When I think of my friends, I see points of light. My friends are lights of joy and happiness. On my dark days, my friends are lights of hope and comfort.

Recently, I had the opportunity to make new friends as part of my Leadership Shelby County 2010 class.

For those of you not familiar with Leadership Shelby County, it is a program designed to bring people from across Shelby County together to study the various aspects of life in our county such as government, education, health care and quality of life.

From now until May of next year, my class will also be working on projects designed to improve some part of our county. Leadership Shelby County is a great program and I am proud to be a part of this year’s class.

The first event of Leadership Shelby County was a two day retreat at the Family Connection and at the Alabama 4-H Center outside Columbiana.

The program at this retreat was designed to introduce the class members to each other and to build friendships through activities like a challenge course, role playing and communication with drums.

All of these activities taught us to examine our own leadership and communications skills and brought us closer together as a group.

It was a great experience and I am looking forward to the rest of the Leadership activities.

Through Leadership Shelby County, I have made almost 30 new friends.

After spending two days with these folks and getting to know them, I can truly say that I am honored to be a part of their class and I am fortunate to have them as new friends.

I am looking forward to working with them over the next several months and getting to know them even better.

I already know that these new friends will also be bright lights in my life. I am blessed.