Hot, sweaty, dirty….these are just some of the aspects that makes up training camp. Who knew a bucket shower would feel so good by the end of a long day or that your thin sleeping pad felt like a five star Serta mattress. Training camp is hard work but so much fun and rewarding in the end.
There are sessions that open your eyes to the majesty of God and helpful tools to guide you along your missionary journey. Now I’m not saying that every talk was full of excitement, some were long and sometimes dull. However, this is information that is necessary to learn for the hard journey you will going on afterwards.
The food they serve you is a interesting mix of delicious to just plain bizarre. But these bizarre foods are culturally appropriate to the culture you will be learning about that day. So when you go to training camp, come with your eyes open to the fact that you may like some of these foods and some of it you may not. And that is fine because not everyone likes everything.
The fitness hike that we did is no joke. When they say your best bet is to train for it, you had best train for it. While the course of the hike was all over campus, campus is full of uphills and downhills that are not easy to navigate with 30 to 40 pounds on your back. But the best part is that you do the hike as a team. My advice is to encourage each other to get across the finish line with each other. The one thing to know is that not everyone is as fast as everyone else and that is alright. Its your job as a team to push that person to do their absolute best.
Your squad becomes your family. It is an eclectic mishmash of personalities that somehow makes sense. These are the people who you will be traveling with for all the months on you journey. Love them well and remember that even though their personality may not match yours, they still are family and bring an important role in the family.
