D(evelopment)T(raining) Week.
I have spent the past two days debating whether to attempt to explain everything that went on over the past week or not. After spending 2 hours talking on skype with my dad and struggling/failing to explain everything that i experienced last week, i have decided to spare myself the days of writing, and you the hours of reading by forming a summary of all the things that we did. However, do not feel cheated! Because i will be sharing in depth all of the most important things (such as: what i learned about myself, God, and working with others).
WHAT IS DT WEEK? Who? Where? Why?
DT week is put on by a professional training group. They travel around the world doing leadership development, and social interaction for major companies. Technically they are not part of world horizons, but in reality they are. So their goal is to push us (the training program) to the limits both mentally, and physically. Consequently, bringing out feelings, emotions, and reactions to situations that may not normally surface. Then, by analyzing and reviewing the positives and negatives of our actions the goal is to be better aware of how we will react in certain situations, and what our general tendencies are and such.
The simulation it's self was very intricate and confusing so i wont attempt to explain it all. But basically, we were all working together to achieve a final goal by 10am Friday morning. But in order to achieve that goal we most do many other secondary tasks. Also, everything costs "welsh pounds." For example, we were required to go to this place and have 7 people rock climb to the top of a cliff in order to receive a piece of the puzzle (which we needed to put all the pieces together at the end to finish the week successfully), but in order to go climbing we first needed to purchase all the harnesses, rope, exc.
DAILY SUMMARIES
Day 1 (Sunday)
-Turn in computers and cell phones
Day 2 (Monday)
-Orientation, purpose of course
-Learn to use equipment (caving equipment, climbing harnesses/belaying, how to use a map/compass, bearings/pacing/contour lines)
Day 3 (Tuesday)
-DT trainers choose leaders (Zack=leader, Tim=secondary leader)
-Realize how much money we need to earn to buy equipment so we start doing "voluntary tasks" which are worth different amounts.
-Submerge yourself in the sea (600)
-Make star wars outfit out of junk that you can find (370)
-Write a 10 line poem about life in Wales (300)
-Eat a whole can of cold baked beans (600)
-Leapfrog 336 meters (1000) me zack joe and meesh were sore after this one
-30 sit ups and 30 push ups in 3 min (300)
-Take a random dog for a walk (i made a friend on the beach haha)
-LICK THE TOES OF ALL YOUR TEAM MEMBERS (400)
Lets just take a second to admire this challenge for a minute. Out of all the things i did last week, this may have been the one that bonded our group the most!
So we did all of this from 11am-6pm as well as planned for a very posh dinner party for the trainers that evening. Out of the MANY years (over 20 i think) of doing DT week we were told that out dinner, decorations, entertainment, and service was the best they had ever seen. WHAT AN ACHIEVEMENT! however tomorrow was a BIG day and we needed to clean everything for this night, and also plan for tomorrow. total sleep= 5 hours
Day 4 (Wednesday)
This was a very stressful day for me. The group split half and half. Some went to complete the climbing mission that we had to do, while i stayed back with the others for a "difficult raft making exercise." That is all the info they gave us. So i was put in charge of the rafting exercise, and also packing to go caving. We were told that we needed to pack food and clothes for 2 nights. So, while the others were climbing i had to pack everyones backpacks which was very stressful because i had no idea if we had all the supplies we needed. But i got it all finished with 30 min to spare.
-when climbers returned, we left for the cave and wouldn't be back till Friday morning
-navigated to cave
-climbed hill in awesome caving suits!
-climbed into the cave and established "camp" in the cave
-very uncomfortable w/sharp rocks and nowhere to sleeepp ahhhhhh....
-spent 1 hour stacking rocks to try to make a semi flat spot to sleep for girls
-total sleep= maybe 3 hours?
Day 5 (Thursday)
Expedition Day!
-Wake up in cave hike down to cars, breakfast (fruit bars.. yay...)
-Break up into two groups (guys and girls)
-Given map/compass. Must reach 3 different mountain peaks by navigating using bearing points. Joe and i were in charge of nav.
-Total of 20K (14ish miles) to finally arrive at the bothy by 5pm.
-Then given a mandatory assignment to go to a specific coordinate on the map.
-After 3 more hours of hiking (this time through marsh land) we were dead and ready for food. (considering all we ate that day was a muffin for breakfast, a chicken/mayonnaise sandwich for lunch, and at least 12 fruit bars throughout the day to keep us going)
-We finally got back to the bothy at about 9pm were the girls had a hot meal for us (noodles/mince cooked over a fire)
-We had our review meeting until 11pm and then went straight to bed knowing it would be a short night because we had a lot to do by 10am the next morning.
-Total sleep: 2 hours (11:30-1:30)
Day 6 (Friday)
-Wake 1:30am
-Pack, breakfast, hike down to cars 1:30-4am
-Drive back to World horizons.
-Arrive at 5:15
-Clean cars, caving equipment, and meal supplies
-I made the final mandatory video that we had to present, and others put together the puzzle that we now had all the pieces for.
10AM!!!.... failure. haha
By ten we did succeed to be back and cleaned up with our video done, however we failed to complete the two puzzles and failed to end the exercise with a profit ($12,000 in debt), but the good news is that very few teams/i dont know if anyone has ever "had victory over DT week." But in reality, that's not what it is for, it is to learn and examine.
Evaluations
SOOOOO... With a total of 10 hours of sleep in the last 3 nights, we headed into the meeting room to have review time. Yea right... haha. I was actually surprisingly awake! so that was good. We had group evaluation where we determined that as a group we all work really well together! VERY encouraging and we all put EVERYTHING we had into this week (I mean we licked each other's toes! lol).
Then we had individual evaluations. They told us "we only get 30 min with each of you so we are going to be very straight forward, so take what we have to say with a grain of salt. Think/Pray about it. These are just the things that we saw this week." So i was quite nervous that it was going to be all bad. When i walked into the room Carol (a woman i was already quite intimidated by. Very sweet lady, but i didnt know if she liked me) was leading the meeting. We prayed, and then the first thing she said was "Blake, each night the trainers would meet up and just talk about the progress of you guys, and i want to tell you that we were all very impressed with you.".....I let out a sigh of relief!!!
We then went on the talk about what it was like to be pushed new limits that i had never been pushed to before. I told them that i came into this week with two goals:
1) learn how to let someone else lead (because i suck at that)/servants heart
2) Be cheerful/happy no matter how little sleep we got, and no matter the circumstances
I told them that i felt like i had some aspect of victory in both areas. In the previous DT exercises it was obvious that i assumed leadership/gave myself leadership haha. So to go into this week prayerfully, and aware of my tendencies was so helpful in my pursuit of being a team player. And in my pursuit to keep the overall group morale high i found it to be fairly easy because everyone was so selfless. yes we were all tired and of course i got frustrated, but i really learned that i can control the way i react to situations. It is MY decision to make the best of things or not. It was cool to hear that the trainers agreed with what i saw in myself. They ended by encouraging and blessing me by telling me that i "have endless potential." Which is exciting to hear as a short term missions worker, coming from full time missionaries.
I definitely still have a LOT to work on when it comes to working as a team, or as a leader within that team, but i am sure that that is an endless journey. So as for now i will continue to examine and re-examine my heart, motives, and goals because that is the only way we can be sure that we are in sync with His plan.
I will posting another blog on saturday (2 days from now) giving my final information about my placement country!!! So PLEASE in the meantime be praying for guidance.
Thank you for your prays and support. Sorry this update took so long to get to you. LOT to process.
He is at work.
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