your YES.