GPA's Green Nation’s Lake House Workshop in Tennessee

Green Nation arrived at Norris Lake on a Thursday night, after the end of our first GPA condition. The five teams came back from fundraising conditions in West Virginia, Southern Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. It was an uplifting moment when we all met up for the first time. Things were a bit different than previous workshops. For starters, it was the first time where we met up with only our nation (group) and not the other nations. It was also the first time we met up outside of our home base of UTS in Barrytown, New York.

It was held at a beautiful lake house in Jacksboro, TN. Our first night, one of our wonderful older sisters, Megumi Homma (third year staff) gave us a guidance on the “Importance of Reflecting and Digesting our Experiences in order to Move Forward”.

The next day we received a talk from our second wonderful 3rd year sister, Hitomi Agari, on “Gratitude” and the importance of being grateful for challenges and the lessons they allow us to learn. After sharing with each other the most grateful moments of our past fundraising experience we had the rest of the afternoon to relax, swim at the lake, and go canoeing- there was even a hot tub to lounge in! It was a really awesome place to be. Then, we were finally assigned our new teams for 2nd condition. And we were able to have a short talk in our new teams.

On the third day and last full day we had we received three talks, all focused on how to strengthen our lives of faith.

The staff compiled videos of our parents giving testimonies on their faith and how they built and strengthened their relationship to God. The evening continued with open testimonies from first years on how our experience has been. It was a long and meaningful evening.

The next morning we received our last guidance by Megumi Homma on recognizing our own value based on our why, where, and how. We then took last minute pictures on the deck, cleaned up the place, and made it the way we were given, and finally, bid farewell to our friendly lake house. We all can’t wait for the 9th of November in Kansas, where we’ll be seeing our brothers and sisters again from the other nations as well with plenty of experiences to laugh and also cry about, but until then, there is a second condition to focus on, and another day and another opportunity to be that much closer to God.