***Training camp was fantastic. It was a week long and was held at a retreat center about an hour away from Atlanta. There were 4 squads of around 50-70 people that were training for different routes. My squad is called “S Squad”. I got to meet everyone, learned a lot, was challenged, got prepared, and had fun.
11 Reflections:
1. Becoming a family
2. Preparing for marriage
3. Getting some good teaching
4. In the name of Jesus Christ, be healed!
5. When they said “training” camp, they meant “training” camp.
6. Sleeping in a tent is like sleeping in a 4 star hotel
7. Exposing sin areas in my life
8. Exposing sin areas in my life #2
9. Letting the good times roll
10. Living a great story
11. Support update
1. Becoming a family One of the best things about training camp was being able to meet everyone and finally be connected. Everyone on my squad is really cool, and it’s motivating to see how fast we bonded and how easily we can love each other because of our common relation to Jesus. It was quite overwhelming at first trying to meet everyone at once though. Our group is pretty diverse which is cool. There were so many different accents from around the U.S. I loved hearing all the “Ya’ll”s. Some people said I have a “Minnesota accent” which is funny, but others said I didn’t. There’s 2 other women on my squad besides me who’re from Minnesota.
2. Preparing for marriage Toward the end of the week, we were broken up into teams of 7 people from our squad of 55 people. At first, the leaders put us into different teams and we did some team-building exercises and were asked who we worked well with before we were put into our final teams. I was put on a team of 3 men and 4 women including myself. One of the women is from MN too! Our team name is “Team Ergaleio” which is Greek for the word “Tool” because we want to be used like tools by the Lord- 2 Timothy 2:20-21. I’m excited to work with this team! Before we left training camp, some guys on my team and I were talking about how this is a legit commitment because it’s 11 months, and we’ll be working and living with everyone on our team every day, and someone from my team was like, “It’s almost like we’re all marrying each other and it’s like, See you in a month for the wedding!” Haha.
***My team! Jake from Michigan, me, Mindy from Arkansas, James from Colorado, Grace from MN, Erin from Wisconsin, and Nate from Massachusetts (he's our team leader)
3. Getting some good teaching Much of the first few days of training camp were spent listening to speakers. We had a speaker that I really liked named Ron Walborn, and he’s a seminary teacher. His talks were like mini seminary courses. We heard talks about letting go of our rights and expectations, grieving our losses, world views, healing and forgiveness, personality differences (we all did the Myer’s-Brigg’s personality test), doing sermons overseas, and connecting with God. The talks really poured into us and offered healing, so that we can best pour into others and best work together on this mission. We also had talks about the Holy Spirit and how God gives us the power to heal people. We also had a talk about hearing God’s voice. Lastly, we had a talk about good communication, and we were told that we are going to be doing something called “Feedback” with our teams each night which is basically providing encouragement as well as constructive criticism to each other to edify and work through conflict.
4. In the name of Jesus Christ, be healed! A significant experience from training camp was that I (and many of my squad mates) were exposed to different aspects of the Lord than what we were used to. To those of you who are familiar with church denominations, training camp was a lot more charismatic than I have experience with. For those of you who aren’t familiar with church denominations, charismatic typically means healings from God, prophesying, casting out demons, and speaking in tongues. In 1 Corinthians 12 it says: “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” And then it says “…to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues.” We learned that God gives us power and gifts and that they work today and not just in Biblical times. From my understanding, sometimes some people have certain gifts and others don't. They gave us some time in groups to try out these gifts. Many churches today don’t tap into the power of the Spirit because of some abuse and manipulation that was caused in the past by people and some churches just don't believe in God's power I think. I really believe in the power of the Spirit and am so excited to see God work in and through me in ways that I haven’t! However, I would have to say that I am a little skeptical and have questions about how you know for sure that it’s God speaking. However, that’s where faith comes in, and I know it’s a muscle that I have to exercise. Ron, the speaker mentioned above, told us that one time he prayed over a woman’s tumor in the name of Jesus, and the tumor literally shrunk in his hand! He also said that one time when he was prophesying, he felt that God was showing him a Tonka truck and a yellow ball, which he thought was kinda strange, but he mentioned that to the person and the person said that his dad gave him that when he was 7 right before he left. Um wow. Haha.
5. When they said “training” camp, they meant “training” camp This was definitely a camp to train and prepare us for our race. One thing that I’ve never experienced at a camp was that they never gave us a schedule or told us what was happening next. Everything was already planned, and they knew what was happening next, but we didn’t find out what was happening until right before it was about to happen. This was because many times on the race, we might not know what we’ll be doing next until right before it happens. We had to wake up at around 6am each morning to be ready to exercise for a half hour to prepare us physically and to pack up our backpacks to be ready to go to a different location. Every day we ate food from different regions around the world to prepare us for a different diet. We had cold showers, and I took only 1. I could’ve taken more, but it was kinda a hassle, and I didn’t mind only taking 1. It was really muddy the first day because it rained, but the other days were hot and sunny. I realized the importance of bug spray because I got countless mosquito bites on my legs as well as random bruises- I seriously look like a Dalmation. One evening, they did a simulation of being in a market overseas. It seemed really real! They gave us paper money which was distributed by leaders, and we had to go to the crowded “market” to get supper. A huge van was driving back and forth honking, a person was stealing money if you had it in sight, a homeless person was sitting on the ground, people were asking for money, music was playing, some currencies weren’t accepted, and there was bartering. Lastly, we were with people all day everyday which is similar to what it'll be like on the race. I’m an extravert, but I realized that I’m a lot more introverted than I think. I can do like 2/3 of the day with people, but I would like 1/3 to myself, but at training camp we were with people all day every day unless you made an effort to have some alone time.
***My backpack! It weighed 30 pounds.
6. Sleeping in a tent is like sleeping in a 4 star hotel Seriously. It is. I’m not kidding. Haha! So the first night we slept in individual tents, and to the average joe like me, a tent doesn’t seem like the most luxurious experience. However, we had to do different scenarios that could happen on the race where we’d have more uncomfortable sleeping arrangements where we’d have less space, privacy, and comfort than we'd have in a individual tent. One of those being sleeping on an undersized school bus. We had to work together to make it work, and some slept and some got no sleep and let’s just say I prayed that I wouldn’t die because I was scared that someone might fall on my head because I was sleeping on the floor and couldn’t flip over. Another night, we were given a scenario where our plane lost half of our luggage and we had to share with someone (I was one of the ones who lost their luggage). They did a few scenarios like this, so when we actually got to sleep in our individual tents, they felt like 4 star hotels. It made me really realize how EVERYTHING is a blessing. The scenarios were probably a little extreme because they were back-to-back, but they did prepare us for future inconveniences.
7. Exposing sin areas in my life Training camp exposed a few sin areas in my life. These are judging others, being selfish, and being insecure. The first one I realized after meeting so many different people at once. I realized that I quickly judged people based on their appearances. In my head I thought, “Oh this person seems cool/not so cool, this person seems outgoing/quiet, this person seems really spiritual/not so spiritual, etc.” And then later, I realized that they were not what I thought that they seemed and that usually I had judged them more negatively than I should have. I don’t like to be judged, and I need to do to others what I want done to myself. The next one is being selfish. Training camp exposed some of the depths of my selfishness as I saw others putting others first, serving them, looking out for them, and sacrificing for them. The thing that really impacted me was the night that we had to share half of our stuff including our tents. I had lost all my stuff in the scenario, so I got a partner to share with. Once I had a partner, I shut down and was like “Ok I’m good, everything's good”. Meanwhile, about 5 or so girls didn’t have anyone to share with. I saw them, but disregarded them because I had a partner, so I thought that they just had to figure it out on their own. I think I did see our squad leader helping them though, but regardless, I felt no empathy for them. Later, our squad leader asked me if someone could join my partner and I to help out the 5 or so girls with no partners, and I agreed. The next day, our squad leader pointed out to us that no one seemed to be worried about the girls who still needed someone to share with and that she had to be the one to help them. That hit me hard. If I needed someone to share with, I’d want someone to notice. It helped me to see that I needed to watch out for others before myself or that if I was ok, I needed to make sure that everyone was ok. Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. Love is laying down your life for someone. We are a family.
8. Exposing sin areas in my life #2. I also noticed that I would just want to relax when I had my backpack ready, but I saw others on my squad go help others with their backpacks after they were done packing theirs. I had that same "I'm good, so it's all good" mentality. Sometimes I wanted to grab more food than others were getting because I was hungry (and they weren’t?). I also felt some insecurity at training camp, and I don’t really know why. I think maybe it was wanting to be liked by everyone and be seen as special and competent. Some people were becoming more well-known for being leaders and getting praise for their servant hood. While it’s great to encourage, I was reminded of the hymn that goes “Riches I heed not nor man’s empty praise, Thou mine inheritance now and always.” and to just be happy with who I am and what I contribute and not compare myself to others.
9. Letting the good times roll The training camp was fun. We got to worship the Lord and commune with Him. We had a dance-off and a dance party which was AMAZING because I LOVE to dance. We had something called “Squad Wars” which was some contests and competitions between the squads to connect us. We had a campfire with s’mores one night. We had lots of laughs throughout the week. One of my teammates said that he really wants to have fun this year, and one of the leaders said that we need to remember to have fun.
10. Living a great story One thing that they encouraged us to do was to live a great story. A speaker said that living a great life makes a great story. They encouraged us to tell our stories to others because good stories inspire others. I'm so excited for this next chapter that is the world race. If your life was a movie, would it be a passionate, exciting, persevering, meaningful, interesting movie? Or would it be a self-absorbed, meaningless, boring movie? My question for you is, are you living a great story?
11. Support update After training camp, I feel ready to do the World Race and am looking forward to it quickly approaching! My mom had a 2 and a half year check up from breast cancer last week and everything looked good, praise God!!!!! as I was concerned about that before leaving. I’m currently at about 50% funded. I moved home the day before I left for training camp and am dedicating this whole month to support raising and preparing for the World Race. And spending time with my family and friends. Please pray that I will have the strength to be away from them for 11 months as I am beginning to realize how hard that is going to be. Please keep praying for this trip, I appreciate it so much and God DOES hear! I love you all and am very grateful for your generous hearts, and I’m praying for you.
　
