jennysnewdawn.blogspot.com
Approximately 12 weeks ago, on August 19 I walked into a gymnasium at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Minneapolis and was introduced to Luke, Dave, Carly and (eventually) Ua, all of whom would be joining me for the following 365 days touring the country and the world.
Now, during training they warned us that we were about to experience what can only be described as a marriage to these 4 people - we would eat, sleep, work, rehearse, perform, pray, travel, and play TOGETHER. In the days following August 19, I have only been separated from these 4 people for 3 days (when I briefly returned home to run Hood to Coast.) We have learned one another's sleeping habits (Carly gives back-rubs in her sleep!), eating preferences (all of us have a crazy affinity for Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies), flatulence patterns (ok, mostly just Dave's...), music tastes (Ua and my love for Country is vehemently NOT shared by the rest of the team), political views, faith stories, pet peeves (Dave hates it when Carly plays her kazoo), and even the smell of one another's feet can be quickly identified.
All this to say, God has blessed us with an incredible community for a year - I have so enjoyed the opportunity to be put under a microscope, so to speak, by agreeing to live and breath the same space with my four amazing teammates. They challenge me to voice my opinions when I am tempted to keep quiet, to live more selflessly, to live more simply (I've discovered that frequent showers are not as necessary as originally thought, and "clean clothes" does not necessarily mean unworn clothes), to live in the moment (especially when I'm tempted to look ahead to the end of this year already and worry), and they challenge me to continue to look at my beliefs and understand my core faith. In short, I am loving team life.
On a light note, the team loves playing games together as well! When we have down time, we play everything from Frisbee to Five Crowns, Rook, Ui77 (a card game Ua made up the other day that is REALLY fun), 5 rocks, Liar's Dice, Flux, Blokus, and Up & Down the River (and I only named a few!) Our most significant arguments thus far have actually been over games (all of us are a bit competetive), and those have been fairly inconsequential.
Our team's strengths: we are all low-key, low-maintenance, low-stress people. We enjoy people & we are all young at heart (we love playgrounds, children's museums, building sandcastles, etc.), and thus are easily entertained and rarely bored. We are all musically gifted as well - every one of us sings and we have been blessed with some amazing songs & cool harmonies for our programs, which makes singing together really fun!
Team weaknesses: we struggle to plan ahead, and sometimes we argue over minor things (like games). We all are human and therefore sometimes our focus shifts to ourselves instead of our ministry at hand. However, by and large, all of us are enjoying and growing from the team experience and I personally cannot think of a better way to spend this year. | 
Another look at New Dawn. i've added this new picture to the gallery. To comment, visit the images page. i really like the way in which the two photos complement one another so well. The picture of us was taken by shel at Columbia Park in Lafayette and the sunrise was taken while at Camp ALOMA in Prescott, Arizona. It's intense! i love it!
Here is a picture (taken by shel) from our team photo shoot at Columbia Park in Lafayette. It captures the moment in which us guys said 'no we won't cross our legs on the bridge' ... it is much more difficult for us than for the ladies. As we had nowhere to go last week, we were able to be booked in Indiana. i then spent my 30th birthday with family and, more importantly, was able to attend Cori & Ed's wedding.