SYIS

So this last week had me back down in Florida at New Tribes' Headquarters again, doing another workshop. I should probably wait to post this until I've gone through all the material again, because there was just SO much to process. In my opinion the group that does the Sharpening Your Personal Skills workshop packs waaayyy too many serious topics into a six day period. But then when I was filling out the evaluation form and it asked which topic(s) I would take out, well......I wouldn't. I guess I would want the workshop to be longer. haha It was interesting this time also to see the dynamics of the group change with the size of the group. In the debriefing and Cerny Smith trainings, there were nine or less of us and it was a really relaxed group. This time around, there were twenty of us and some rather big personalities thrown into the mixture. I found myself getting stressed out by some of the more dominant personalities in the group, so it was a good thing that we covered Managing Stress, Living in Community, etc.  =-D

Doing role-play for the "Helping Others Solve Problems" session. And yes, I'm wearing my biking clothes. At our 3pm break every day, I ran to my room, changed clothes, loaded the bike, and ran back to the session so that I could get a ride in post-workshop before the sun disappeared.

We did a lot of role-play and list making, analyzing the wrong and right versions of the role- plays.

The Millers, Member Care workers with NTM. I met them back in the Fall at the PTM conference, and they're the reason I turned around and went back down for this workshop. Actually, they're the ones who told me that NT offers these trainings. I said it back in the Fall, and I'll say it again- they're the most fun couple in their 70's that I've ever met. Honey and I did the Conflict role-plays together, and found it difficult b/c we made each other laugh so much. =-)

The entire SYIS workshop group. It was mostly comprised of NT workers, but there were a couple of us from other agencies, and a married couple not in missions at all.

These are the topics that were covered from Sunday to Friday:

Relationship Killers, Loving Listening, Drawing People Out, Helping Others Solve Problems, Confronting Well, Receiving Confrontation Well, Building Trust, Living in Community, Managing Conflicts Well, Helping Others Manage Conflict, Walking in Moral Purity, Managing Stress, Maintaining Margin, Helping Others Grieve Well, and Being an Encourager

The sessions that I most enjoyed and got the most from were the ones on Stress, Conflict, Helping Others Solve Problems, Walking in Moral Purity, Maintaining Margins, and Helping Others Grieve Well. Some I enjoyed because they are areas in which I have a lot to learn, and others because they're topics I feel strongly about. It really was a great workshop, and I'm looking forward to using the remainder of this week to review all of the workbook and go through the bible studies that are included with each topic.