On October 16-23 in the year of 2011, I was in the backwoods of Georgia, camping, in a tent (and other various modes of shelter), outside, with strangers. That is a sentence I never thought I would say.
Training camp was the longest and shortest week of my life. It's hard to explain, but it's almost as if time would speed up and slow down at the exact moment it needed to. I wouldn't be surprised if that campground was in some kind of wormhole. Everything was a little too Twilight Zone-y if you ask me. (Kidding of course…Although if you asked my squad, I bet you they would all tell you that they lost track of what day it was at one point or another.)
We were stretched; I'm talking emotionally, physically, and spiritually. The 41 of us (it's 41 right? We might have to do a head count…) spent every waking moment together. We slept in tents, buses, cabins, and open spaces together. We ate all our meals together. We endured countless meetings together. We prayed together, laughed together, cried together. The only moment you could spend alone was the brief 10 minutes you had a for a shower, if you decided to take one that week. You would think that spending all this time with the same people might make a person never want to see those people again. But it's just the opposite… I can't wait to see those people again.
God brought some of the most incredible, compassionate, Jesus loving, and ridiculous people together in the E squad. I feel honored to be spending the next year of my life with them. And what gets me even more excited is what we will be doing together- the people we will be meeting, the stories we will be hearing, the places we will be seeing. I can't wait for this new family to experience the world together all in the name of the kingdom. It's going to be hard, my goodness will it be hard. But if we couldn't handle it together, we wouldn't be together. We have each other and Jesus, you don't need much more than that. (Besides Eleanor, of course.)
(Photo by Denise Escamilla)
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:27
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