Finding the right words has never felt quite this hard.
Fresh off the heels of my World Race Training Camp, finding the right way to describe my experience is elusive. Strangely enough, the only word that begins to efficiently encapsulate the whole experience is a word that is often overused: LOVE.
My heart is swollen with the love for my new friends family. At training camp, I lived in community with over 30 men and women who are hungry for God, for serving others, and for seeing heaven on earth. We worshiped together around a campfire. We sang silly songs and woke up before the sun. We made plans for our futures over meals of rice and beans, PB&Js, Pad Thai, and fried crickets. We pursued the Lord and saw transformation and healing in our hearts and minds. With their support, my love for Jesus has crept far into nooks and crannies of my heart that I didn’t even know were there, and my soul is both satiated and ravenous.
It’s funny how God often works in oxymorons.
There are many other ways I could use to tell you about training camp. I could describe the freezing bucket showers on 38-degree mornings, but I’d rather tell you about the shouts of encouragement from my teammate in the next stall as I poured the water over my head. Perhaps, I could explain how I “slept” on the floor of a single room with 120 other people, but I would prefer to tell you about how I slept shoulder to shoulder with my new best friends, and that I didn’t even care how smelly they were because I love them. Plus, those bucket showers were cold, so I totally get it.
Yes, I think love is the best word.
The love for our Father and His love for us. Our love for one another and the ways we learned to love ourselves more fully. The love for the people we have yet to meet. May your day be filled with even a fraction of the love I have experienced over the past 10 days.
Until the whole world hears,
Mia
PS – I will post some more updates about training camp soon, but I just wanted to write a brief post to let you all know that I am back, and that you can expect a VIDEO soon. Fun, right?!
