– Lots of Jesus
– New Friends
– Worship
– Session after Session
– Porta Potties
– Living in Tents
– Bugs
– Bucket Showers
– Sleep Deprivation
– Hikes
– Eating with your Hands
– Exotic Foods
– And a whole lot of love
THIS IS TRAINING CAMP.
In ten days, or what felt more like two months, I fell in love with a group of amazing people all on fire for God and we call ourselves Q SQUAD.
Training camp consisted of 6 different squads. Each squad had a different route of countries they would be ministering to come September, but for now, we would all train together and get just a glimpse of what we might encounter traveling the world.
In our squad, we have different teams. Our team is the people we will be living with for 9 months. Here we are, TEAM MOSAIC. A mosaic is a picture or pattern made by arranging small colored pieces together; our team is made of broken people with our own stories who come together to create a beautiful picture.
Over these short ten days, these girls became my family. We laughed, we cried, we prayed, and we praised God together. Soon, we will take on the world together spreading the gospel and sharing God’s love with everyone we meet.
We endured different simulations of real life scenarios we might encounter on the mission field. Our first scenario was that the airport lost half of our squad’s packs, so we had to spend one night and one day with only what we had on our backs. I was one of the people who had lost my pack, so I spent that night sharing a tent with a girl who didn’t lose hers. While it sucked not having a change of clothes or my toothbrush, the squad came together to help one another, which made everything work out.
Two days later we had another scenario where our flight was canceled and we had to sleep in a busy airport with bright lights and lots of noise. So they packed all of us into the building where we had our sessions, thankfully we had time to grab a few things out of our big packs so I had my pillow and a blanket, buuuuuut it was still the worst night’s sleep I had. It was cold, loud, bright, and packed.
Our last scenario was that we were living with a ministry host with limited room, so they put 15 girls with our big packs into a 8 person tent. It was quite cramped, but I actually slept well and enjoyed talking to my squad mates until we fell asleep.
On nights we didn’t have a scenario, we would put our tents up at our campsite, it was quite a sight to see all the tents lined up. Then in the morning we would pack up our packs and pile them up.
At training camp I learned more than I thought my brain could take in. I learned practical things like the religions practiced in the countries I’ll be ministering to and how to communicate with a language barrier. I also learned about the Lord’s forgiveness and different ways to connect with God so that I may easily spread this good news.
Greater than that though, I received something that can’t be taught. I felt the presence of the Lord and got wrapped up in His love.
I know in my mind that God is always present, but its so easy to get caught up in the secular world and forget that. We become so busy that we don’t see Christ throughout our daily lives, let alone feel Him with us. Training camp allowed me to slow down, step back, and see God’s hand a work in every aspect of my life.
Each night I stood in a room full of 300 18-20 year olds and we sang our hearts out praising Christ. The room was thick with the Holy Spirit, the Lord’s presence was undeniable.
That feeling made everything worth it.
In those moments, it didn’t matter that some of us hadn’t showered in three days. We forgot to complain about how bad the porta potties smelt. Our bug bites stopped itching and we forgot that we only had 12 hours of sleep in the last 3 days.
And that is the point of training camp: giving up all our worldly comforts and instead finding comfort in the Lord.
By knowing that we can find comfort in Christ we are as ready as we can be to take on the world and focus on serving humbly and loving radically.
