AFM training, week one

Let me get you up to speed on what’s happening. I landed in Berrien Springs Michigan early on the morning of the 16th for Adventist Frontier Missions Student Missionary training. Its a four week course designed to get the SMs ready for service in the field.

Monday through Thursday was mostly spent filling out forms, learning about how to deal with various cultures (this will continue) and learning about the different personalities within the group of SMs and how they relate differently.

Thursday evening we were given eight Tupperware boxes about the size of shoe-box and told anything we wanted to take with us, had to be in those boxes. Keep in mind that there are 17 SMs this year. Sleeping bags and water bottles were the only exceptions.
We dressed in grubby clothes (as instructed) and loaded onto the bus. The first stop on the bus trip was a grocery store for the food we would be fixin’ during the long weekend.
After that we took off for a large piece of property owned by the SDA church up here in Michigan.

At this point I get to a point where I can’t really tell you what all happened cause its kinda secretive, not shoot-you-if-I-tell-you secretive, but we ain’t supposed to tell.

We arrived back on the campus of Andrew’s University at about 1830 local time one exhausted bunch of folks.

About two hours later, six of us had the bright idea to run to St Joseph, MI to get something to eat. We didn’t arrive back till about 2300 even more exhausted, but we had a blast, though I think the restaurant would have been fine if we hadn’t showed up.

The main goal of the event was to build the SMs into a team. A second goal was to push us to our physical limits. The first succeeded incredibly. I’ve only known most of my fellow SMs for a hair over a week and I’m now closer to them then I am to some people I’ve known for years. Its amazing what a proper mixture of trust-building activities and exercises can do for trust.

The second goal succeeded for some of the people on the team. The size difference between the team members is quite vast. Ranging from girls that are doing good to reach 5’4” and might weigh 110lbs if you threw them in the water in winter ski clothes, to myself at 6’2” and 175lbs. There is one other person who weighs more then myself. I”m going to guess, but didn’t ask, about 200lbs.
I’m by no means as fit as I’d like to be, but my long legs made it incredibly easy to maintain a fast walk while the small girls were jogging, thus making it very easy for me to keep pace with the team and not push myself that hard physically.
Please don’t take this as bragging, I’m simply saying that I was expecting to be pushed much harder then I was, but due to the team oriented nature, some of us un-natural freaks had it much easier then others.
While the physical part was a challenge and a fair bit of fun (for me anyway, others seemed to dislike it a bit more ;) ) the team building aspect is what really impressed me more.

We would be given a task to complete and a different person from the team selected to lead for this event. Various restrictions were placed upon us to make the task more difficult. Restrictions ranged to not being able to speak at all, limited word usage, some members blind-folded, English dis-allowed as a communication form, etc. The tasks themselves ranged from physical challenges, to mental challenges, to seeing how we would handle being pushed with time limits, lack of sleep, lack of food, etc.
It was a lot of fun to watch the individual members and the team as whole grow through this experience.

Initially, everyone tended to think as a single individual and as time progressed to the point that when given a task that had the team subdivided into smaller teams, that we joined together to complete the task.
Individuals grew in confidence in themselves, confidence in their leadership abilities, physical abilities, spiritual connection, and many other areas that are kinda hard to put down on (virtual) paper.
Suffice it to say I learned a fair bit about myself and learned a lot about the other SMs.

After this weekend the rest of the training goes back to the classroom. So while we’ll be getting lots of good instruction, it’ll be terribly boring to tell you about.

If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to try and answer them

I thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, I greatly appreciate them.