Maiden Warrior

Day one of road trip training revealed to me that I was one of the older people involved. This is due to the Oak Tree Foundation having the policy that you must be under 26 years old to be involved. (This rule allows young people to get involved in world changing activities and lead them). For the first time in my life I answered to someone younger then me. It was not such an odd feeling and when I think about it everyone I answered to on road trip were younger then me.
One such person who made this experience feel so natural was my group leader Eleanor who was latter dubbed as "Boss". Other group leaders could hardly measure up when it came to how they handled their groups. They were either too controlling or too focused on themselves. Ele kept us inline without making the whole thing like school camp.

Several people lost their cool on road trip and the pressure from the administration roles they had taken on had clearly taken a toll on some of them. This is understandable but a few of the crew organising the trip, never raised the tone, never spoke out of anger and kept the frustrations to themselves. Elie was one such person she made it fun and the few times a hint of stress popped through it was tame and did not retract from the experience or the atmosphere.

The key aspect to Eleanor that stuck with me was that whilst we had only a limited time together she took the time to get to know each of her team members personally. In a week full of timetables and deadlines there was limited time to do this with any one so most road trippers only got to know one or two people really well. Eleanor had additional rolls to play in the campaign as well as a group leader and still managed to have all of her team call her friend.

Admittedly I had a soft spot for Eleanor for reasons i don't really know. She represents everything I stand for, a firm follower of Christ who acts on her words and gets out into the world to make a difference. She is achieving wonders with her life, both personally with travels across the globe and with her faith. I had the amazing experience of sitting in on a conversation where she shared her faith with other road trippers and I hope I was there to back her up with it. This conversation took its natural course and nothing was forced onto people, she shared my views on when its appropriate to discuss such issues and when its not. Whilst on the war path for Poverty she happily took up her sword and battled for Christ at the same time.

I pray that in years to come that our church will be filled with young people as active in their faith and as passionate about injustice as she is. What an awesome force they could be, our churches and the world need more maiden warriors like Elie. My road trip experience was something that will stick with me forever because of the people I now call my friends, none more so then Eleanor.