I’ve put off blogging about training camp for long enough….
Mostly I put it off because I had no idea what to say, how to even condense that type of week into one blog? Honestly I’m still not sure how to express everything that happened.
First let me say my squad has 54 other people than me. Like woah. That is a lot of blessed people. The first day I was quiet. If you know me, you know at first I am super quiet, but once I warm up to people…. well you know 😉 The way we have bonded though seems just incredible. Almost instantly we were sharing our lives, breaking down walls, exercising, crying, laughing, dancing. I have never been around such a large group of strangers and just felt so accepted and welcome in a millisecond after meeting them. After such a crazy week with them I am proud to introduce my new family K Squad
Tell me we aren’t beautiful?!
So moving beyond the apprehension of meeting my new family Jesus was on the MOVE that week. This week was not about us learning to go serve those less fortunate but this week was about our relationship with HIM. How we are called to be his sons and daughters, how precious we are and what it means to give up those thoughts that we are inadequate; it was about his love and serving him with our lives.
One encounter with the Holy Spirit that I will never be able to forget and still get the chills happened on a random day. I really don’t even remember what we were doing but we had time to just sit and ask the Holy Spirit to move, so I did.
30 seconds after sitting down outside there was thunder and a large grey storm cloud in the distance. So I asked God “ok so what about a storm” I for some reason randomly thought of Amos in the Bible. Ok I’ll look up Amos 1:2, simple enough. “The Lord roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem.” Wait what, this is so confusing! “What else do you want me to hear God, this doesn’t make sense.” Ezekiel. Ok Ezekiel 1:2 it is. I accidently read verse 4 instead….. “I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal.” How is that even possible that two random verses would be about storms?! “God what are you trying to say?!! Are you causing a storm, is Satan? Where is this coming from?” About 30 seconds before they asked us all to come back inside I just heard, like a soft whisper, “My power is coming.”
I shared this with the group because I really didn’t even know how to process it, and am still looking to. At separate times people from my squad came up to me to share what they felt while I was sharing. One that really struck me was the image of a storm all around me but Jesus sitting right beside me protecting me.
Isn’t this true?! God has furious love for us. Sometimes things happen that we never saw coming or expected but Jesus is there as our intercessor or our go-between; the calm among the furious love.
Which brings me to Thursday of training camp week when our teams were announced. Now I would like to introduce my additional family: Team Fiercely Rooted
Another image one of my teammates had was a tree in the middle of that powerful storm. A tree that undoubtedly would bend beneath the storm but never breaking because of such strong roots.
That’s what we are striving for, strong roots in the Trinity.
Since seeing those strong roots planted among our squad and hearing messages of building strong roots within myself in God at camp, these weeks at home have been all about that. Really digging deeper in prayer and reading scripture. Reaching out to my team in times of struggles and feelings of inadequacies.
We are striving to be an ISAIAH 61 team; go check out the whole chapter, its truly inspiring!
Now time for so updates, short and sweet:
1. My route has changed indefinitely!! The World Race is partnering with Gray Media and filming a documentary of the Race and our Squad was chosen to be filmed! The new list of countries we will be visiting is:
Guatemala
Nicaragua
Philippines
Vietnam
Thailand/Burma
India
Nepal
Botswana
Swaziland
and 2 countries TBA
2.
I am about $600 dollars away from leaving this September 2nd. Would you consider partnering with me financially and clicking on the support me tab above? I was so blessed to meet my first deadline and attend training camp and I know the Lord will provide through you all to help reach these nations!
Thanks for making it to the bottom 
Holly
