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Worldwide Marriage Encounter Columbus, Ohio
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Marriage Encounter: The Best Marriage Saver
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Taken from MARRIAGE SAVERS by Michael J. McManus Copyright 1995 by Michael J. McManus Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House Chapter Nine Marriage Encounter: The Best Marriage Saver “We have this to say: Every couple should make a Marriage Encounter…It’s like coming home with a new bride! -Husband, age eighty plus, interviewed by the National Institute for the Family In spring 1976, Harriet and I experienced a weekend retreat that literally changed our lives. After a decade of marriage, we fell back in love with one another but at a far more profound level than anything we had experienced before. When the retreat ended, we felt as if we had been on a honeymoon, but one designed by God to bond us together in a transcendental marriage. The impact of the weekend has been permanent because we learned a new form of soul-to-soul communication that has deepened and enriched each day of our marriage in the seventeen years since. There is no question that I never would have considered writing a book on how to save marriages if our own marriage had not been irrevocably uplifted and transformed. The weekend is called Marriage Encounter. Our experience is not unique. Nearly five million couples have made a Marriage Encounter weekend since the movement was founded in 1968, and objective, scientific research on Marriage Encounter is unanimous: Eight or nine of every ten couples who attend a ME weekend fall back in love with their spouse…the same experience that Harriet and I had. That’s an astonishing track record. If you can’t take my word, or that of the academicians on this, take the word of Dr. James C. Dobson, the Christian psychologist, whose radio program, “Focus on the Family”, is the most widely aired show (more than 1,700 radio stations) in America. He confesses that he attended Marriage Encounter “for professional reasons, not expecting to get anything relevant to my wife and me. If there is anything I felt that Shirley and I didn’t need, it was help in communicating. I rarely have been more wrong. Marriage Encounter gave Shirley and me the opportunity to occasion the deepest most intimate exchange of feelings we had known in 20 years…It proved to be one of the highlights of my life. I just wish that everyone who trusts my opinion would now accept this advice: Attend a Marriage Encounter weekend at the earliest opportunity”. The single step that could do the most to save marriages I am convinced that the single step that could do more than any other to slash America’s divorce rate is for every married couple to attend a Marriage Encounter weekend. If you are married and have not gone on a Marriage Encounter, put this book down and sign up for the next one. To learn more, call 1-800-795-LOVE. Your call will be recorded by Worldwide Marriage Encounter, which organizes weekends for 15,000 couples a year. You will be called personally by an ME volunteer in your area who can tell you when you may attend a local ME weekend with people from eleven different denominations.
NOTE: For more information about Marriage Encounter in the Central Ohio area, Call or write Paul and Marilou Clouse, 740-746-9003 Rt. 1 Box 616, Sugar Grove, OH 43155 or see WWMEColumbus.org |
