I’ve stared at this empty document for about 40 minutes. The cursor has blinked over 2,000 times. Normally I’m pretty good at blogging (at least I think I am.) I write about what is happening or has happened in my life and explain the details and post and be done with it.
But this blog is different. Training Camp for the World Race was different than anything I’ve ever been a part of. It’s like trying to explain to a cynical man that has never known what it is to feel the warmth of love about the reality of falling in it. Training Camp was this orchestration of paradoxes: it was where questions were being answered with more questions; where strangers fell in love with one another as if they knew each other all of their lives; where brokenness was the door to find healing; where abandonment was necessary to gain infinity; where life was found in death.
Some of my fellow missionaries. They are the greatest people.
If I could summarize what Training Camp was all about, it’d be this phrase: in order for God to work through you, He must work on you. Let me tell you that God loves you right where you are. But God loves you too much to keep you how you are. And when it comes to serving people who are lost, without hope, and in some of the darkest places on Earth, God needs to change you so that He may use you. It’s like the story of Jesus telling His disciples that the Father loves those who He prunes (John 15:1-16.) And when it comes to long-term, no holds bar, tough, gut wrenching, 24/7 missionary work, God needs to prune in order that I may bear fruit. And pruning hurts. Sometimes God only needs to use a small pair of scissors to cut off the twigs in my life. But more times then I like, God uses the sharpest tools in the shed to cut deep. And the Holy Spirit does not seek to hurt me. But He does seek to make me more like Christ, and that is usually painful.
Every day was similarly different than the previous one (see the paradoxes forming?) We would wake up to the cold morning dew; whether that was in our tents (sometimes with someone next us in our 1 person tent), on a bus (try sleeping with your legs above your head, balancing on the 3in. width of the chair in front of you.)
Travis getting ready to pass out on the bus.
Or how about inside a multi-person tent in sweat and rain water from the thunder storm that nearly blew it away. You get up and pack everything you just unpacked (WR irony) and start the day with exercise (like peeling your blisters) and personal devotion with God (like asking Him what the heck did I get myself into…) Breakfast consisted of some kind of Asian banana, egg, tomato, cheese, and onion sandwich (dip a cheese sandwich into ketchup and soak it in water for 30mins), rice, and water. We had lectures of all sorts by the extraordinary Dr. Ron Walborn, Dean of Alliance Theological Seminary. From the history of Western Christian thought to the purpose of missions, it was edifying and beautifully captivating. The astonishment crushed everything you thought you knew about what you know (theology fail on my behalf.) Lunch consisted of African cornmeal (weird grits), Indonesian beef, more African Cornmeal (and more and more), rice, and water. Afternoons were solely based on team-building. I’ll get into more details on my favorite team building episode in a later blog. But it was so wonderful to be with my fellow missionaries and grow together.
The L Squad men honoring the amazing women we are blessed with in our group.
Skipping with the men to evening service (it's normal for men to hold hands in Africa.)
This was followed by evening service. Now evening services were freaking ridiculous. They consisted of events such as: “let’s learn about healing, and do it. Let’s learn about spiritual gifts, and receive it. Let’s talk about oppression in our personal lives, and get rid of it.” The practical application was so overwhelming. It was literally reading the Bible and taking it for what it is and believing what is says, and doing it (which you would think most churches do… but like I said before: the astonishment crushed everything you thought you knew about what you know.) It was absolutely incredible. I’ll explain more personal stories in the upcoming blogs. Dinner was all about bread, cornmeal (again), rice, Asian chicken (not your China Buffet on the corner), noodles, rice, some more rice, and water. And by the time the night was over, a wet, bug-infested tent sounded so good (especially when you find a spider the size of your hand crawling on your leg right where you will soon find a tick digging into that very same spot a few days later.)
A spider I killed in my tent after battling with it for 2 hours.
Words can’t simply grasp the nature of the beast that is the World Race Training Camp. God hit me hard, broke me down, crushed my soul, all so that in the ashes and dust of my lungs, came true worship of a man broken, dependent, who has abandoned all expectations he once had, and has accepted the reality that he cannot do anything without the love of the Father, the blood of the Son, and the empowerment of the Spirit. I read Hosea 6:1 the first night of camp, not knowing how real it would be to me the upcoming week:
Come, let us return to the Lord;
for He has torn us, that He may heal us;
He has struck us down, and He will bind us up.
God was faithful to that promise, and He struck me down, tore me up, all to graciously and lovingly heal me from myself and bind me to turn me from a man to a missionary, and turn strangers into family.
