Orientation week

It's somewhat of a massive challenge to try and portray all that project is through a little blog like this. Many of the staffers use the metaphor that project is like trying to drink from a fire hose, which has definitely been accurate.

This first orientation week is a bunch of training, organization and defining of ministry teams, and overall just figuring things out. And the training is intense. We've had daily themed "experience" sessions for 2.5 hours each morning, which is essentially the college course version of Sunday sermons - and by "college course" I mean it is very in depth, very challenging, dense, lots of unpacking and hard work; but ultimately very rewarding.

We've also had first meetings with our action groups (groups of 3 with a common discipler) to initiate what will be our closest and most intimate relationships here. Our first meeting was over lunch and moved from simple tell-us-about-yourself to a 2+ hour marathon of your complete testimony. I really like the guys I'm in this group with - just really rock solid and mature in their faith with lots of experience and many amazing stories and backgrounds.  Really looking forward to how it will develop over the summer - just our very first bible study as an action group extended to over 3.5 hours today (this was a good thing! It ran way over but only because it was going so well and with so much excellent discussion. And there were a few breaks so it wasn't entirely the torture it sounds like).

One other thing that stood out was the first of our weekly men's/woman's time. We'll be focusing on the issue of biblical manhood during our time, and the staffers certainly pulled no punches this week. It was great though, all the conviction only served to magnify God's grace. I think it summed up all of these tiring days well that the project director ended the night by saying "our brains and rear ends can only take so much."