TRAINING CAMP!
It sounds simple enough.
Load all the gear you need for 11 months in a backpack weighing less than 50 pounds. Meet up with 200+ slightly crazy other adults (ages 21-35) and spend a week together preparing for this 11 month/11 country trip around the world your about to take.
They tell you to show up with NO EXPECTATIONS.
Upon arriving, tents and hammocks are assembled. Awkward hellos, handshakes, and hugs are exchanged. Trying your best to memorize faces and place them with the 52 other names you've just heard. You'll spend the next 11 months bonding with these people, but right now they are still strangers.
No schedules are posted. This whole week is set up to be a play it by ear experience. A test in patience and flexibility.
I quickly realized that I was not ready for what God was about to do with me this week. What he was about to show me. And what community really looks like.
The entire week was a test of true to life situations that we will face on the World Race. Giving us a chance to process the difficulty as a team and work out a solution. Relying on those around us to balance out our strengths and weaknesses.
This meant nights sleeping in cramped conditions under the stars. Hiking through mud in the rain. Sleeping on school buses. Loosing half of our gear. Getting our money stolen in a foreign market while trying to buy dinner. Using the surrounding wilderness as a restroom. Taking not enough cold showers. Sharing less than average meals with strangers. No cell phones or computers. The list could go on.
And it wasn't just physical circumstances that brought us together as a community. It was the walls that Jesus began to shatter in our spiritual lives. Speaking up and becoming vulnerable about things from our past. Fears, doubts, loss, and grief were brought to the light.
When I say that this was by far the hardest week of my life, it's because of what I finally let Jesus do within me. Through tears, Jesus began to heal hurts that I had clung to for years upon years in my life. Places where I found my identity in the past were destroyed and honestly, it hurt. But the peace that came with the healing is unable to be expressed.
I finally let Jesus love me completely this week. I know that sounds a little crazy, but for a long time I subconsciously allowed my performance to dictate how much Jesus would love me. In the back of my mind I was convinced that the more service I did, Jesus would finally approve of me. Like his approval was only found when I did things to make him happy. This week I was finally able to accept that it is not my performance that makes me accepted or loved. That is not the father that God is.
I learned that effective ministry starts within yourself. When we finally allow God to heal the hurts inside ourselves, we are prepared to take the world by a storm.
Jesus wrecked me this week. It may have been the hardest week of my life, but maybe the most rewarding. In one month I take the final step of this journey of preparation. I LEAVE THE COUNTRY!!!
Below is a picture of the team that I will be sharing the next 11 months with. (I will introduce them more clearly in a later blog.) Begin to pray that we will be ready and willing to live in community and become vulnerable to each other as the months pass. I know rough times are ahead, but God is ready to do some amazing things. I can feel it!
Enjoy this short video a squad-mate made. It's a good summary of the week.
