There is no way that I can express through words all of the emotions, feelings, and situations that God used to change my life during training camp (TC), but I’ll do my best to try.
In the most basic way, here is what happened during TC. God pick me up in His arms and said, “I’ve been watching you for a long time and you are doing great, but you could be doing a lot better if you stop dragging this around behind you, here let Me take that for you, oh and this, this other thing here I’ll take that, too. Oh, and one more thing, you didn’t even know you were carrying this, but it has been holding you back for a long, long time and it’s about time for it to disappear. Now go and run faster than ever before.”
Training camp had two basic parts. Part one, focused on your personal relationship with God. Part two, focused on your team and teams relationship with God and role in the lives of each other. This whole process destroyed me and rebuilt me into something so much better.
Part One – Self
We learned about who we truly are in Christ. To take a deep breath and take a long look at our lives and give an honest opinion to ourselves about what we think. We stripped away lies that be have been carrying around since childhood that others had told us “who we were.” We learned that a lot of us hadn’t really forgiven people in our pasts and we were able to release them and ourselves correctly. And most importantly, we heard the Lord tell us in His own words the worth He sees in us, the love He has for us, and the freedom He has given us. To be completely honest and open with you, I broke down and balled not once, not twice, but three times during this process because God was stripping the chains off that had been holding me back for so long.
Part Two – Team
We spent many hours completing teams building activities with different groups of people over the course of three days. After each exercise we would be asked as a group different questions about the activity we just finished. Then we would be taken one-by-one to talk with one of the members of our leadership team and asked different questions about who we would like on our teams. Questions like: who would you follow into battle; who do get along with; who do you not get along with; and, who pushes you to do better. After all of the challenges were finished we were finally divided into our five teams, each with six members. My team includes five other lovely people picture on the left side of this page: Erick, Alex, Ali, Tiera, and Patrick.
It is amazing how God brings 29 strangers from all different walks of life and puts them together to share His good news. I am excited to see how this next year unfolds!
Also, below are links to videos some of the people on my squad made at training camp.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9l3han7H9acrjXZcF4jerg
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUcR-tK-XoEgb2Uy_WGlnEw
A slave of God and the Lord Jesus Christ,
Nicholas Buford
