For those of you that don’t know, training camp for the World Race is 10 days of field training, spiritual training, and personal development. We arrived to camp on Saturday, October 16, and immediately my expectations were blown away! I’m not going to go into too much detail, because I don’t want to ruin it for future racers (you know who you are-trying to cheat and find out all the juicy details). 🙂
Our original squad was split into two squads a couple weeks before training camp, so now there is T-Squad (my squad), and U-Squad. We will be traveling to pretty much the same countries, but at different times. There is also V-Squad, which has an entirely different route. All three of our squads were at this training camp together- over 200 racers!! So as you can imagine, it was quite overwhelming. I expected to stay in my tent and sleep outside for the entire 10 days, but it turned out that I was able to stay in a cabin with other T-squad girls. I wasn’t sure at first if I wanted to stay in one of the cabins, because I wanted to ‘rough it’ and learn how to use my tent and see how that would go (since I’ve never really camped before), but I’m glad I chose to because I was able to spend quality time with the T-Squad girls. Its incredible how fast we bonded and close we became in just a few days. The only explanation is that we were connected in Christ.
The Camp Ground
For the first few days, we really spent a lot of time in personal and spiritual development. We worshiped three times a day and spent a great deal of time focusing on ourselves. What had we buried deep within us that we needed to release in order to continue in our walks with Christ? What are the things that we refuse to give over to the Lord? Who do we need to forgive? Those kind of questions were asked of us, and freedom and redemption began to happen all over the camp that weekend. [I will be telling more about my story and what God did through me at camp in another post soon.]
God really did a work in my heart at training camp. Since I rededicated my life to Christ in 2008, I’ve known in my spirit that my life is meant for something greater than I could even begin to comprehend. He began to break my heart a long time ago for the lost, the hurting and the unloved. But at training camp, the intensity of the pain began to increase in a profound and life-altering way. I heard the stories, saw the faces, and felt the pain of women and children all over the world caught in a life of sex-trafficking and prostitution. I wept for the homeless children in Africa as young as 2-3 years old that get high just to cope with their pain. No longer can I sit back and watch the injustice around the world. Many would say that ignorance is bliss; as long as you don’t know of the pain, as long as you don’t see their faces, you are not responsible to do something about it. But I am no longer ignorant. Now I know. Now I AM responsible. There is no hiding it. There is no covering it up with a few one week mission trips to satisfy my own desire to “do some good”, receive a pat on the back and go back to my normal life. No. I will never be the same. I am wrecked and irrevocable.
“However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me–the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace” Acts 20:24
So that is just a glimpse at what the Lord has begun in my heart. If that is what happens at just the training camp, I can’t even begin to fathom what is going to become of me on The Race. Just don’t expect me to return home as I am.
OKAY- back to some more training camp details for yah. So, just in case you don’t know how the World Race works yet, I’ll give you a summary of the basics. As I mentioned earlier, we have a squad (T-squad) which is made up of roughly 43 individuals. The squad as a whole travels to each country together. We will spend about 4-5 days in debrief as a squad at the beginning of each location before we break off into our teams of 6-7 to travel to our specific ministry locations. Some months, multiple teams may be working with the same ministry, whereas other months we may be working separately from the rest of the squad. (just depends on the location). So, I’m sure you’re just dying to meet my squad and team! One of the things I love so much about the World Race Program (and AIM in general) is that they do the best they can to assure that God’s will is done when forming teams and placing team leaders. They not only spend a great deal of time in prayer, but also spend hours observing the squad throughout training camp to see how individuals interact and work together. They truly cared about our input, and took it into consideration when forming the teams. I have to say, that I am STOKED about my team!!
My Squad
God has truly hand picked each one of these men and women to be a part of this squad!! From day one, we were united. I’ve said it from the beginning–there is something different about this squad–you can just feel the power of the Spirit connecting each one of us. Its incredible!
My Team
I could not of been blessed with a better team!! our team dynamics are AWESOME. We really do have a fun and diverse group. I will personally introduce all of my teammates in a separate blog with more specifics about each of them and how you can follow them along this journey as well, but for now, I’ll just introduce you to them:
From the Left– Erin Knight, Kelly Roberts, Suzi Ibanez, Scott Taylor (team leader), Me, and Melanee Zorilla.
Field Preparation
Okay, so there were many aspects of training camp implemented simply to prepare us for what we may encounter on the field. The first of which was the food. Ohhh yes. I have to say, Miss Patty did a fantastic job representing India, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Each day had a different theme. We ate a lot of rice and beans (which is fine by me) but we also ate some pretty weird stuff. For Eastern Europe day, we ate grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato, onion and banana. I think I would have enjoyed it if it wasn’t for the banana. I ate it though. i think as a squad, our FAVORITE meal of the week was Southeast Asia day. For breakfast we had rice soup with whole sardines, bacon bits and chives. A few lucky winners also received a fish head floating in the soup! Yumm! To the left is a picture of this delicious fish head, and to the right is a picture of some African soup/bean dish with other stuff in it. I’m not really sure… but it was one of the more appetizing dishes!
On Tuesday afternoon, our squad left the camp ground and traveled off into the woods for an overnight camping excursion. This was probably one of my favorite days of the week! Our assignment was to pack for an “unknown number of days” and pack only our sleeping bags, pads and clothing/personal items. No tents. Yes, thats right– no tents. We were given a certain list of supplies and food and told to figure the rest out for ourselves. It was SO much fun! We had campfires and sang songs and worshiped the Lord while bonding with one another. I have to say, sleeping under the tarp-tent we made while curled up in my cozy Northface sleeping bag was absolutely the BEST night sleep i had the entire week! And that next morning, I knew I would be able to make it on the field for the next year sleeping in my tent. I’m READDYY 🙂
So thats all for now… I will have some more updates coming soon with more specifics about what God did in my life over this week.
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