Participants of the European LWF Global Training for Young Leaders
A contribution by Daan Leker and Moritz Gräper:
„Seigneur, nous arrivons…“
Today was already departure-day. Nine young adults from all over Europe (Sweden, France, Slovakia, Chech Republic, Finnland, Poland, the Netherlands, Ukraine and Germany) had been together for one week. No one knew what to expect!
During the week we shared thoughts, ideas, passions and problems. We supported each other in developing projects for our local contexts, wich was the goal oft he LWF young Leadership Course. And got to know each others cultures. One thing is for sure: Time just flew by.
The LWF program was divided into different phases. After we had gotten to know each other better, we started by analyzing our views on our home context, to sharpen our goals and talk about things that need change.
In between working on our projects we also had bible studies wich where presented to us in interactive ways. We discovered about the gender differences between our cultures and learned how to speak as apostles. Which was really interesting. During the week it was really good to see that everyone one was entitled to their own opinions and was able to speak freely! We also had worship every day, which we all prepared. We learned songs in French, German, Swedish, Russian and all the other languages. This was a bit difficult sometimes. And we played games in the morning to wake up, most of which included paper towels.
We were exposed to Russian diakonal work in a soup kitchen to get a feeling of social issues in Moscow. We helped passing out soup, salad and tea to 60 to 80 year olds. These people came tot he soup kitchen almost every other day and from all over Moscow. It was impressive to see and it really made an impact on all of us to see that these people, who al ready have a whole life behind them, didnt have enough money to eat. It was a an impressive day.
The kitchen was run by an Etheopian man who had been in Russia since the eighties. Younger volunteers from Cameroon and also Nigeria helped out. After this deep real-life experience we got into, we started the next day to go into ourselves in order to discover our passion and formulate a vision. It was so precious hearing what’s really going on inside of every one!
The most challenging part was probably to move from the big ideas of our vision to a certain project that would make sense in our own communities, being realistic about sources, budget and people. Many of us experienced quiet a crisis. Goals that where to big, SMART goals that we didn’t fully understand. Preparing the presentations which we had to do on the last day, without computer! An example of some oft he projects we will be working on fort he next ten months are:
- Setting up classes for young people in wich they’ll learn to discover themselves and try to give them direction in their lives.
- Setting up an international program in a congregation.
- Setting up youth services within in a congregation.
- Setting up youth meetings and give English lessons to young people.
For us it was very helpful to hear one an others opinions. We usually got up between 7:30 and 8 am and went to bed at around 1 or 2 am! There was simply so much interesting things to talk about, lots of work, tommy emmanuel videos on youtube.com, table tennis matches (Joanna beat us all), playing volleyball with some Russians, having coffee, and so on.
Thank you to everyone who participated (Yana, Sanna, Johanna, Daan, Nastia, Katariina, Milan, Martin), thank you Roger, thank you Yana and Dmitry! You all made this trip so precious!
Moritz & Daan
