WELCOME TO TRAINING CAMP!!
Schedule for Training Camp 2014
- Arrive at Training Camp and meet your crazy squad, the ones covered in red from head to toe sweating as they put up their tents…you’ll know them when you see them.
- Eat food at your meals from every culture throughout the week. Be prepared to use your hands as utensils, sit on the floor sometimes and oh yeah you’ll probably still be hungry after your meals.
- Come to group lecture sessions as we worship the Lord and see the Holy Spirit move….it’ll be pretty cool so you won’t want to miss it. Also be prepared to hear the speaker blow your mind with truth and conviction.
- Prepare for brokenness among yourself, your squad and your team and get ready for the Holy Spirit to enter into your life in a way you’ve never experienced.
- Sleeping arrangements? Oh, yeah, don’t worry you won’t ever sleep in the same place twice. Your nights will look like something like this: Grab a tent one night, Find a friend or two another night, snag a bus seat and make it your bed one night, make your own shelter in the woods a different night, grab 12 tent buddies the following night. It’ll feel normal, no worries.
- Have you ever engaged in team building activities? Oh you have? Well how about ones including magic carpets?
- Leave the week with a new family of 45 and be ready to grow, serve, love, pray, witness, heal, learn, take risks, and change over the next year. Go into the nations for the glory of the Lord.
Had Adventures in Missions given us a schedule for our week at Training camp, I’d like to think it would look something like this. Needless to say, if this was handed to me at the beginning of the week I wouldn’t really know what to do with it.
Let me start off by reminding you how much I appreciate a good plan and schedule, you know, something to keep me on track and let me know what is coming next. Well something I have been learning quickly is that even though I like or desire something that doesn’t always mean I will get it…cue Training Camp.
I don’t think I could have ever accurately prepared myself for what was going to happen at Training Camp. I wasn’t told what it would be like before and I wasn’t given a plan during the week, but honestly if I was told what Training Camp would be like beforehand I wouldn’t have believe it. It rocked me and opened my eyes in the best ways possible!
First of all, I met my squad, H Squad, and they are awesome! My squad is so full of joy and as a whole we are so beautifully different that our squad just makes sense. On top of that we were assigned teams and my team is a powerhouse for the Lord, I am pumped. I cannot wait to spend the next 11 months serving alongside everyone on my squad!
Secondly, Adventures in Missions prepared us for the World Race in so many ways and we were exhausted by the end of the week, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. This week was real and raw. It was vulnerable. This week presented challenges that we weren’t expecting to face as quickly as we did. It opened up past wounds in some and brought healing to others. It brought us together as a squad while we also drew intimately closer with the Lord. Although the days seemed endless our week at training camp was short and we just scratched the surface of the growth and depth to come in the next 11 months. There is so much more that we have yet to experience. So without a laid out plan or schedule Training Camp happened and gave me more than I could have asked for.
The one thing I knew to be true as I committed to the World Race, the one thing I knew as truth before going to Training Camp, and the one thing I am even more convinced of after training camp is this:
The World Race will be impossible and without purpose if I’m not totally dependent on the Lord and put my personal agenda aside.
This has led me to examine my walk with Christ. When walking in the Presence of God I won’t know what is coming next, even though I may want to, because if I knew I probably wouldn’t believe it. The Lord is so faithful and shows up in the most amazing ways but He calls us to follow and obey Him by faith. That means that I won’t ever have a blueprint for my life and that’s okay. He has far better things in store for me than I could ever plan for myself. So that is what I will do. I will obey and depend on Him, by faith, when He calls me into situations that I am not prepared for. I will follow Him to areas for which I don’t have a schedule, and I will go where He is leading me because I know that He will grow and challenge me the way He desires. Dependence on Him is what the World Race is about.
Lord I know that these next 11 months will be selfish and in vain if I go into the World Race with a schedule of my own. So I give control up to You, Father. This year I pray that I will be led by the Spirit over my own plan and desires. Break me into total dependence of You and You alone.
