Worshipping the Lord through song-Valerie Umana-Anderson

Sunday, Sept. 25, 2011 was "Day of the Bible" here in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and Valerie was invited to sing a song at our church, Christian Community of El Hatillo. This "Day of the Bible" is a yearly event, inaugurated in the 1980's by official decree, when the churches here honor the Bible as the Word of God. She choose a song in Spanish which speaks of the power of God's Word (Marcela Gandara, tu Palabra).
Enjoy the 4 min. video here in the blog or go directly to youtube.com by clicking on this link: 
Valerie Umana-Anderson singing at church (4 min.)
http://youtu.be/0Ac37je7Ot0

How do we turn experience into learning?

Camp is full of experiences. But not every experience is educative, in fact, many experiences can be mis-educative. What are the mitigating factors?

• The experience tends to provoke greater learning if it pushes you out of your “comfort zone” and into your “groan zone”.
• The learner must decide to move from her “groan zone” of discomfort to the “growth zone” by drawing back from the experience to reflect on it, observe her reaction and those of others, then to understand the whys or theories in play and finally to move into making concrete changes or adjustments for the next experience.

This is the essence of experiential learning and since camp provides a wide gamut of experiences our CCI/LA instructors need to know how to learn from experience themselves to be able to teach others how to as well.

Therefore, the first phase of the IFI in Mexico was a four day focus on training them to be facilitators of experiential learning using low ropes courses or team-building elements.

This 4:56 min. video (can be viewed directly on my YouTube channel: http://youtu.be/2lnB0nFMvRM) shows you how we begin by teaching safety skills, both to guard one’s emotional and physical safety. This is how we teach about emotional safety for example:

• What are some of the words or gestures we tend to use that are destructive in nature?
• What are words and gestures that we can use that are constructive and useful for building each other up?

You’ll also we also notice in the video that we practice spotting skills to avoid accidents when we are doing the team-building activities.

Our CCI/LA training is always characterized by a combination of theory and practice. We teach an idea or concept and then give ample opportunity for it to be practiced and accompanied by immediate feedback so the images of people in the video doing the activities are led by the students themselves.

How have you learned from experiences? How would you teach others to learn from their experiences? Tell us your thoughts, if you please, by sharing your observations using the link below.