I am writing this blog from a plane, in the window seat that my teammate was kind enough to switch with me so that I could see what it looked like to leave the country for the first time.
This past week has been wild, to say the least. I have met my team, a group of people who were strangers to me only 72 hours ago, and are already my family. Training camp was not at all what I thought it would be, and everything that I needed it to be. If anyone reading this is unsure of what training camp is with Adventures in Missions, or if you weren’t aware that I’ve been in Gainesville, GA the last three days and not in Colombia, I’ll tell you a little about it.
Training Camp is an immersive three-day experience jam-packed with as much information and practice for what to expect on the field as they could give us. An average day at camp looked like this:
6:30am – Wake up surrounded by 40 other young racers and start repacking your pack. This means rolling your sleeping bag back into its compression sack and tucking your packing cubes back into their designated spots. Everything gets cleared away because we leave things better than we found them on the Race.
7:30am – Team Time! This a chance to share with your squad how the Lord has been moving you through this experience and these were some of the best times that we laughed and learned about each other.
8:00am – Breakfast! Every meal at training camp is inspired by a different country. Our very first meal we ate without any utensils or plates – just a community platter we all shared.
9:00am – Worship. Time to get your world ROCKED by the Holy Spirit. There is no sound better than the voices of 65 of God’s children lifting up their praises to Him, singing harmonies straight up to Heaven.
The rest of the day consists of a series of sessions, occasionally interrupted by lunch, that taught us practical applications of what we may have to do on the field. We learned how to be good guests to our ministry hosts, how to keep children engaged in children ministries, we talked about storytelling and the best way to communicate how much we’re growing. Every minute of training camp was fruitful in some way, even our personal time or Squad Wars. In between sessions, you could find us sitting on the floor playing cards, taking a walk through the trails, or trying not to think about the porta potties. A sense of community filled the whole space, and it was so amazing to watch all the different teams prepare to go out into different parts or the world and love each other.
6:00pm – Dinner, which I always looked forward to. There honestly wasn’t a meal I didn’t love, although I definitely didn’t get enough to eat on Asia day because I couldn’t figure out how to use the chopsticks.
7:00pm – Worship and another session. So good, you guys. So much good.
9:30pm – Bed time! Pull your packs back out and roll out your sleeping bags and take your packing cubes out to brush your teeth from your water bottle.
Repeat!
There are a lot of things I could say I took away from training camp. The unbreakable bonds my team ALREADY has, for example. How competent I feel about presenting the gospel overseas now. The belly laughs and the giggles and general light spirit. But to sum it up, my biggest take away from training camp is that if I were to go home now – if this plane was taking me to Iowa and not to Medellin, Colombia – my life would already be changed. I am already a different person than when I came to camp 4 days ago, and that terrifies me and delights me. Because if this is how much a three day intensive camp can change me, how much will I grow over the next six months?
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