December 2010- April 2011. Fund raised $3700 each.
Wrote letters, sent out emails, prayed, asked, borrowed, worked. Were blown away with generosity from unexpected, sometimes even unknown people.
January 2011. Road trip to Nashville for Intensive Training (IT) Weekend.
We were only allowed to bring 14 pounds of luggage, bedding included. LST created a schedule to simulate jet lag. We had several team building tasks, which included bartering for materials to make the tallest tower...
...We lost haha. But it was very funny.
We also took personality tests to learn about our teammates. We joke about it now: Alyssa's a people-gatherer, Hannah "just wants a break," Cole's a loner, and Jacob and Michael are rebels :)
We also went on an intense scavenger hunt all around Nashville. We had to eat each meal for $2 or less per person. It was stressful, but I think we learned a lot about the dynamics of our team.
Reppin UA
Sleeping on a concrete floor was also an adventure. Each of us had our own technique to get comfortable, but it was hopeless. And hilarious. After a long weekend, we sat through a church service in German. It was quite the test of willpower to stay awake...more challenging for some of us than others.
IT weekend was stressful and challenging, but we look back and laugh about often.
Group training kicked off!
February 2011- April 2011. 12 weeks of group training.
We met up at church for 2 hours on Wednesday nights to work through training workbooks together. To be honest, we didn't always have the best attitudes about training. Some of the tasks seemed tedious or pointless to us, but I think now we understand how well LST equips their teams.
Shoutout to Andrea Zahler for being an excellent team trainer! She gave up hours of her time to make sure we stayed focused, prepared, and encouraged. Quote: "Faithfulness is more important than excellence."
Most of our memories from training include us all laughing. I love that about our team.
One night we headed out for family dinner at a Thai restaurant in Tuscaloosa.
March 2011. GO Weekend.
As training came to a close, we headed back to Nashville for GO Weekend, a time of tying up loose ends and being commissioned. Alyssa learned how to keep the team's budget on Excel. Hannah practiced leading the Information Meeting we will have with our Readers. The team presented one idea for our weekly parties, Flapjack Fun. (We'll let you know how it goes in a few weeks!)
We got the Luke workbooks which we'll hand to Readers soon, as well as our LST t-shirts and On-Site Handbooks. IT'S GO TIME.
June 13- July 25, 2011. Bangkok, Thailand...
Wai from the Way.
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