Thrive takes volunteer preparation seriously. The first few days are devoted to focusing on God and allowing Him to fill us during our worship and prayer time. We want to be filled up in order to pour out on the attendees during the retreat.

Sunday morning we gathered to discuss and train in our roles as small group facilitators. We discovered the differences between those that process internally and those that process externally and how to include everyone and allow all participants to share and feel comfortable in the way they think and communicate. Thrive’s understanding of cross-cultural workers and their needs shows in the details of our training. To ensure that attendees are not continuously asked the same questions over and over, each volunteer chooses a question from a list of suggestions that they can then use when interacting with an attendee anytime during the retreat.

First-time volunteers have been meeting with seasoned Thrive mentors to ask questions, discuss expectations vs. reality, techniques for being sensitive to cross-cultural workers, and pray for one another. The team as a whole has also considered ways to engage conversations not only in small groups, but in mealtime and self-care time, always keeping prayer front and center in our interactions and small group times.

Self-care teams meet to discuss room arrangements, practice their roles, and become better acquainted as partners. This year, attendees have eight options of self-care to choose for their free time of refreshment.

Thrive is intentional about team building by assigning volunteers into different groups for mealtimes, so we all get a chance to learn more about each other in a casual setting. If you take a walk around the property in the evening, you will see pockets of women continuing conversations that started earlier in the day, which can include both tears and laughter.

After three days of preparation and training, we are eager to meet the attendees and welcome them with loving arms.