Preparing to advance

This is a busy week around the international SPACE office. We are preparing for the second annual Mission Advance weekend - the weekend where all teams come together for some missions prep. We still believe it's a great idea and this weekend is a great venue for making sure that we send teams that are well prepared, from tactical ministry skills, to knowing their teams well and being ready to engage new and different cultures.

Even though we did it last year, this year will still be a much different challenge. There is the standard challenges of masses of people - food and lodging. In this case, we've got some people helping behind the scenes for food and lodging will be a mini tent city on the church property [taken down before the wedding starts...]

Two other interesting challenges - The Axis, our talent and variety stage on Friday evening. And all of Mission Advance will be traveling to downtown Baltimore to help serve an 'Adopt a Block' event that one of our good SPACE friends from GCC is trying to catalyze. There are going to be quite a few of our kids sharing their story this weekend - either in a suburban youth church or on the street.

We have also invited some special guests to be with us this weekend just like last year:
N and B Rmsing - who used to live in Tanzania;
AMoser who calls India a second home and her session entitled, "Alyssa's Tour of the World" [I wrote about her here] ;
D and J Helger who run Nav Youth here in Howard County;
MPM, our logistics coordinator - these four will be running some special mission/culture workshops,
and Amy M, wife of MPM who will be running some team building activities.

I'm excited about this weekend. I have a feeling there are going to be some significant moments this weekend - groups of people that transform from individuals into teams, kids blessing strangers from vastly different cultures and some students deciding to go whenever and wherever God calls.

Photo: Mission Advance 2006