Challenging week

Well, we had a team building week this week, the lectures were on relationships. It was basically how to relate with people, and how we were designed for relationships. Every problem in the world is a relationship problem (minus natural disasters, which is arguable for some as well). But along side the lectures was a survivor week, where the 4 outreach teams (team india [mine], team vanuatu, port villa, team vanuatu, santo, and team malaysia) were competeing against each other in physical and mental challenges. Not in order to win, although that was the goal...but in order to create team unity and bring the weaknesses to the surface. We started off having trouble meshing (as a team of strong, independant leaders would) but in spite of starting the week off most likely in last place we sat down discussed and came back and won the last two biggest games and came in first for the week. God is teaching me that I'm a leader, but the only leadership I've experienced is taking leadership...the greatest leaders are followers, and I need to die to my right to have my way and empower others and exalt their ideas. It may not always be as fully selfless as this (although I'll always strive to be this selfless) but this missions trip God is focusing me on being in the background and empowering my team!

To give you an example of the challenges, the last night we did a missionary scenario where we were trying to reach a tribe. The staff woke us up at 1:30 in the morning (we had no knowledge of this) and told us the scenario of needing to urgently reach a tribe that was in a self-sacrificial state, ready to give their lives for their God or something. We were on an island (Stradbroke Island) and spent over two hours running an intense obstacle course where we had to eat the native food (wet dog food), make it over a pit and everytime a team member touched the ground we lost a point (I sacrificed my body and they walked on me to the other side, we only lost one point), then we had to scale a rope across a swamp, the rope dipped into the swamp and we got soaked as well some pretty bad rope burn and open sores, then we crawled through more swamp to some mental challenges. This whole deal ended at 4:00am and throughout the whole thing we were sprinting through thick forest on a "path" that has almost never been travelled, running through spider webs with spiders bigger than my open hand and constantly getting lost. It was a very trying experience, many people on many teams fell in the swamps and could not complete the tasks, but this is the reality of the mission fields we will be entering. I loved it, throughout the whole night my team kept a very positive attitude and really encouraged each other! We only had 5 people as opposed to 9 on the other teams, this made the events even harder for the most part. It was an amazing experience, and after my hour sleep back at the campsite, we packed up and moved out. I feel like I can conquer anything physically after that night!


My highlight of the week though was when my team said that they actually SAW my attitude and leadership change and could see a new tier of God-given power rising in me, that was so encouraging because I worked very hard to acheive this selflessness and brokeness for our team!

Peace, Love and Prayers!
Adam