WOW! Our first post as a group. We are truly excited that you are following along with us as we prepare for and experience this amazing trip. We have a wonderful group of participants that are truly passionate and share a sense of excitement along with Annie and myself. Our group consists of Molly Long, David McCartney, Leah Johnson, Alexa Snyder, Maureen Piccirilli, our lovely accompanier Jen Kline, along with group leaders Annie Sadowski, and myself Chris Pike. Some have been referring to us as a dream team and we completely accept that and embrace it to the fullest.
To fill you in on where we have started and how we are coming along we take a look at our first few meetings, and encounters. We got off to somewhat of a slow start due to scheduling conflicts with ABST orientation but we have made up for it with all of our fun and interesting meetings. In our first meeting, we started off with a little introduction of ourselves as well as a little icebreaker to become more comfortable with each other. The question of choice you might ask...If you could be a superhero what would your power be? Think about it. We sure had some interesting answers, me personally said that I would want to have lightning fast speed like flash. Other answers included invisibility, teleportation, and typical super powers. However, most creative answer goes to Leah with her wish to shoot pepto bismol out of her knees with the logic being it was an element of surprise. After we got to know each other we asked what everyone was looking to get out of this trip and why they were excited or looking forward to. To close things up and build excitement, while informing the group about L'Arche, we watched a video on why Jean Vanier started L'Arche. Below is the link to the video if you care to watch along with us.
http://www.jean-vanier.org/en/media/videos/jean_vanier_explains_how_he_set_up_larche_in_1964
On to our second fun filled meeting we started off with Annie passing around crafts she had aquired at L'Arche last year and we all said what we were grateful for in the spirit of L'Arche and the holidays. To create a little excitment, as well as get up and moving, we partook in a game of charades to demonstrate how the pillars fit into our trip. The pillars of ABST being Community, Reflection, Service, and Simplicity. A lot of laughter was shared within the group especially with Jen Kline being forced by David to leave big pillow at home. To finish off this meeting and send us into winter break on the right foot we read and chose our favorite Jean Vanier quotes and talked about how they resonated with us. This allowed us to get to know each other on a deeper level, along with reading some work and inspiration of Jean Vanier.
We hope that you continue to follow our journey and enjoy the ride with the "dream team". We will be signing out and taking a quick hiatus as we all go home to celebrate the holiday with family and friends. As a group we would like to wish you all a safe and happy holiday and a happy new year.
Sincerely,
Chris and Annie
