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CREDO Marriage Enrichment Retreats (Navy)
Our goal in a MER is to provide an environment where a couple may work on their intimacy as a couple. A marriage is a partnership of a man and woman who seek a life-long commitment to love and support one another. How successful they are at accomplishing this goal is dependant on many different aspects of their relationship. Different types of exercises and free time are used to help each couple grow without the normal everyday distractions of work and home life. The positive results of a MER will be seen by the end of the weekend as a couple demonstrates deeper intimacy while strengthening the emotional, physical and spiritual aspects of marriage.
Family Life's Weekend to Remember Conference
Every couple drives away with a roadmap to a great marriage. If your marriage has been struggling lately, it’s easy to forget what a good relationship feels like. Our speakers will show you exactly how to pursue a marriage that really works by using their own personal stories of success and failure and God’s Word to restore hope.
- In just one weekend, you will discover:
- God’s purpose for bringing you together
- Your distinctive roles as husband and wife
- How to resolve conflict and fight fair
- Secrets to putting sizzle in your sex life
For more than 30 years, we’ve helped people reach a turning point in their marriages. More than a million couples who wanted to take their marriages from fine to fantastic have come to us to help make it happen.
Click here for information regarding a special military rate.
Click here for more details on current events: Weekend to Remember, The Art of Marriage, and the Love Like You Mean It Marriage Cruise.
Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage
Why a “laughter” approach? For one simple reason: to overcome the male objection to a seminar. Let’s be honest, a marriage seminar isn’t the first thing a guy thinks of when he thinks of “a fun way to spend the weekend.” We get that… Familiar with the fact that women are usually much more open to discussing marital problems than their spouses, Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage is designed with an element of humor that appeals to couples, but is especially well-received by men. By making our event fun and non-threatening, more men are open to attending and both husband and wife end up having a fantastic time. However, while this event is fun, it is anything but light and ineffective. Mark’s great content and unique approach to troubled marriages has yielded one of the highest success rates in the country.
Unlike many traditional marriage seminars that tend to be overly serious, technical and emotionally taxing, the Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage seminar is different because it helps couples deal with tough issues in a way that is fun and non-threatening. Through the two-day seminar, couples will laugh, learn and be able to make real positive changes to their marriage.
Click here to find an event near you.
Love and Respect
In 1999, Dr. Emerson Eggerichs launched his ground breaking Love and Respect ministry. Through his teaching, Dr. Eggerichs and his wife Sarah reveal that love and respect plays a role in every relationship. Happiness and success in marriage are not based on love alone. Many husbands feel they are not receiving the respect they need, and wives feel they are unloved. Too often, good willed couples get caught in what he calls The Crazy Cycle....
"Wives don't feel love from their husbands so they react with disrespect, husbands feel disrespected and respond in unloving ways..."
Eggerichs helps couples restore their marriages by teaching wives how to recieve love by showing their husbands respect and showing husbands how to gain respect by giving their wives love.
During this two day live event, Dr. Eggerichs and his wife Sarah help explain three basic principles:
- The Crazy Cycle: Why two couples negatively react to one another.
- The Energizing Cycle: Why two couples negatively react to one another.
- The Rewarded Cycle: What a person can do if personal expectations are unmet by a spouse.
The Eggerichs speak all over the country. Click here to see if they are coming to a city near you!
Military Marriage Conference (DVD)
This four-part video series, a companion to the book 6 Secrets to a Lasting Love is designed to encourage, teach, and strengthen military marriages. Through fun and entertaining stories, thought provoking principles, times of personal reflection and sharing with your spouse, you will experience:
- Forgiving love, which offers a fresh start after you have hurt each other;
- Serving love, which helps you meet each other's deepest needs;
- Persevering love, which sustains you through the inevitable storms of life;
- Guarding love, which protects your hearts from threats to your marriage;
- Celebrating love, which helps you maintain physical and spiritual connection;
- Renewing love, which sustains your lifelong commitment to your vows.
This series is comprised of four sessions that are approximately one hour each and are ideal for couples or small groups. The series can even be adapted for marriage retreasts or for use by each spouse separately during deployment of one overseas.
Oxygen for Your Relationship Program (Stronger Families)
The Oxygen Seminar is designed to help couples strengthen their relationship and work on tough issues in a way that is fun and non-threatening. Couples learn how to improve their communication, better understand each other’s needs, resolve conflict, rekindle romance, and find renewed hope.
Our seminars are fun, interactive, and practical – you will walk away with skills that you can use right away. Our commitment is to drive oxygen into your relationships through 3 key principles and provide the tools, steps, and resources to reach these goals:
- Create and implement an ACTION PLAN for your relationships.
- Design a SUPPORT SYSTEM to build on your successes and get you through the tough times.
- Learn how to PAY FORWARD what you have learned to help others.
Click here to learn more about Oxygen Seminar events that you can participate in.
Smalley Family Seminars
Our seminars will transform the way couples build a healthy, secure relationship! We have reduced 40 years of research into powerful seminars. Whether you’re 19 or 80, married, or planning to get married, our seminars are for you!
THE DIFFERENT SEMINARS WE OFFER
- Guarding Your Child’s Heart with Gary Smalley
- A Marriage seminar with Michael and Amy Smalley
- The Wholehearted Marriage seminar with Greg and Erin Smalley
- The Comedy of Love (a date night full of laughter with Michael Smalley)
- Love and Laughter with Gary Smalley and Special Guests
Click here for dates and locations.
Spiritually Smart Family Conferences
Spiritually Smart Family Conferences are designed to provide families, couples, spouses, and single parents, tools and encouragement to cope with matters such as: loneliness, parenting, maintaining healthy marriages, conflict resolution, re-integration after deployment, and much more.
Participants will become better equipped to weather deployment separation while maintaining the home front, and couples will better reconnect following absences caused by deployments. Together, couples will navigate the extreme demands of family separation and will, like Timothy, become equipped to “look to the concerns of others.”
Spiritually smart families are those who conscientiously apply proven biblical principles to protect and sustain their families and marriages in difficult times.
Military deployments are at all all-time high, separating spouse from spouse and children from parents. As a result couples experience added stress on their marriage, and parenting becomes even more complex. Spiritually Smart Family Conferences help families apply biblical principles to protect, enhance, and sustain marriages and family relationships in turbulent times.
Offering hope, encouragement, and solutions: families, couples, or spouses attending a conference will learn to successfully apply Christ-centered tools to cope with matters such as:
- Military deployments
- Marital strain
- Stress and loneliness
- Maintaining strong and healthy family relationships in the face of duty
- Conflict resolution
- Staying close while apart
- Communication and parenting tips
- Re-integration following deployment
Contact OCF to see if there is an event scheduled for your area.
Strong Bonds for Couples (Army)
Whether you’ve celebrated one anniversary or 20, as an Army couple you can anticipate more excitement - and expect more challenges - than the average civilian couple. Long separations, frequent relocations, and the stress of deployment can subject Army marriages to extreme hardship.
That’s why we developed the Strong Bonds Couples program. It’s our way of saying thank you for the sacrifices you and your family make every day as members of the world’s premier fighting force. And, because we understand the stresses of military life, we want to serve you through an off-post, Strong Bonds weekend retreat. You and others from your unit will gain skills that fortify your marriage, and enjoy a time of relaxation, recreation, fellowship, and fun.
Strong Bonds programs are offered by Army Chaplains with the full support of your Commanding Officer. You’ll gain practical, useful information based on world-class curriculum developed from years of research. In small groups, you’ll participate in activities that renew bonds with your peers. And, as a couple, you’ll practice communication and relationship-building skills, as well as share intimate moments.
The Strong Bonds Couples weekend retreat is designed to strengthen relationships, inspire hope and rekindle marriages - even start the journey of healing for relationships under fire.
Click here for a listing of Strong Bonds events.
The Gottman Institute - The Art of Science and Love (dvd or vhs)
Thousands of couples have attended the Gottmans' highly acclaimed workshop, The Art & Science of Love, offered five times each year in Seattle. Now, in the privacy of your home, and at your own pace, you can experience a personal workshop with Drs. John and Julie Gottman.
Click here to find a workshop located in your area.
The Marriage You've Always Wanted Conference - Dr. Gary Chapman
Led by Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the best-selling Five Love Languages, this conference is not a dry, formal, marriage seminar—it’s a time of fun and discovery that can help you build the love relationship of your dreams. Whether you’re getting married in six months—or have been married 60 years—you’ll get solutions you can use. With biblical advice and a healthy dose of laughter, Dr. Chapman gives valuable tips on breaking unhealthy patterns and choosing to develop a God-honoring, happy marriage.
Couples both married and engaged will benefit from practical sessions addressing topics like communication differences, dealing with criticism, understanding love languages, and making sex mutually fulfilling. Join us for a day that will be a highlight for your marriage.
Click here to find a 5 Love Languages event near you.
VA Marriage Retreat Program
The VA currently has marriage retreat programs for all Veterans at two locations: the VA San Diego Healthcare System and the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, GA. About 20 other VA medical centers are in the beginning stages of establishing their own programs.
The retreats are conducted by VA chaplains, social workers, psychologists, and counselors who have been certified as instructors for teaching better communication skills, relationship skills, and emotional literacy skills to couples.
When VA’s marriage retreats first began, only veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts were being accepted into the program. Since then, VA has opened the program to anyone who’s ever worn the uniform.
For more information on VA’s marriage retreat program, call 706-733-0188, extension 6118, 6114, or 6172.
Wisconsin - Think Marriage
Think Marriage is a non-profit organization based out of Green Bay, Wisconsin, is dedicated to improving the quality of relationships through education.
Click here for a listing of classes and marriage seminars in Wisconsin as well as webinars.
Copyright Benita Koeman 2008 - 2012
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