An Ultreya to Remember: Fellowship, Potluck, and a Word on Peace
If you’ve never been to an Ultreya, imagine this: a room full of people from all different walks of life, who all share one thing in common — they’ve each walked through a Keryx weekend. Some of them met each other for the first time on a candidate weekend years apart. Some served together on team after team. But when an Ultreya rolls around, none of that matters. Everybody is family.
That’s exactly the feeling in the room on August 8, 2026, when the SonKic community gathered for an Ultreya at Alpena Free Methodist Church (175 N Ripley Rd, Alpena, MI), hosted by the Keryx in Community ministry. Doors opened at noon, the potluck tables filled up fast (bring a dish to pass is basically a sacred rule at these things), and from 12:00–3:00pm the room was full of worship, fellowship, and — this time — a testimony that had a few of us wiping our eyes from laughter.
So, What Exactly Is an Ultreya?
For anyone new to the term, an Ultreya is essentially a reunion. The word itself comes from an old pilgrim’s greeting on the Camino de Santiago, meaning something close to “onward!” — a word pilgrims called out to one another for encouragement as they pushed toward their destination. In the Cursillo-style renewal movement (which Keryx in Community is built on), that spirit carries over perfectly: an Ultreya is a gathering where people who’ve already been through a weekend come back together to keep encouraging one another “onward” in their walk with Christ.
There’s no formal program to sit through and no pressure — just a potluck, some worship, a short talk or testimony, and a whole lot of catching up. It really is the closest thing to a family reunion you’ll find outside of an actual family reunion. People swap stories about their weekends, ask how each other’s kids are doing, and leave a little more encouraged than when they walked in.
Introducing Our Guest Speaker: Jessica Dobbs
This Ultreya’s speaker was Jessica Dobbs, who attended SonKic 20 in Hubbard Lake at the table of Miriam. Jess has stayed active in the Keryx in Community family ever since, and she’s currently heading into her second year at Fire & Grace School of Ministry, training toward pastoral and teaching ministry — which made this the perfect bit of “on-the-job training,” as she put it herself.
Jess didn’t set out to give a polished, rehearsed talk. In her own words, she wrote it the night before, praying over what God actually wanted said rather than defaulting to a straight timeline of her testimony. What she landed on was peace — specifically, the peace of Christ that Isaiah 9:6-7 promises will have “no end.”
She spoke openly about walking through real, ongoing pain: a bulging disc that’s kept her in compression socks for months, a terrifying stretch in 2021-2022 when a bad reaction to steroids left her shaking uncontrollably and eventually separated cartilage from her ribs, and the reality of navigating all of it without health insurance. And through every bit of it, she came back to the same thread — that His peace has carried her through, from a 2020 healing out of depression, through a chest injury right before her own candidate weekend, and into the pain she’s still walking through today.
It was honest, it was vulnerable, and it was exactly the kind of testimony an Ultreya is made for: not a performance, but one pilgrim telling the others what’s kept her going.
If you’d like to hear it in her own voice, the full talk was recorded and is available on YouTube.
Come Find Your Family
If you’ve been through a Keryx weekend and haven’t made it to an Ultreya yet, consider this your invitation. You don’t need a special occasion, a perfect testimony, or anything prepared. Just come hungry — for food, and for fellowship — and let the family welcome you home.
Keep an eye on the Keryx in Community calendar for the next gathering near you, and for more on the ministry itself, visit keryxic.com.