From WOW to TEAM

Dear Readers,

For my first article, I thought it would be fun to write about how TEAM initially began. My name is Sabine G. Anderson, and I am currently an MK (Missionary's Kid) in Mexico. This blog was the idea of my friend Mary, who I have known for about four years. We met in 2015 when her family was first moving to Arizona, while we were visiting family for a vacation. Mandy, Mary's sister and I first met at a playground. It didn't take long for us to become instant friends after Mandy and I discovered we shared a birthday (only Mandy is older by a few hours :P ). 

When my family and I returned to Mexico that year, Mary and I stayed in close contact through email. It was like our texting format, which we now laugh about when we remember our few sentence emails we would send to one another. (edit: and we would respond without seconds, like if we were texting. -Mary) It was a few months after we began emailing that Mary got Skype and she came up with this idea to make a Bible group. I was totally for it! In the beginning, we were only three members: Pixel, Mary, and I.

It took us years to decide to name our group something other than "Bible Group", and we did decide on naming it WOW which stands for Weekend Of Worship. Over time, however, we realized the name didn't fit. Sometimes we would skip a weekend, or worship throughout the week as well. Plus, it did not feel like it was real worship leading a bible group compared to, say, singing in a choir. So we came up with the name TEAM, which now stands for Teaching, Evangelism, And Ministry. Since a lot of us in the group are MKs, PKs (Pastor's Kid) or are in some sort of ministry at church, this name suited us better. 

Years ago, when the group was still WOW, we were a little lost at what we should do for the group, and we even had scheduling issues for the longest time. In the beginning, we tried doing these books by Ken Ham, a creationist, but we didn't feel like we were learning anything from them (because there was no new information to us). We tried moving on from there to devotionals or just Bible reading. Still, nothing worked.  It wasn't until we decided to change the name to TEAM, and when we voted on another leader to help Mary did things begin to change. I was chosen as the second leader.

When I first started to help lead though, it was still rocky and the group wasn't learning as much as I hoped. Finally,  Mary and I decided to take turns every other week to lead. She read from her Bright Lights devotionals, which have great lessons on how to grow in your relationship with Christ, and I am read through a book called Anxious for Nothing. 

Things are smoother now that we have a more concrete schedule. We are now eleven members in all. While some have come and gone, we are gradually increasing in size. Throughout this time we have had a newsletter that members have written for. And now TEAM has started a group blog, which I pray will be able to touch lives. 

Sincerely, 

Sabine G. Anderson 

(Edit: Mary here! Hi. Anyway, I changed some things in there to past tense because our TEAM has had some changes. Now, we meet twice weekly- late Friday and Saturday afternoon. We have been going through Romans one chapter a week, and we have weekly memory verses.)