2005 SPACE missions prep meeting

What an awesome day yesterday! We had about 35 students show up for a 10-3 training day for all summer teams. We had four teams - Brazil, Trinidad, Light Company (middle school) and DC. Great turnout, there were only a few people that couldn't make it.

The morning had four workshops, with the four teams rotating to each one, for about 20-25 minutes each. The workshops were:
1 - learning in a different culture
taught by a couple from GCC that had served in Tanzania for four years
2 - team personality
a combination of Myers Briggs and Love Languages discussion, led by one of our SPACE leaders who has been to China, Panama, Germany and various other places
3 - developing your story
how to communicate your story about Jesus, taught by three post college guys and gals who are on a team from GCC going to Turkey for a few years, leaving in September.
4 - the state of the world
taught by me, going over basic concepts including the 10-40 window, unreached people groups and the latest State of Christianity 2005

We had lunch after the workshops. My wife slaved away the night before cooking 15 pounds of ground beef for taco salad. She IS a gem. She gets dragged into all the details of SPACE.... haha

After lunch, another friend MAB, came and did some team building exercises for us. Another set of 3 exercises, rotation style.
1 - team relay including spinning your head on a golf club 10 times.
2 - walking as a team with the hand/foot ski things
3 - team communication while on a balance beam

After being outside, the same teams got a few bags of big and small marshmallows and a tub of toothpicks. The object was to build the largest structure that we could in a certain amount of time. I think the middle school team won. Theirs was massive. My teams, on the other hand, was an art deco piece. Ha.

The final piece of the day was a debrief. MAB and I go way, way back, so it was fun to have him come out and do the team building stuff for us. His favorite phrase is "For every physical lesson, there is a parallel spiritual truth." The discussion was very engaging, lots of kids were willing to talk and dive in to discussing that principle from the stuff they just did. Some ideas that came up included: its not easy being first, you have to learn to work together, chaos is not always bad, and it's hard to know when to lead.

Overall, I think the day was a really big success. My two main goals were [1] to give these kids some great perspective from people that have been involved in missional experiences and other cultures and [2] to have a great time of bonding with their teams.

Photos: The Brazil team, minus one female leader; our SPACE 05-06 intern, E, spinning her head on the golf club; the LC marshmallow structure; the Trinidad team on the beam; the Trinidad team minus three team members