BEFORE
Before training camp…I wasn’t really thinking much, I was trying not to get super excited because I had no idea what to expect, and because I didn’t know what to expect I didn’t have a whole lot to be super excited about. I just knew I was ready, and at this point I was mainly wanting to just get on an airplane, and didn’t exactly want my picture taken….but it worked out because now I have this picture that shows my emotion in this moment…thanks mom and dad!
AFTER
After training camp…now I had a reason to get excited and I had SO many emotions, because the ten days before this picture was taken were packed with SO much…just stuff….To try and answer the question “How was training camp?” is much longer of an answer then just “good”. For me it was “CRAZY!” Not the summer church camp kinda crazy, but emotional and mental crazy. The beginning of the week looked SO much different from the end. The first day felt like we had been there for a week, and by the time the ten days were up we didn’t think we would ever leave, but at the same time it felt like we had just gotten there. I can’t imagine what nine months will feel like.
Here are some things that happened within those ten days…
WE GOT BAPTIZED!
I have grown up in a Christian home and claimed to be a Christian my whole life, but never really grasped that personal relationship with God for myself. I knew how to talk like I knew, because I had grown up being around other Christians, but when it came down to really talking about my person relationship with Jesus, how had I made it my own? Baptism. I got baptised when I was about 7 I think, and the only reason I did it was because one of my brothers was doing it, so I figured that was the time for me to do it and get it over with so I don’t have to do it alone. I completely had no idea why I was doing it. This week there were many many things that started clicking in my head that I think I have been trying to figure out for a while. God is a personal God. I chose to follow Him. The whole symbolization of baptism is to make a stand for yourself saying, I am a Christ follower, and the decision is all mine. No one told me to, or hinted at me that I should, it was simply my choice, and that was something that in ‘n’ of it self tought me so much.
This is the team I will be living with and doing ministry alongside. (Minus Allison the one in the different color green, she was our team leader for TC.)
This is the whole squad, we’re all coming from so many different backgrounds and places across the United States but ultimately are able to bond together over the fact that we see God doing something in our lives and want to embrace it and share it with other people and one another. My goal is not only to learn things on the field for the nine months, but take everything that is experienced and implicated it in my life back at home as well.
-Random Pictures-
Sleeping 100 people inside (beds were much more close knit later on in the night) because the monsoon outside would sweep us away in our sleep…
Morning Sunrises
52+ tents, REI was greatly advertised here
The place we butterflied band-aided a girls foot that needed stitches, broke a fan and wood beam, worshiped Jesus, talked, napped, cried, watched storms, danced, and laughed the hardest.
