Hey friends!

  A little over two weeks ago, the women of C Squad found out that there would be team changes: the four women’s teams would be combined and rearranged into two new teams. Team changes are very uncommon for Gap Year, and the news came as a huge surprise; we had all thought that the teams we were in would be our teams for the rest of the Gap Year. It was hard to process at first; it still doesn’t feel totally real. 

  It’s still difficult to understand why we had team changes, even more so to comprehend what the point of our first teams were. I look back on Mariposa and see that there was a lot of learning: I learned to be vulnerable in a healthy way; I learned how to give and receive feedback; I learned how to build relationships with people that are different from me. 

  Mariposa is Spanish for butterfly; we chose the name because we knew this would be a season of change, like how a a caterpillar changes into a butterfly in its chrysalis. Gap Year is, in a lot of ways, our chrysalis. Team Mariposa was a stepping out, a practice for our unsteady selves in being the hands and feet of Jesus. Emily, Lydia, Emma, and I all took our first steps together, learning how to love each other well, and how to work together as a team. 

  Now I’m in a very different team; team Jubilee is almost twice the size of Mariposa, and only one other member of Mariposa is a part of it. We have a different group dynamic; feedback is gonna take a lot longer than it used to; and some of the girls I don’t know nearly as well as I’d like to. Even so, I’m soooooo excited to get to learn alongside these amazing women (you’ll get to meet them eventually!). There will be good times and bad, hard seasons of working through it, and joyful times of laughter and fun. I can’t wait to see where this next season takes us and how God will work!

Until next time,

Claire