The GLS Progress - Update 1

With the first GLS being about four weeks away and most happening in October and November, we thought you all might be interested to hear about all the various irons that are on the fire around the world in preparation for the GLS this year.

Today, we wrap up the East Africa GLS training which took place all this week. Volunteers from Uganda, Malawi and Kenya were poured into, envisioned, and trained in the nitty-gritty details of putting on these events in their country. We covet your prayers as our team heads to Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria next week to continue training our teams in West Africa at our 7 different Nigerian sites. Below is a picture of some tech volunteers being trained in Kenya this week.

All summer there have been and will continue to be various other trainings occurring all over the globe, including locations in Singapore, Bolivia, and South Africa to name a few. Training is an extremely high value at the GLS. Quality events are ensured by quality training, and we are dedicated to pouring into the volunteers who so selflessly sacrifice their time to participate in this venture. We are SO grateful for them, and without them, the GLS truly couldn't happen.

Another massive project in making the GLS happen every year is the incredible task of translating the content from the Leadership Summit into 29 different languages. This process is extremely complex, detailed and time-consuming, and our translators give extreme diligence to generating the most accurate, clearest translations possible. Imagine taking the highly conceptual, idiomatic content from the Leadership Summit and trying to translate it into the given context for that particular language.

Take this quote from Gary Hamel, one of this year's Summit faculty: "Their employees were prisoners of precedent, locked in jails run by the custodians of covention." This is a compelling sentence in its original English context, but native speakers can sometimes take for granted that the jargon and idioms in their language can be easily translated into others. Can you imagine translating that sentence understandably into 29 different languages? That's just one instance, and it happens for each and every Summit session at every foreign-language GLS location.

That gives you just a taste of all the activity going on around the world right now in preparation for this exciting event. Check back again next week to hear more about the exciting initiatives being spearheaded as we prepare for God to work mightly through this event.