My latest trip to Equipping Ministries International pt 1.

This weekend I attended EMI‘s Intensive Teacher Training. One of my personal goals is to become fully certified so that I can run a full weekend seminar on communication skills and how they can make or break relationships. I’ve personally benefitted a great deal from the principles taught by EMI and really believe in sharing those as much as I can.

The weekend began on a bad note: I was depressed Friday morning and had to fight off the urge to skip the entire weekend. I had a sudden, overwhelming sense of lack of personal control especially with regards to my schedule (which is a regular point of contention within my life) and that led me to feeling enthusiastic about blowing the entire course off.

Fortunately I did get out of bed and on the road to Cincinnati, Ohio.

Traffic was extremely bad in Illinois. According to my car’s onboard statistics (which I so want to refer to as “the ship’s computer”) I averaged a speed of around 52MPH during my tenure on I-74E. As you can guess, this set me back quite a bit. It also had the misfortune of setting me up to hit a total white-out thunderstorm right outside of Indianapolis Indiana (which had gas for only $1.99/gallon!)

I pulled over in Shelbyville for dinner and suddenly realized that I had done this before: I stopped in Shelbyville on the way back from two previous EMI weekends. Shelbyville is a large-enough town east of Indianapolis, which is why I choose it.

I find a lovely local Mexican place to have dinner and to use the phone to call ahead my tardiness (Eastern Standard Time put me at just being late as I finished my dinner–but only late in registering). After my dinner (which I’ll describe in a bit) I called EMI and got no response: the office was empty as the weekend was being taught at a local church.

Bummer.

To add to my dismay my food almost made me sick. I ordered a stuffed poblano pepper dish that I’ve enjoyed elsewhere. Being who I am and choosing a local joint one can never know exactly what one is in for and this dish was no different. After I finished my rice and beans (which were excellent), but before I finished off my margarita I began eating the peppers. Poblano peppers have a spicy-yet-sweet taste that lends itself to stuffed peppers very well. Oftentimes poblanos will be stuffed with Monterey Jack cheese or a stuffing of sorts. I can’t recall the insides as it was the outsides that got me: they were covered in eggs. Of course I didn’t notice this at first, as they were topped with a generous portion of tomato sauce and various cheeses and spices. As I pondered the first bite I noticed something odd in the texture of the batter: it was a little rubbery (but not worth complaining over–just unexpected). As I chewed my third bite I began detecting the trademark sulphur content of the eggs used in the dish. I gagged unexpectedly and almost made a nasty mess of things at my table. Once the thought and taste of the eggs were out in the open I could not get around them.

Disappointed, I paid my bill and hit the road fast. Foolishly (and forgetfully) I popped a Vicodin once I got on the road. Now, Vicodin doesn’t typically make me tired, but I had enjoyed a margarita earlier and that was a bad call. Fortunately nothing happened.

The weather continued its punishment as the rain would not let up all the way to Cincinnati.

I arrived at the church about 60 minutes after the seminar began and was met at the door by the very warm face of concern belonging to Karen, a volunteer for EMI who had just called my home phone. I was ushered into the room and introduced to my small group (just eight people were involved in the entire weekend). My group re-introduced themselves and I told my brief story. Everyone seemed concerned about my back but were happy to know that nothing bad had happened on the trip out.

One of the biggest tasks we had was to prepare a brief teaching demonstrating a point from one of EMI’s LIFE Seminars (mine was concerned with confrontation and conflict). Before we workshopped some ideas we were taught about three different learning (and teaching) styles: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. We took a brief quiz and I scored as a high auditory learner (which served to explain my inability to take notes in college). We were encouraged (and expected) to work all three teaching styles into our seminar, so that we could teach to people who were strong in any regard.

We wrapped the evening up with some role-playing that demonstrated the teaching styles to us.

See you in part two.