Our first Mannamily retreat.

This Sunday is our 3-month mark, three months of progress, three months of challenges, and three months of working together. A few weeks ago we had the opportunity to talk about the accomplishments and challenges of the last couple of months at our very first PD retreat. With the amount of programs we lead we are generally all going 100 miles a minute and not usually in the same direction. So our first retreat gave us the chance to meet in a way that we hadn’t been able to since our July orientation in Miami. 

One Thursday, we all piled into the micro and departed to one of the most beautiful places in Nicaragua, Laguna de Apoyo. Laguna de Apoyo is a crater lake in between the cities of Masaya and Granada. When we arrived we were all shocked to see the georgous lake and home we would be sharing for the next two days. We quickly unpacked and sat down for our first meeting. Over the course of two days we were able to plan, evaluate, share ideas, and even have a little fun!

With all 13 of us together and the experiences we have had so far, we were able to set long-term and short-term goals for the remainder of our time here in Nicaragua. We had the opportunity to split into our program groups and evaluate what is and isn’t working and plan ahead based on the new knowledge we’d gained. We were able to do team building activities to get to know each other even better than before.

Since returning from our retreat we have implemented strategies to help us reach our goals. We are now having Spanish Thursdays, during which we are allowed to speak in Spanish and Spanish only. We have had the chance to implement new program ideas and new roles within each program. We have seen programs grow, shift, and evolve from the ideas we came up with in just two short days.

With our next retreat just two months away we are excited to see the programs continue to grow. We are hoping to see our Spanish vastly improve and are working hard to reach that goal. There will be different obstacles we face along the way, but again we will have to opportunity to evolve as time goes on. We know that with each new day there is an opportunity for us all to do great things together. Challenge accepted.