Joshua Initiative & Tyrone Founders Day Weekend

Throughout 2009 Edgar and I were a part of OM's "Joshua Initiative" (or JI). The Joshua Initiative is a year long leadership training course. Different OM fields around the world offer this course. We had the privilege of being a part of a group of OM USA participants. We met once a month as a group where we received training from outside speakers as well as experienced leaders within OM USA. We each found a mentor to meet with once a month, and were assigned to a small 3-4 person team within JI. We also had real life tasks/exercises to help us practice the principles we learned.

One of these exercises involved Tyrone's (the small town OM USA resides in) annual Founders Day weekend celebrations. OM USA, being the largest company in town, has participated in the distant past, but has had no real involvement in the past several years. Wanting to contribute to the community, the leadership at OM USA asked the Joshua Initiative to take on this project.

Our 3 small teams (of 3-4 people each) divided the tasks: Parade Team (Edgar was on this team), Give Away/Promotional team (I was on this team, and nominated to lead this group effort), and the Fair Grounds Booth team.

The weekend took place the day after we arrived back from Tobago! So we hit the ground running. But there had also been a lot of preparations weeks and months in advance. The whole experience served as a really good learning experience: leading a small team on my own, collaborating with the other team leaders, facing horrible weather conditions, and the ever-present budget challenges.

So, here are a few photos of the weekend: which turned out to be one of the wettest in Georgia history. This was the same weekend that most of Atlanta faced horrible flooding. But the show must go on... apparently. These small towns don't mess around.




And here is the whole group during one of our sessions. This time, we had a virtual speaker, Hans Finzel the author of Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make and the executive director of WorldVenture since 1993. He phoned in from his home in Colorado, which was in the middle of a blizzard, to teach us & answer questions. (Don't let the second photo fool you. We sent it to him as a joke, since he couldn't see us. This was a really great session, and I really gained some great insights from this great teacher.)