My team and I have been in
Swaziland
(a small country in southern
Africa
, bordering
South Africa
and
Mozambique
) for approaching 2 weeks now. Swaziland is actually a kingdom.
A picture of the King, in a Manzini laundromat.
The first couple days were just hanging out before debrief, then we had debrief for a few days with morning worship times and then the June World Race team arrived here a couple days ago. Thrown in there one rainy afternoon, we had some guy time and played some paintball. I got shot from like 15 feet away and have a nice, and i mean nice, welt on my arm.
Since the June racers have been here, it’s a week of training and teaching sessions. Andrew Shearman, Gary Black, Tom Davis and Seth Barnes are all here (among a few others) and have bestowed upon us a lot more great stuff. We had a few days (before June people got here) where we signed up for one-on-one times with those guys and some other AIM staff that are/were here. I had one with Tim Drew/Steve Kinsley, Seth and then Gary. They were all really good and had a lot of good insight and advice and all that, but kind of the main theme I got from those 3 sessions, (and i think this came mostly from Gary)…but i need to simply learn how to be a ‘son of God.’ It kinda sounds easy at first, but for me it mostly entails learning how to continue to put him first and what HE wants first. It’s just more of learning how to seek him first and foremost…and putting other things behind that.
As some of you might know, I have a tendency to be too hard on myself. I pretty much always feel like I have to be doing something productive…and pro-active. Sitting and just ‘being’, hasn’t qualified as being productive to me. But I need to learn how to see that as being productive and necessary, and quite possibly what God wants me to do at a particular time.
I always feel like I have to be doing something better. I am very rarely content in life. That was another thing that came up in my one-on-one times: I am never ok with what I am doing or what i did, because I feel like I
coulda/shoulda done it better or
shoulda done something different with my time that
woulda been more productive. Nothing is ever good enough for me…pretty much.
And so,
Gary
‘s assignment for me for the rest of the year is to learn how to be a ‘son of God.’ And a large part of that is going to be learning what exactly that means. 🙂
We had a day of silence a couple days ago. We ‘January World Racers’, are running a lot of the training sessions for the new guys that just got here. I’m gonna be helping with a training session tomorrow about how to lead your team.
And last but not least, I just have a praise that continues to blow me away everytime I think about it: Back in
Mexico
,
Guatemala
and even
Nicaragua
for debrief…my small team was a mess! I sucked as a leader, my depression was in the way of that and negatively affected my team, I just plain didn’t know how to lead my team, we didn’t understand each other and didn’t know how each other worked, and that led to quite a bit of assuming and offending…we added another team member at the beginning of february…I wasn’t aware of how important servanthood was for a leader…and we just did not mesh as a group. One person on the team even had an idea of having our team fizzle out and we all go to another team. We were seriously hanging on by a thread when we got to
Nicaragua
for debrief.
Now…we could hardly be in a better place as a team! We need to pray more as a team (which is no small thing), but we all get along great, we have a much better understanding of how we all work and we all love our team!!! I mean seriously, there is pride in our team! And I know that can be a bad thing sometimes…but right now I love it, because I keep looking back to where we were and just laugh and admire God for what he has done with this team! So, be grateful for that with me, cuz it is pure awesomeness!
