I’ve got some people on my mind and I need to tell you about them. They are some of my best friends and my family. These blogs are going to be about my teammates. Welcome to my longest blog series yet… I think it might even be longer than the fall of Kyle series… which is awesome and you should read it!
I’m going to tell you about each of my teammates and I think you will quickly understand why I love them and why you should love them too. I hope you’ll take the time to picture each of them as you read, to lift them up in prayer, to consider supporting them financially, and to go and read their blogs (and leave comments!) You’ll have to work hard to beat my Mom (Pat B) but I think you can do it. In fact, that’s a challenge… see if you can out-read and out-comment my Mom. Their lives will really challenge you and stretch you and just make you smile.
For this blog I’m just going to tell you a little about our team as a whole and then refer you out to one of Danny’s blogs…
The naming of Team LESS.
The joke version: The name came about in a unique and very “us” way. We are a tad immature and think it’s funny when people happen to say the word “do” twice in a row during a sentence. For those of you who are above potty humor… when you say a sentence like “When we do do conflict correctly…” the double “do” sounds like doodoo which is a term for poop. So anyway… jokingly we wanted to name our team Team Do Do… which transformed into WeDoDo at the suggestion of world race director, Jerry Goode. In a session we were told to come up with an acronym that would define our teams values… thus LESS was birthed. It quickly became LESS DoDo and then was simply shortened to LESS.
On a more serious note: LESS stands for Love Encouragement Simplicity and Service. Over the months this has actually defined our team quite nicely. We also think of the verse that says “He must become greater, and I must become less.” When I look at my teammates that is exactly what I see. A group of people that wants to become as small as possible for God to be great.
How we Roll
Our team is very easy-going. Sometimes we are so easy-going that it is hard to make a decision. We love to serve and just to be where God is… wherever that is. I am so blessed to be surrounded by people that love to find God in every situation. Our team isn’t one to dwell on the negative. We tend to acknowledge it and
move on. Every country has brought a different kind of Ministry and different challenges to us as individuals and as a family unit.
We have 2 boys and 4 girls, We have 3 high school teachers (2 math and an English) and 3 people who worked in Student Ministry last year. A Minnesotan, Utah non-mormonite, Delawarian, Chicagoite, a Texan, and one from the great state of South Dakota. Our ages are: 26,26, 25, 24,23 and 23… I’ll leave guessing who’s who in this category to the reader.
This is not a group of people that ever claims to know the answer. We are broken and want to learn from every situation. We are learning to be live like a true Acts 2 church, learning what our gifts are, and learning how to challenge each other and push each other beyond the current definition of comfortable.
What else can I tell you… oh, we love to laugh. Fun seems to follow our team wherever we go. I refer you my photo blog of Botswana should you need more convincing! We thrive on being ridiculous… and joking with someone is definitely a love language on our team.
You know, coming on the world race I sort of expected to generally like the people I was with… they seemed interesting enough. God far surpassed that expectation. I never really expected to genuinely love each of the 5 people I get to spend every day with this year. I don’t really know if that happens for everyone… but if I had to do it all over again, I can promise you that I would choose these 5 as my travel partners for this year.
I hope you will enjoy reading all about them as much as I enjoy talking about them!
