In the Beginning

Week 1 is complete, and we are two days into week 2. I had a great first week, and I think the participants would say the same. Activities ranged from fun activities (Olympics, flag football, and "Capitol Chase," an event in which staff and team leaders scattered ourselves around the capitol area, dressed up or disguised in some way, and the participants tried to find us) to powerful sessions, in which, as one participant put it, "the speaker said we were free to go to lunch, and no one moved."

Seeing the teams start getting to know each other and bond has been especially exciting for me to see after last year when my team leader got there three weeks after training started. I remember that during those three weeks my team mates and me being kind of unsure how to start to bond, knowing that someone else would be coming at some point. So to see teams already past just "getting to know each other" this early is pretty exciting for me to see.

One of my big projects this past week has been helping to set up community outreaches for the teams. I was kind of worried about my ability to adequately assist the teams in finding locations for outreach depending on their interests, but God has blessed me with an amazing contact for outreach locations, a little bit of personal experience and knowledge of outreach locations from my training, and some teams that have had the initiative to take some ideas and run with them themselves. So today, most of the teams started their community outreach assignments. We are still working to finalize and concretize plans (umm, put plans into concrete form), but we are farther along in the process than I thought we might be at this point, so I'm excited.

-Ben Herr