Tuesday to Friday next week I’ll be in NOLA with my GFM Regional Leadership Team (that’s us above last year gathered in North Carolina for the same meetings). These are my teammates who lead GFM ministry with me in a massive 17 state region called the South-Central. We gather in person, just our team, just one time per year for team building and coordinating our leadership. A few things you could be mindful of when you pray for us:

• Leon Filyaw (light blue shirt, back row) is our new RD (Regional Director). He stepped in as our leader when our old boss Don Paul Gross(back row, cadigan, behind me) took an RD job in the West last year.
• Please track with us via the schedule below. We have two guest staff members joining us for the part of our gathering focused on Spiritual Formation (Kathy and Karen).
• We’re meeting in New Orleans! Looking forward to some time with my team in a fun city (and maybe some food Nebraskans like me don’t normally get to eat).
• I’ll be helping with a few things in the schedule – pray for me this week as I prep for a couple of discussions on evangelism and lead our team in a MS study of Matthew 13.
• One fun thing we’ve got planned is an outtrip to LSU over in Baton Rouge! Allison (one of our Area Directors, on Leon’s right in the pic above) lives and works there. We’re going to hang out on her campus for some meeting, eating and prayer-walking!

Please pray for our time together! I’m excited about looking at a couple of Evangelism Self-assessment tools that our region has been using for the past two years. IF you’d like to see them click the link below! Oh, hey, looks like they also talked me into doing some cooking Tuesday night when we first get there! I hope they don’t regret that! In my experience when they trust you to feed them, you better deliver! I’m bringing a pretty safe family favorite I’ve made a million times: Tim’s Chicken Chili.

Thanks so much for your terrific support, friendship, giving and praying. I couldn’t keep this thing going without you! If I’m not too busy, I’ll try to blog while I’m down there next week!

PS: February’s GCF Brunch

The topic of conversation at brunch was Conflict Management! If you’re an old-school IV staff director you’ll recognize both resources we used: Difficult Conversations (in it’s 3rd rendition) and the trusty-dusty Thomas-Kilman conflict profile. YES, I had them take the old-school version of the questionnairre and discover thier conflict strategies (Avoidance, Accommodation, Competition, Compromise, Collaboration). I dare you to download it and take it right now! You can use the QR code above.