The Teen World Outreach's West Coast Training Week began on June 21, 1998 in Pasadena, California. Four teams met to prepare to their voyages with destinations of Australia, Fiji, Hong Kong, and Bolivia. The Australia team was the largest with 3 leaders and 16 team members. While we came as strangers, we became friends within the first day. Our busy schedule kept us active. Our day started out with devotions, breakfast, and the beloved calisthenics. Throughout the day we attended various classes that taught us about spiritual warfare, culture, how to give our personal testimony, how to make a Salvation bracelet, mime (and lots of it), team activities (great trust-building activities), and a rally every evening.
Every team had the opportunity to perform a skit during one of the evening rallies. Our team was the last to go. (They saved the best for last, of course). We decided to do a parody of the movie Titanic combined with various aspects of Training Week. The objects of our humor included calisthenics ("Touch your toes! I said your toes, not your knees!), the mandatory boot and name tag wearing regulation, Operation Exodus, and ourselves. The picture shows some of our team pretending to clean toilets, which was our punishment for being late a few too many times for class.
Training week ended with a Commissioning Service where we were officially "sent out" to the nations, even though we didn't leave until the next day. Parents were welcome to attend, but only a few people's families were able to come because most of us lived too far away. Training week was tiring, as we rigorously prepared for the following three weeks, but was very beneficial to growing closer to each other and God. We would greatly need the skills we learned sooner than we might have thought...
Next: Departure & Week One "Down Under"