Training Camp??? More Like Ridiculously Awesome Camp!!

 

      Whew….training camp….what a ride!!!  That Holy Spirit sure does know how to throw one heck of a shin dig.

 

      Before I really get into everything we experienced, I just want to say it was a powerful week that was so far beyond “training” it’s ridiculous.  There’s no way to really sum up everything that happened, but not only am I still going to try, I’m going to attempt to do it in a single sentence…

 

      We experienced prophetic worship, physical healing, supernatural bonding, emotional healing, broken hearts for the world’s suffering and a sense that God is going to MOVE and do BIG things in the lives of the people we’ll come in contact with.

 

      So that, in a very brief nutshell was our week.  And that doesn’t come close to doing it justice at all.  But I don’t want to give too much detail because I don’t want to ruin it for any future racers who might be reading this, and…if I really went into it all, this update would be thirty pages long.

 

      I would like to say that the Spirit formed an incredible, supernatural bond bewteen the 65 of us on S-Squad.  We’re more than a group going out to serve together…we are united in some invisible, spiritual way that is incredibly real, and incredibly encouraging.

 

 

 

 

      With that said…I’ve also bonded with the five other people who I’ll be in a team with next year.  So, without further ado (ado) let me introduce you to Team lovebound!!!

 

      Paul came up with the name.  It’s basically saying we’re bound together in love, we’re bound to God in love, and that we’re outward bound to go out and love others.  God’s love is the central focus of our group, and we’ve adopted 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 as our “theme” verses.  Yeah, it’s pretty rad.

 

 

 

      They made some changes to our route for the year.  So as of now we’re slated to go to:

 

Guatemala

Nicuragua

Costa Rica

Phillipines

Thailand

Mayalasia

Cambodia

South Africa

Mozambique

Swaziland

India

 

       I think that’s the correct order, but I might be off on one or two…and it might change again, so nothing’s totally written in stone at this point.

 

 

 

 Team lovebound struttin’ our game faces during camp-wide olympics.  We were competing against the racers who are leaving on their trip in September, who were also at training with us.  Needless to say, S-Squad brought home the gold!

 

 

Taking over the Chic-Fil-A playground.  Our “fierce tiger pose” seemed to make sense at the time….

 

 

During camp our whole squad would do ‘declarations’, which amount to someone yelling a statement of faith (like, “I declare our God is good!”) to which we would respond by yelling it at the of of our lungs, while standing on whatever furniture was nearby.  (That’s me cupping my mouth…because sometimes just plain yelling isn’t enough.)

 

 

 One day our team was told to go out and be missional…and to pray about whatever that meant for us.  So, after a time of prayer where we tried to hear and sense what The Spirit was leading us to do, we came to the conclusion to go to Atlanta’s Olympic Park and give out FREE HUGS to everyone!  (But first we stopped at The Varsity for lunch, where God put someone in our path to love on.)

 

 

 The signs we made got plenty of attention, and we gave out hundreds of hugs!  I had one kid run towards me from about thirty yards away with his arms open the whole time!  Some people took the hug and said thanks.  Some asked why we were doing this.  Some even asked for prayer.  No matter what the reaction, we just kept on hugging and laughing.  It was a powerful day.  Oh yeah, we hugged folks from Russia, France, Brazil, Mexico and China!  How awesome is that!!?

 

 

 These little girls were so into the free hugs, they asked to take our signs, and then they went around hugging other kids they didn’t even know!  It was contagious!!!

 

 

 

      So now I’m home, preparing for our launch in two months.  There is a TON to do.  Stay tuned to the blog as I’ll continue to post through our launch date, which is scheduled for the first week of October.  Feel free to subscribe to the blog (there’s a link on the left hand side of the page) and you’ll receive email updates about blog posts.  Or, if you want to bookmark the page with the most recent blog entries, it’s HERE.

 

      Also…THANK YOU so much for everyone who is reading this (comments are highly encouraged)!!!  And THANK YOU to everyone who has provided encouragement, prayer and financial resources to this trip.  You are truly a blessing and there is NO WAY this whole thing could happen without you.  So take full credit for everything that happens over the next year, and for everything that has already happened (including the free hugs…that’s all you!)

 

Love you guys,

Mac