BoldUlysses.com

One of the best things about the workshop was the amazing diversity of the attendees. There were eight other twentysomthings, three of whom were still at school at Moody, and the rest of whom, like me, were out of school. Tim and Tammy are dating, he a soft-spoken accountant and she a still more soft-spoken nurse. Laura, affectionately known as Skeeter (by her own admission), works full-time but is taking courses at Moody Bible College at a slow pace on her way to receiving a degree. Caye (rhymes with sky) and Brian are from Venice, Florida, sent to the workshop by the missionary board of their church because of their interest in missions. Caye is a Moody grad in her mid twenties and has a great gift for youth ministry and for music. Brian is in his late twenties and is very well spoken and friendly. Jenny and Jonathan are MKs (missionary kids) and Moody students. She grew up in Japan, and he spent his formative years in Afghanistan. They’re dating too. I roomed with Jonathan during my time there; he lives just a few blocks away since his family is affiliated with TEAM and he attends Moody in downtown Chicago, but he wanted to spend the weekend in the dorm, just for something different, and because the fee covered that too. We had some good talks but didn’t get to spend too much time together since our evenings (really the only free time we had) didn’t coincide schedule-wise. Finally, Katalin is a senior at Moody and Jenny’s roommate. She’s very friendly and talkative and has a heart for church-planting in the middle east. Near the end of the workshop, through the evaluations we had undergone of the various facets of our personalities, and just Bob and Pat’s experience with us for a few days, Bob confirmed something that I think we all realized very well–all nine of us would make a great church planting team. We had the variety of skills necessary, and we had them in spades, overlapping each others’ skillsets and talents but vitally unique in the specificity of our giftings. An exercise that emphasized this more than anything was during the time where we examined our personal values. We noted one person who we felt was someone whose values we held in high esteem, a hero, in other words, and which values and qualities about them made our respective decisions. Next we listed “what we would want written on our tombstone,” two or three qualities that we would want people to remember about us at the end of our life. From those two or three, we were to pick one, and then condense that into one word (Pat made the concession that it could be a hyphenated word). We then went around the table and shared our word. Everyone’s word was different, something that was a first for the years that Bob and Pat had been doing the workshop. Between events like that and just the chemistry that the group experienced around the table during meals, I felt it was a group of people that I could have a ministry with, and not only would we enjoy it, we would thrive, by His grace. It was an amazing foundation for the workshop in so many ways, allowing us to explore the uniqueness of our own hearts for missions and dampening any thoughts we might have had of comparing ourselves.

Saturday night was amazing. After the workshop concluded that evening, Caye, Brian, and I borrowed Jonathan’s car and drove to downtown Chicago to visit Moody. For what it’s worth, the car was a Saturn and quite easy to drive. I was mildly impressed. What wouldn’t have been so impressive to you all, however, were our navigation skills. Par for the trip into Chicago was about forty minutes, since the TEAM center was in Carol Streams, just outside of Wheaton. We got a bit turned around initially and it only took us about an hour to get there, a reasonable time. Getting back, which should be more intuitive than the trip out, at least in theory, took us a good two hours. Honestly. Greater Chicago’s lack of reliable and consistent signage on the roads coupled with a complete lack of a sense of direction was not a combination condusive to effective travel, and we got turned around at least half a dozen times. While we were there, though… Moody is in the heart of downtown Chicago, most definitely an urban campus, as we were practically underneath the Sears tower, with its monolithic presence looming even in the darkness. We finally found a parking space and walked over to the main campus. Caye, a Moody grad, was intent on getting there quickly through the cold, but Brian and I had to stare up the buildings and take in the atmosphere a little bit. She laughed about that. Jonathan had provided me with his student ID before we left, too, which came in very handy during Caye’s improvised tour. We saw the library, the student union, the dining hall (through windows), and visited the main dorm. I had the number of one of Jonathan’s hallmates, so I called him and Brian and I visited the rooms upstairs while Caye reacquianted herself with just about everyone who walked in the door. It was a lot of fun, though pulling her away from her alma mater was difficult. It was getting late by this point, though. We took a different route back to the freeway through the more renown areas of downtown, Caye pointing out the landmarks (or would-be landmarks) along the way. We were fortunate that daylight savings time switched over that night, since we would have been even more exhausted than we were on Sunday morning after the Saturday night getting home antics. It gave us some great time to talk (or at least commiserate), though, even if Brian decided to conk out and start snoring audibly in the back seat about half an hour into our trip home. I only met these people on Friday, but through everything that we had been sharing in the workshop and our common “trials,” it felt almost as if I had known them for much, much longer. I definitely intend to keep up correspondence.