WORLD RACE TRAINING CAMP
This last week I met the people who will become my family this next year! In Georgia we all assembled, but not for sweet tea and country cooking. Instead we bonded over sleeping in tents together, eating strange foods, getting bit by bugs, taking cold bucket showers (or embrace the smell of the wild), and strange team building activities.
Its funny how quickly a group of strangers can become a tight knit group when put through odd adventures together. Each day we were put through different scenarios of things that could and will happen on the race. We had no schedule and had to learn to take everything as it came. We were awoken every morning at 6am to pack up our tents and packs, exercise for thirty minutes and then start the day with some foreign breakfast that usually still left us hungry. One day half of our bags and tents got “lost by the airport”, so we had to be a community and take care of our unfortunate friends. Another night all 42 of us had the challenge of sleeping on a bus, our scenario being that outside was “unsafe”. On a particular evening we were given a certain amount of money and had to buy our own food in a busy market filled with beggars, traffic, thieves, and altogether chaos. Though only a stimulation, it brought me back to my time in North Africa. I right away felt at home, it was weird how fast my instincts came back of holding onto bag so it wouldn’t get stolen, and ignoring the people yelling at me and reaching for me to help them or buy something from them. We had a limited time to change our money over and get enough food for us to eat. And in the midst of it all I didn’t see the ones that were right in front of me. Through this experience I’ve realized that I don’t want to be another person in the crowd who ignores them, but I want to see them. Even if I can’t help them; I want to look in their starving eyes and let them know that they matter. Mother Teresa once said, “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” I want to be like the Man who sat in the dirt with beggars and and looked in their eyes and talked with them the same way that He talked to kings and rulers.
In going to training my single apprehension was about who were these people that I was going to be stuck with for upcoming year! Fortunately, this is no longer a fear but an excitement. Our squad is made up of 42 people who we will travel to each country with. Once in the country we will divide into our teams that are made up of 6 and 7 people; in these teams we will minister in various cities. I’m so excited to get serve alongside people who love Christ so passionately.
This September we will launch out for our first month in our first country: Cambodia!!!
I am still in the fundraising stage, and need to have $7,500 in my account two weeks prior to launch to be able to go. Currently, I am at : $3,779. I am confident that God will provide, whether that’s through you or some other miracle! I did not have the money I needed to attend the the training camp until the day of the deadline! Miraculously I got $4 dollars more than I needed the day that I needed it.
