Our INTENSIVE Training!

For the past two weeks I have been with my team in Searcy, AR, doing some very intensive training!  Our classes started at 8 am and ended at 5 pm, then someone from College church would provide dinner for us which lasted at least until 9pm.  So our days were pretty full.  It was great though!  We all learned so much and I grew, spiritually, very much!  My team is absolutely amazing!  I will make introductions later this week.  

Our first class was group dynamics with Carl Michell.  Carl and his wife Frankie were missionaries in Italy with Howard and Doris Bybee.  On Monday and Tuesday, we talked with L.V. Pfeifer on the doctrines of  Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, both of which are apparently very active in Italy.  The rest of training, we spent time with Howard Bybee talking about Catholic doctrines.  Then we had a VERY BRIEF overview of church history, from the time of the Apostles to the Stone-Campbell movement, with Allen Diles and Fred Jewell.  After the church history lesson, we had singing/Italian lessons with Jolie and Paul Love.  Paul and Jolie also fed us authentic Italian food for lunch everyday, and it was SO good.  We sang songs in Italian that the churches in Italy like to sing and they were teaching us to sing in parts.  In the afternoons during the first week, we had cross cultural communication with Howard Norton, Getting to Know Jesus with Jim Woodroof, and Faith and Evidences with Don England.

Here is a picture of Jim (above) about to teach class and a picture of one of Jim's classes (below):

The second week of training we had some of the same classes like Group Dynamics with Carl, Catholic Doctrine with Howard, and Faith and Evidences with Don, but we didn't have the singing lessons or church history.  But we still had great classes like The Beatitudes with Jim, where we looked at the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and how they are guidelines for Christian living; Gordon Hogan gave us brief looks at Islam, Buddhist, and Hindu doctrines; Bruce McLarty had a class on post-modernism and pluralism; Dan and Suzanne Reed, former missionaries in Venice, talked about their work in Vince with the church and the children's ministry they started there; and then Noel Whitlock, the preacher at College church talked to us about the importance of the church.  

We did have the weekends off.  The first weekend, Angela, Andrea, and I saw Toy Story 3 at the dollar theartre and then we played cards with some of Angela's friends at a coffee shop.  On Saturday, I got to play racquetball with Jim and Angela.  I didn't think that I would've gotten beat in racquetball by a 77 year old man, but Jim is awesome at the sport!  This past weekend, I played golf, twice, with Eric, Ryan, and Howard.  It was my first time to play golf ever and it was pretty amusing to watch me play, especially since Ryan and Eric are awesome golfers!  It was also a very humbling experience getting beat in golf by Howard, haha!  

I have been so blessed by God the past two weeks, and I thank God that the men who taught our classes were there to share their wisdom and experience with us.  I was praying that I would grow, but I didn't imagine that I would grow that much and grow so close to my team.  I will post later this week and introduce my team.  Please keep praying for us and the work that God will do.  God bless.