🤠 Get Your Posse: Mentors

We’ve all been shaped by people we’ve learned from.

And we live in a remarkable time for learning. Through books, courses, podcasts, and teaching, we can learn from some of the best in the world—without ever meeting them.

But there’s something especially valuable about learning from someone directly. I’m grateful for teachers, coaches, pastors, and other leaders who invested in me and called out potential.

And then there are the people who impact us simply through the way they live—family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Sometimes their example leaves an impression long before we recognize their influence.

Who comes to mind for you—someone whose example has stayed with you, even if you didn’t recognize its impact at the time?

When I was 11, a mere fifth grader, one of those people was a girl who was already a sophomore in high school—five school years ahead of me.

I met her during a special weekend at our church called a Lay Witness Mission, part of the Methodist tradition. Believers from other communities came to stay with church families and share stories of how God had transformed their lives.

No celebrity speakers.
No big production.
Just everyday people sharing their faith.

A couple of teenage girls came from Minnesota that weekend. One was a track athlete who loved God. People were naturally drawn to her, and the way she carried herself made an impression on me.

She’s also the reason I fell in love with John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” I still love that song today. 😊

We exchanged addresses and became pen pals.

And I mean actual pen pals. 😊

Handwritten letters.
Envelopes.
Stamps.
Waiting for the mail.

We wrote back and forth for years.

She encouraged me to follow hard after Jesus.
She was interested in my life and what I was doing.
She was kind.

She probably had no idea how influential she was in my life.

But she was.

Looking back, she was a mentor to me, though neither of us knew to call it that.

She was a friend I admired, a little farther down the road, whose friendship and example helped me grow stronger in my faith.

Thirty-two years after we met, I dug through my box of saved letters—I’ve apparently always been a letter keeper 😊—and found hers.

I went looking for her on Facebook and got the chance to reconnect with someone who had played a much bigger role in my life than she probably realized.

What encourages me is that she didn’t have to be light-years ahead of me to make a meaningful difference.

She wasn’t a theologian or someone who had walked with God for decades. She was a teenage girl whose faith, kindness, and example helped me take steps forward.

We need the wisdom of people with deep experience and maturity. But someone doesn’t have to have mastered everything to help us grow in something.

A mentor can be someone a little farther down the road whose life gives us something worth following.

And we can offer that kind of encouragement, too—by showing interest, making time, and inviting someone to walk alongside us.

〰️〰️〰️ 🤠 〰️〰️〰️

How to Welcome Mentors into Your Posse
(See my “Nice • Friendly • Welcoming” post to learn the difference)

→ Notice who’s already there. Who models something you want to grow in—faith, character, relationships, or your craft? You may already have someone to learn from.

→ Open the door to a conversation. Ask a specific question: “I admire how you handle ____. Would you be willing to share what you’ve learned?” You don’t have to begin with a formal request to “be my mentor.”

→ Receive it well. Put something you’re learning into practice. When you can, thank the person and let them know how they’ve helped you.

→ Make room for someone else. Show interest. Offer encouragement. Invite someone to join you in something you already do. You don’t need all the answers to help someone take a step forward.

Whose wisdom could you welcome—and who could you make room for—this week?

🤠 Get Your Posse.

___________________________

Fun fact: Before sharing this post, I wanted to let my friend know I was writing about her. We’ve been Facebook friends since I first reached out, but when I pulled up her profile, I noticed we had one mutual friend. I had to look!

When we met more than 46 years ago, I lived in South Dakota and she lived in Minnesota. Now I’m in Missouri—so who could we both know?

What a surprise to see it was my current Bible study leader! Turns out this mentor had been her pastor’s wife in Minnesota—and her son’s fourth-grade teacher. What a small world, and such a sweet connection to discover!

What a sweet connection and a reminder of the unexpected ways God weaves our lives together. ❤️