Here is part two of three from Training Camp. Wow, so much happened to each and everyone of us during that week. I guarantee that we could all write ten blogs that contain 1,000 words and still not get a chance to tell you everything we felt, saw, experienced, or learned. I keep telling people that by the time I am 50, I still probably wouldn’t have told them every story. And this was only one week of training camp! I cannot wait to see the amazing things that God does with an entire year. I am so pumped for those stories. But in the meantime, I will quickly run through the biggest highlights of this week. This will be short and not in a whole lot of detail, so if you want to know more, feel free to contact me!
The Lessons:
- “The gospel is not ‘Jesus plus my preferences’.”
- “What comes out of you when bumped?”- Are you overflowing with the Holy Spirit?
- “Have a big ‘Yes!’ in your heart.”
- “Who God is is predictable, but what God does is unpredictable!”
- Kingdom work happens in the peripheries- Are you too focused on efficiency and productivity? God also works outside of that line!
- There is a huge difference between having knowledge about God and knowing God
- Forgiveness- Psalm 86: The first trait we see of God is His forgiveness. We too must be forgiving!
The Preparation:
- Learned how to write better blogs- Storytelling!
- World Race is a “Mission Trip and a Discipleship”
- Built upon…
- Intimacy
- Communion
- Mission
- Sleep Scenarios
- Slept in tents
- Had “night watch”- praying throughout the night in shifts as a group
- Slept in a small space to simulate host housing
- dealt with “lost luggage”
- Culture days
- dressed and acted in ways consistent with the rules and expectations of certain cultures
- ate the food of different regions while adhering to their rules (for example, on Africa day, we ate with our fingers, while on China day, we ate with chopsticks and we could not serve ourselves food)
- We even experienced a mock Marketplace that simulated everything we will come across in a foreign market, all at once!
- An amazing 2 mile hike up a mountain, which we then camped on top of! (Hiking in Kansas DID NOT prepare me for this! But it was so much fun!)
- Got a chance to meet our small (4-6 people) teams that we will be serving closely with for the first 3 months. Sometimes we will be working together as an entire squad, but there will be many times where we will break up into our small teams. I am so excited for my first team! They are a great group of Spirit-led people who truly love God and others!
The Fun
- Ate crickets (Not bad. Crunchy, but not bad.)
- Team-building games and activities
- Daily workouts as a squad
- Interesting and great-tasting food
- Squad Wars! Against all odds, we won!! O-SQUAD!!
- Experienced God in very real, immensely incredible ways all week long!
- Grew close to my squad in a really short amount of time. I haven’t known them very long, but already, they are my family.
As I said, this doesn’t nearly come close to everything I could say about training camp! I haven’t even mentioned all the lessons I learned, the steps towards God and healing I took, the leaders that helped us, or the experiences that will forever shape me. God has once again begun the transformation process in my life. I have a long ways to go, but thanks to this week, I will never go back to who I was. Thanks for reading!
