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As a general rule, we were broken up into six groups of about 7 people each to make the tasks of traveling, assembling and coordinating easier. Kim and I were in Group 3; the only all adult group. Each group was supposed to stay together to keep from gett ing lost or getting in trouble; even our group. But it's hard to tell adults to stay in your group . A natural (or acquired) part of being an adult is being responsible enough that you don't have to stay in a group to stay out of trouble. Anyway, we mostly stayed together while traveling. But we soon discovered that God had a good reason for us to be together in a group - discipleship.

Pastor John Aker had written a discipleship manual for the entire 45 people to read, study and discuss during our two weeks. He covered Matthew chapters 5 through 7 and had study questions for us to think about. There were also verses to memorize and specific prayer requests that John had thought about while he was making up the manual.

His idea was for each of us to study the lesson for the day, pray, and then get together and discuss the lesson. What we got out of it was enormous. Each person had their own slant on what the lesson meant in their own lives and with the wide range of experiences of each life, God was able to minister to us through each other and give us great insight into our own lives. It was wonderful.

Each lesson began and ended with prayer. In fact, almost everything we did began and ended the same way. God truly blessed us with His examples of prayers that are answered and it seemed to be continuous. It seemed like everything that we asked in His will was answered. We knew God was with us at every turn.

John also had us read a book called In His Steps by Charles Sheldon..

In the book, Sheldon was trying to show how lives would be changed if people would ask the question What would Jesus do? when they were faced with a decision. From simple to complex questions, it was tough to examine our own lives with that framework. It gave us lots to think about.

All of these things forced us to slow down at times during those hectic two weeks.

We needed to keep in perspective who was in charge, what He wanted us to do and how He wanted us to be. It was a great mix to allow us to be at one with the other 45 people, at one with our small group, at one with at least one other person, and at one with our God.