Y’all… Training Camp was crazy good! And exhausting, and eye-opening, and just so many other adjectives that I just cannot put into words!! Through the last ten days, I have prayed, worshiped, heard sermons, and just experienced God in ways that I did not know were possible while standing on American soil.
Let me be quite honest with y’all. I know that my God is a BIG God. He has no limits or boundaries. But for some reason I always seem to put Him in box. I always think, “I cannot wait to get overseas to see God do some big things!” … That right there is me putting my God in a box. I never remember that everything He does over there, He can also do here! In America!
In these last ten days, I watched Him heal people that thought they would never be healed. I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me. I experienced a joy and freedom like never before during worship. All these things because our God is BIG.
While at Training Camp there are different sermons and sometimes there are opportunities to process what has just been taught and how those subjects have effected your own lives. For example, guilt and shame. We had the opportunity to sit with Jesus and process why we maybe feel guilt and shame in our lives. Even further then that, we got the chance to dig deeper and remember what has happened in our lives to cause that guilt and shame. Here, I’ll get vulnerable and give you my personal example. Throughout high school and college my experiences with guys were not that awesome. I had some deep pains and hurts to work through to see that the reason I have had such low self-esteem the last few years is because of the shame I felt from those situations. I felt I was not good enough for guys to look at me as the jewel that God made me. I thought I was only good enough for guys to look at me as an object.
And that is not the only time God showed me that He can heal me from hurts and pains that I have stuffed down so deep I could not even see them anymore.
But Training Camp was not all super sad, emotional feelings. I got to feel the joy of meeting 42 new people! And at the end of those ten days, I get to call those people my family. Truly. Family. Some of them now know more about me then I knew about me ten days ago. Funny how God works and gives you exactly what you need when you need it.
Training Camp was amazing. 3 bucket showers. 3 hair washes. 4 shirts. 4 pairs of pants. 2 pairs of shoes. and 1 hat. That’s all it took to get me through those ten (smelly) days. But y’all I learned that I can be more joyful when I live a more simple lifestyle. Living in a tent, killing spiders left and right, having essentially a pool float as a mattress, and loving life more than ever before.
Okay, now let’s talk about that hike… If you have kept in touch with me you know that I have been training to do a 3.1 mile hike in 50 minutes with a 30 pound hiking pack on my back. Well, when we got to TC that said, “Oh! You only have you hike 2.2 miles in 38 minutes!” You can only imagine my relief… “Oh heck yeah, we have got this in the bag!” Those were my thoughts until they told us we were doing it after lunch, in the heat of the day, and that the uphills were so brutal that we would need to jog the downhills and flats to make up time. Y’all that hike was no joke! Thank goodness I had my new found family members to encourage me!! I and my two girls decided to run everything but the uphills. Easy. So we thought… I think that to this day and for the rest of my life (until childbirth) that will easily be the hardest thing I have ever done. But we did it!! And in 28 minutes I might add (trust me when I say I felt like death afterwards). God showed us that in EVERYTHING He strengthens us.
And that seemed to be a re-occurring theme through the ten days. God gave us all patience when we were tired. Kindness when it was easier to snap at someone. Strength to make it up those hills just one more time. And most of all, He gave us joy. Joy when we had to wake up early to workout as a Squad. Joy when we had to eat crickets for lunch. Joy when had to wash dishes. Joy in every moment that we were there.
I have so much more to tell y’all about Training Camp but I don’t want my blog to be thousands of words long. If you want to know more, let’s get coffee and chat!!! I’d truly love that more than anything. Y’all I cannot express how on fire I am and how I now want to tell every person I see that my Jesus is an awesome Jesus and ugh wow!!!! He is so good!!!!
With love, and seriously let’s go get coffee..
Sav
