Oops.
If you know me you know that I am 100% a procrastinator… and that my friends is why it took me 24 days after my flight landed from training camp to right this blog. With that said, it has also taken me 24 days to fully comprehend my 10 days in Gainsville GA and it has taken me 24 days to put into words how eye opening training camp was for me.
What is training camp you may ask? Training camp was 10 days I spent in Gainsville GA, where I met my squad (my family of 40 something for the next 9 months) and my team (my 7 sisters for the next 9 months). It was 10 days of waking up at 7 am every morning and packing up all my stuff, tearing down my 2 person tent and strapping it to my 65 L pack just to set everything back up that night so I would have somewhere to sleep, bucket shower, eating meal portions fit for someone on a severe diet, listening to speakers, and worshiping my heart and soul out alongside 200 other world racers. The Lord is so so good.
At first, I felt broken, starved, homesick and lost. But in the end, the feeling of love I had for the Lord and for the people I will be helping and haven’t even met yet was so strong.
Hungry.
Deuteronomy 8:3 says, “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.”
I was so hungry, hungry for a big mac and a large fry, hungry for a steak and potatoes. But in reality I was hungry for the Lord, hungry for his word. Little did I know that by the end of my 10 days there, I would be full.
Some nights we did simulations, real life scenarios that we would be put in on the field. One night we slept in a room full of 90 people, on the floor, with speakers blasting airplane/airport noises. It had to be about 50 degrees in that room. Honestly? I cried myself to sleep every night, but that night was my breaking point. Not having my sleeping bag or even a sweatshirt. Just my rain-jacket and a pair of socks to keep me warm. But that my friends, is life, and it is humbling.
We didn’t get our phones during the day, but we got them back around 11 pm each night till about 7:30 am the next morning. When we did get our phones back, there was a good 20 of us crying in our tents while we talked to our moms. All my life I have thought of myself as independent, thinking I could live on my own, go off and do my own thing. But when I was stripped of food, contact to the outside world, and put into a place where I knew NO ONE…I realized my parents do a heck of a lot more than just make sure I have a roof over my head and someone to bail me out of the crap I get myself into. Before I went to training camp, my parents were my backbone, and by the end of training camp I realized that they SHOULD NOT BE!!
God should be my backbone, He should be who I go to for EVERYTHING, who I go to when I need direction and when I need someone to hold me. My parents are my earthly parents but HE is my Papa.
Sick.
While at training camp, I actually ended up getting very very sick. One morning I woke up with a sore throat thinking it was nothing, and it ended up being a 104 degree fever and an ER visit.
I just turned 18…I’ve never been to a doctor’s appointment by myself let alone the emergency room! In a very unfamiliar and scary place, the old me would have cried and turned to my parents to fix and take care of everything. But, I was a new me. I was the me that training camp had showed me I needed to be. Reliant on God and the people I am WITH, not people 2,000 miles away. GUESS WHAT!! Everyone layed hands on me, my parents did what they could from Minnesota and had people praying for me, the Lord was in me and I was HEALED! My fever was 104 and when they took it at the ER 25 minutes later is was 98.9!…I know what your thinking, the thermometer was off, but we had taken everyone in the rooms temps and they were all normal, I promise you it was 104 (they had ice bags under my pits and on my neck and I was eating ice) my eyeball were hot people MY EYEBALLS!! And POOF I was fine! That is the power of the Lord.
“For I am the Lord that HEALS you”, Exodus 15:26
(This rant will definitely need a part 2)
Moral of this rant:
Training camp was the craziest 10 days of my whole life, but the outcome was unexplainable. These next 9 months will be filled with blood, sweat and tears, but most of all it will be filled with love, worship, and all the crazy things God has in store for me and my team.
I leave September 9th for Thailand, so stay posted for more rants of this crazy adventure God is sending me on! With that said, I am $3,300 away from my next deadline (which is in 2 weeks)!! There are many ways to donate!
1) Click the DONATE button on the top of my blog
2) Venmo @Joey-Filo
3) Cash/checks in person!
God’s Blessings,
Joey Filo
