I found myself in my car on Saturday morning of the 11th of October, driving southbound from Tennessee to the empire state of the South. Georgia was on my mind..and so were a lot of other things. I was headed to “training camp” for the World Race and to put it bluntly I had no idea what to expect. Regarding what we do, I got some hints and tidbits of advice from friends who have done the race before, but all in all they tried to keep most details from me.
So I drove down to Gainesville with a new friend who lives in Nashville and who is also doing the World Race. Josiah and I shared sentiments of excitement and nervousness on our ride down. In summary, the week was FULL of:
– friendly new faces
– camping out in the woods
– teaching sessions
– being stretched out of our comfort zones
– trying new foods
– worship
– meeting the Holy Spirit in new ways
– watching God work in new ways
– the start of friendships that I am confident will last a life time.
It was great but so hard. A lot of the difficulty I attribute to not being an outdoors person. I don’t want to expound on what exactly goes on but the week really showed me how much I delight in being comfortable and how much I like to do what I want whenever I want. I think these are things that have become natural for anyone who lives in America.
We won’t always be comfortable on the World Race and we won’t always get what we want on the World Race and they tried to give us a taste of that at training camp. We were never promised a comfortable life from Jesus, but what we were promised in this life was immeasurable love and grace found in Him.
Now I love relationships. I can’t say this enough. I believe that we were made for having relationships with one another and even more so for having a relationship with Christ. So I really enjoyed that a huge part of training was starting new relationships — meeting my Squad (the 50 ish people we will be travelling country to country with) and also forming our teams (6-7 people from the squad we’re put with to go into different parts of the country to do ministry that month) through a bunch of team exercises. I love my squad and i’ll be honest in saying that I am surprised that I do! We were all facebook friends prior to camp and we were mostly all in a groupchat together, and I thought most people would annoy me and be really weird in person. A bit of brutal honesty, but I can, admittedly, be quick to judge (not my best trait). Throughout the week, though, I was proved wrong as I came to love these new friends as we learned more about one another and went through hard and fun new experiences together. I love being proved wrong in circumstances like these!
Leaving training camp I am now more excited than EVER before to leave for the World Race in January of 2015! AHH!
Our tent village.
My college friend LAURA who is also leaving for the World Race in January. She is going to a different set of countries with a different squad but we had the same training camp. It was great to have a little bit of home around!
“O” Squad! The 50 people I’ll be traveling country to country with.
They already feel like family! Try and find me in there!
My team! I’ll be doing day to day ministry with the people below and I could not be more excited! We come from across the country and one of us is even from Peru. God is a mastermind who loves bringing His children from different places together to get to know each other and grow with one another. The group is subject to change but for right now these people are more than I could ask for. Our team name is “Ones on the Rock.”
A small photo shoot below. We were allowed some time towards the end of the week to go hang out in Gainesville, Georgia which was incredible given the intense week had been going through. Simply grabbing some coffee in a warm building brought us all a LOT of joy.
ALSO I was asked to be the team LEADER for these people and I was so honored. I’ll be helping facilitate a lot of things, encouraging constructive feedback, helping point all of them back to Christ, and above all i’ll be serving them. This will be something that stretches me out of my comfort zone but I am excited for that chance. I am just a tool for the Lord to use!
Driving back to Nashville with my new friend Josiah who was also at training camp. He lives in Nashville too. He is on a different squad going to different countries – the same group as my college friend Laura. We were exhausted but in the best way.
Driving through Chattanooga, Tennessee on the way home.
The end of a great week and the start of another adventure.
