OLA 2019

for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and love and self-control.

(2 Tim. 1:7)

My second week in Belize I spent camping in the Mt. Pine Ridge Forest with some of the other JP2 faculty and the first-year students. Called the Outdoor Leadership Adventure (OLA for short), the trip is a required part of the coursework at JP2. Students leave their phones at home to live for a week without electricity, running water, or a real bed on some property in the nature reserve owned by SOLT. Each day, students get up at 5:30 am to venture out on different excursions—hiking in the mountains, walking blindfolded down to a river, exploring a cave and natural water formation, and climbing a huge waterfall. In the evenings, after Mass and dinner together, we played chess (the students here are completely obsessed with chess) and talked around the campfire.

The terrain around Mt. Pine Ridge is very different from where I’m living in Benque and stunningly beautiful, so it was a real treat to get to spend almost a week there exploring it. I had been praying this summer that the Lord would fill me with love for my students, and as soon as I actually met them, He answered with an outpouring of desire for their good and so much consolation each time I observed one of them drawing close to Him in prayer or helping another student.

JP2 faculty

Probably the coolest part of the week was seeing how living in common for even such a short period of time concretely built up community and leadership among the students. By the last day, students had come to know each other, and were offering and receiving help in ways that made it clear they had not only a desire to help but a new awareness of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Young men who had hung back at the start of the week helped the young women with carrying bags and navigating difficult parts of the trail. Young women who had been reluctant to climb or get in the water at the beginning of the week pushed themselves through burdens of fear and insecurity. Students who had barely been able to speak a word when the OLA started were smiling and playing cards with their new friends.

At the end of the first day, as students were setting up their tents, Fr. Beau sat down to draw me a map detailing how to get to the cave the next day. And the question that I would be working through the rest of the week hit me: what in the world does it mean to lead when you don’t know where you’re going?

Many of the students hadn’t been camping before. Many hadn’t been this far away from home for this long before. I was supposed to lead them, to support them, to guide them in the leadership the OLA was supposed to be developing.

Rio Frio Pools, another stop on our map!

I’d never been camping for a week before. I’d never been to Pine Ridge and I’d never been to the cave I was supposed to be leading them through the next day. I had literally moved one week before to take up semi-permanent residence in a foreign country.

How was I in any shape to lead these students?

Leadership, I told myself, is not primarily about knowing exactly where you’re going and what you’re supposed to be doing, otherwise I sure as heck cannot lead these students. Trying to figure out what it does mean, I remembered two things that had come up in conversation earlier that summer with two of the most incredible women leaders I know.

The first is a Boston College PhD who works at a DC think tank. “When you’re a teacher,” she told me, “Always make sure you’re working harder than your students. They'll see your hard work and know that there's something there that makes it worth it, and they'll try to find out what that is.” I know she means it, because that’s exactly what she does.

You can’t lead if you just to use your position of leadership to make people serve you and make life easier on you. Leadership means thinking something so important that you are willing to pour yourself into it in whatever way necessary to achieve your end.

The second runs a highly successful business in Nebraska. “Leadership,” she told me, “means you’re the one mopping the floors.” I know she means it, because that's exactly what she does.

Leadership means not pursuing the vision at the expense of people. Leadership is service: He came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. Leadership is constantly looking for ways to meet the needs of the people around you. It's a willingness not just to run towards the vision, but to be the first to volunteer to do the dirty, mundane, difficult jobs it takes to get there.

The verse from Second Timothy kept coming up all week, as I realized that when you're enslaved to fear, you seek control, and leadership looks a lot like knowing exactly where you're going and what you're supposed to be doing. The only way to lead through hard work and service is divine liberation from that fear. Blessed be God, this week allowed me to see how much He has done so for me over the past two or three years.