Before arriving at the Dunrovin Christian Brothers Retreat Center on a recent Friday afternoon, the confirmation cohort at St. Anne-St. Joseph Hien Church had to agree to abstain from cellphones, gaming consoles and other electronics.
Vanessa Pham, 16, literally kissed her iPhone goodbye in the retreat center’s parking lot in Marine on St. Croix. “I have a photo of (Chinese actor) Yang Yang on my screen, and I gave him a kiss before I gave it to my parents,” she said. “I knew it would be hard not to have it.”
Than Nguyen, 20, said he had trouble falling asleep without his cellphone. Nguyen, a student at North Hennepin Community College, scrolls through TikTok and watches YouTube videos before bed and listens to Korean pop music or white noise to help him fall asleep. “I don’t like to admit it, but I’m pretty sure I’m addicted,” he said.
Vanessa and Than were among 28 high school and college students from the parish in North Minneapolis who spent the weekend at Dunrovin, located about 10 miles north of Stillwater.
Pre-COVID, the retreat center hosted hundreds of students and accompanying staff from Catholic churches and schools in the Twin Cities and Chicago each year, but those were canceled during the pandemic.
With COVID numbers dropping, groups are starting to plan and book retreats again, said Jerome Meeds, the retreat center’s executive director.
“People are starting to say, ‘We want this back. We need this back,’” he said. “Retreats and pandemics, they don’t mix real well. We’re trying to create community, trying to create closeness, and then you have social distancing, well, it just doesn’t work. We don’t want to be socially distant; we want to be close.”
The need for Dunrovin’s “oasis of peace” is greater than ever now, said Camille Kiolbasa, director of marketing and development. “Given everything we’ve been through in the past two years, and even before that, kids are just super stressed out,” she said. “They need what we offer. And adults need what we offer. You need to not just unplug technology; you need to put yourself in nature in a very simple setting.”
MAKEOVER DURING HIATUS
The dormitory-style housing on the shores of the St. Croix River “really lends itself to the kids and adults not being distracted,” Kiolbasa said. “The rooms are very simple on purpose. It’s not meant to be a vacation.”
While retreats were on hiatus, Dunrovin staff gave the retreat center a makeover. Buildings have been renovated, bedrooms have been redone, walls and windows have been painted, and the grounds have been updated, Meeds said.
“We decided we could look at it as ‘the ship is sinking,’ or we could look at it as an opportunity,” Meeds said. “We chose to look at this as an opportunity to be at a better place when things are done. We found a way to make lemonade with the situation.”
Dunrovin is open to all — regardless of religious affiliation.
“We’re open to everyone God is calling to us,” Kiolbasa said. “Dunrovin is a Catholic mission, but it’s not just for Catholics. Catholic means ‘universal,’ and as such, we universally welcome everyone in. That hospitality is very much at the heart of our Catholic LaSallian mission.”
Dunrovin staff hope to get back to pre-pandemic booking levels — or even higher — this year. A marketing push that emphasizes the availability of weekday overnight bookings and the ability to host multiple smaller groups simultaneously is underway, Kiolbasa said. Groups are trending smaller and couples retreats are expected, she said.
A cabin on the property — just feet from the St. Croix River — is regularly rented out on the short-term vacation-rental app Airbnb for $93 a night.
PLAN TO INCREASE PROGRAMMING
Dunrovin staff hope to attract even more guests by increasing programming. One initiative underway is bringing Catholic school groups to Dunrovin during the school year. Prior to Kiolbasa’s arrival, school groups would come only in the summer.
“I come from an education background, so I saw that was something we could immediately do,” said Kiolbasa, former development director at St. Croix Catholic School.
Dunrovin staff want to bring inner-city middle school students out as formal groups and train older high school students in Dunrovin’s leadership program to assist with the middle school retreats, she said.
Dunrovin became a retreat facility for high school boys of the De La Salle Christian Brothers schools in 1964 when the religious organization purchased the 50-acre property on the St. Croix River. Campers attend morning and evening prayer services in the retreat center’s chapel.
Meeds has been the retreat’s director since 1999. He and his wife, Mary, who serves as the center’s executive assistant, raised four children at Dunrovin.
Rental income, combined with donor support, makes it possible for Dunrovin to host underserved youth at no cost, Meeds said. A group of students from San Miguel School in Chicago, for example, come to the retreat center each summer. Donors underwrite their visits, including lodging, food and program activities; the school pays the cost of busing the kids to camp.
Other churches, such as St. Anne-St. Joseph Hien Church in Minneapolis, pay their own way.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Theresa Lam, St. Anne-St. Joseph Hien Church’s retreat coordinator, said each confirmation class looks forward to their time at Dunrovin.
“We’re from the big cities, so we don’t get this at all,” she said, gesturing to the snow-filled field leading down to the St. Croix River. “We put them out in the middle of nowhere a little bit and separate them from their lives, so that they can regroup and connect with the spiritual aspect of their lives.”
The retreat’s curriculum, written by a Vietnamese priest, centers on bridging the gap between the teens and their parents.
“There’s a big disconnect between parents who come to America and the kids who grew up in America,” she said. “We’re trying to connect them. It can be hard to navigate.”
Many of the parents have “uprooted their lives … to give their kids the opportunity to live the American dream,” Lam said.
Parents who were highly educated in Vietnam arrive in the U.S. and “work crazy long hours to provide for their children by working jobs … like being janitors and nail techs,” Lam said.
“We hear every year that ‘My mom/dad just works too much; they don’t even know who I am.’ The parents and students are both stuck in an endless cycle of not being enough for the other.”
Retreat leaders work to get the students and their parents “to stop the cycle and understand each other instead of placing blame,” Lam said. “It is a huge eye-opening experience for both sides.”
The students, who have been attending the same Sunday school class together for the past 12 years, are split up from their usual “hang-out groups” during the retreat.
“We put them with people they usually don’t gravitate towards,” Lam said. “We create an environment that puts the students outside their comfort zones, where they share feelings of insecurity and talk about family problems they are going through. They realize that everyone is going through the same things, and it bonds them.”
At the end of the retreat, each confirmation student received a letter from his or her parents.
Than Nguyen said his parents’ letter made him cry. “Like in many Asian households, our parents don’t really show love physically, but through what they do: cooking, working, buying us stuff,” he said. “Getting a letter from my parents was a new experience for me. They were able to tell their thoughts to me, which had never really happened before.”
Vanessa Pham said the most meaningful part of the retreat for her was “connecting to everyone on a deeper level.”
“I loved talking to them,” she said. “It helped how the environment was safe and comfortable for us to connect to people who we didn’t have the chance to in class.”
Dunrovin helps foster connections like that, Kiolbasa said.
“It’s a calm place just to get out of the chaos of the world,” Kiolbasa said. “People are realizing more and more that they need to get away and that they need the peace that a place like this offers.
“It’s not going to magically make the world better or wipe away all of its problems, but it can equip the kids to better handle the challenges that they are facing,” she said. “That’s what we are: a safe haven where they learn to trust.”
FYI
Dunrovin Christian Brothers Retreat Center offers personalized tours for nonprofit organizations, community groups, schools, places of worship and small businesses seeking overnight accommodations with meeting space and meal services. People can request a tour by contacting Emily Squyres at GuestServices@Dunrovin.org or or 651-433-2486.