Team Four the 10. The team that none of us wanted to be on. Wait, what?
Rewind. In order to form teams at training camp, our trainers observed us throughout the week, then put us into different mock teams where we completed multiple activities. They then took our feedback about how well we got along with each of the other members, what went well, what didn’t go well, etc. etc.
Jump forward to the second and final day of our team formation activities. We had just spent a lovely night sleeping on a school bus, so none of us where on our A-game, to say the least. We got into our mock teams and then completed the activity. And it did not. go. well.
At the end of the activity, our trainers asked us all to rate how well we thought the team was, on a scale from one to ten. The catch? We had to show our ratings at the same time. Really? Awesome. We all put up our ratings, and there were multiple four’s and five’s. Ouch. As we began discussing the ratings, there was a general consensus in the group:
I’ve been on better teams.
We really didn’t work that well together.
This team just isn’t going to work.
We were obviously all very optimistic, as you can tell.
Fast forward to later that day, when we found out what our teams were going to be. Yup, you’re right, it was the exact same group of people. What? We were all kind of confused to say the least.
But you know what? We all realized something in that moment. God had specifically brought us together to be a team. We fought against it. We thought our plans were better. And yet, miraculously, we were now a team.
Now back to our team name. We wanted to have a team name that would inspire us later on in the race. We wanted to remember that we didn’t want to be a team. This is where the “four” comes in. That activity I mentioned earlier? The one where the team was rated at a four? That definitely indicates we didn’t want to be a team, and yet God’s plans were greater than our own. For some reason, that seems to happen a lot. Who knew?
The second part of our team name is the 10. Earlier when we completed the activity, they told us to rate our team at a 10 if it was the best team we could ever imagine on the race. Well, no one rated the team at a 10, not even a little bit. But once we were a team, we all agreed that a 10 is something we want to strive for. We want to fight for each other. We want to continue on even when we don’t get along. We want love each other the way Christ loves us.
I now would like to introduce you to my team, Four the 10. I will be serving alongside these amazing individuals for the next 11 months, and I honestly can’t convey how excited I am that we are all on a team together. We’re all very different, but I know God is going to do some amazing things in and through us!
From left to right: David Garretson, Sarah Moore, Cindy Nickell, Rachael Miller,
Leigh Ann Howington, Ham Dilbeck, and Athena Papadopoulos
