“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!”- Isaiah 52:7
This past week I went through leadership training with 22 amazing people. We will all be leading trips this summer to Swaziland, Jeffreys Bay, Thailand, Philippines, The Highlands of Peru, India and the Amazon. The group consisted of people from all different areas of the country, but we all shared in our passion for the Lord.
On Wednesday, all of the “A” leaders gathered in Gainesville and went out to eat dinner together. After dinner we headed back to the base where the people leading the camp served us desserts and coffee. It was a good time to break some of the awkwardness of meeting new people and allowed us to have a sweet time of worship together.
We started again early Thursday morning. In order to have breakfast we all had to memorize every leader’s first and last name. This was a challenge in itself after only getting a couple hours of sleep. After breakfast we each had our quiet time and then the training began. We talked about expectations and responsibilities for “A’ leaders, community life and how to handle tuff situations on the field. We broke up into guy and girl groups for lunch and got to spend quality time learning about each other. After 
lunch we spent some time in worship and praying over each of our team members and the countries where we will be serving. Later in the afternoon all of our co-leaders arrived, and I finally got to meet my co-leader, Sean. My group of leaders spent the evening cooking dinner for the rest of the group. There was a serious “catch” though. Each one of us was given various handicaps that we had to overcome in order to finish the meal. My ailments included being paralyzed, having only one arm and not being able to talk (yes this was hard for me… ha). The problem was that most everyone else was blind or had no arms. No one was able to do anything on his or her own. Well, after they finally got me in a chair I was able to get in the kitchen and try to start cooking. I must say as frustrating as this was at times, it was a great time to bond with the other leaders and have some very humorous moments together. Once dinner was cooked we all served our co-leaders dinner. We spent the rest of the night getting to know a little bit about our partners and what their expectations are for our trips.
It was another late night and by Friday morning I was running on empty. God showed up in an amazing way though and gave me energy I didn’t know I had. We had some more training classes and even had a team building activity which involved building a rat’s house made of only marshmallows, vanilla wafers and toothpicks. Let’s just say it was harder than it sounds, and I now know I will not be an architect anytime soon. We spent most of the day doing what we call an ATL (Ask the Lord). We broke up into teams and each group went out into the community asking the Lord what He wanted for us that day. My group decided to go to lunch first and spend some time bonding with one another. It was such a great time to talk about what God was doing in each of our lives and really get to pour into one another. After lunch we headed into town and shared an amazing time listening to the Lord and loving on the people He led us to. God completely blessed my 
heart through this ministry time and gave me newfound energy and excitement. We finished up the day with some more sessions and then used dinner to get to know our co-leaders. Our night was spent in worship and sharing with one another some of the issues we were struggling with. I was able to spend time praying with two of the other girl leaders, which was a really special time for each of us. After this we worshipped together and then many of us stayed up late praying with someone about things in our lives that we needed to hand over to the Lord. Saturday and Sunday were similar and by Sunday afternoon we were all so close that we didn’t want to leave each other. I truly grew to love this amazing group of people. Each person is uniquely different, but together we represent a beautiful picture of the body of Christ. It was hard saying goodbye, but I can’t wait to see each person again as they come back to Gainesville for their team’s training camp. It was a hard week and stretched me in many ways, but I know God is going to use what came out of this week to have a lasting impact.
For His Glory,
Caroline 🙂
Ps. 56:3
