World Race Training Camp was one of the best times of my life! 10 days in Georgia experiencing Jesus on a whole new level with community is amazing. This was the time I’ve been waiting for a really long time. Stalking other racers blogs and watching videos of TC had me excited for years. I wanted to be apart of what they did. We rolled up to training camp and my heart was beating out of my chest as my squadmate Logan and I were screaming at the top of our lungs!
I discovered a loving family of 200 world racers and an even closer one of 47 on Z Squad. There was more grace and peace that I could have ever imagined. There was sweet sweet praises sung to Jesus and being set free from shame that I didn’t even realize existed. We dug deeper into the bible and what the Lord had to speak to us each day. I laughed at almost every moment because my teammates are seriously hilarious. I got so used to the oddly smelling port-o-potties that it didn’t bother me anymore (they smelt like cinnamon too, WEIRD). Took bucket showers every few days and had crazy sleeping scenarios almost every night to prepare us for real field situations.
I enjoyed doing everything in community. We ate from a different part of the world each day and shared one plate of food that we had to portion out between 8 people. Most of the time we had no silverware or plate ware.. it was great. We had physical fitness tests and walked up and around hills every day. We bonded with our team in ENO hammock city. We went to a state park offsite to go camping with our squad. On that night one of my teammates got baptized in the lake, we built our own shelter, cooked our own food, ate some smores and worshiped with our Father…I could go on forever.
From the 10 days at TC I began to see that the Lord has way more in store for me in these next 11 months that I would never even think of. It will be the most challenging time of my life but one of serious growth. I’m nervous but I can’t wait for him to flip my world upside down for Him and the Kingdom! Here are some pictures from my time there 🙂 Thanks A.Spriggs for capturing every moment!
Z Squads Campsite – Hammock hangs
LEFT: Tent City! The ladies were thankful to have the showers next to our site
RIGHT: This is where we all spent most of our free time!
Community Eating
LEFT: Breakfast from Europe that we ate in 2.85730 seconds
RIGHT: This was our lunch for Europe day! SO GOOD
Sessions and Dance Parties!
LEFT: Throwin’ up our Zs to show some squad pride!
RIGHT: Dance competitions tell you A LOT about people haha
Africa Day
One of my favorite eating days! The tradition in parts of Africa is that the men walk to places holding each others hands, the women serve the men food first and the women eat on the floor after serving the men their food. Every time we ate on this day they would blast The Lion King and flash the lights on and off to represent the common power outages that occur in Africa.
LEFT: Serving the men breakfast
RIGHT: The men walking hand in hand for their meal
MIDDLE: Ladies praying over the food on Africa day.. yes we ate fries, bananas, oranges, and boiled eggs for breakfast
Challenges
LEFT: 2 Mile hike in 40 min or less with our full packs on to check up on our physical fitness!
RIGHT: Team building activity fun! My team killed it here! We had to lower a hula hoop with our fingers and let me tell you it is not that easy
What are the odds?
MIDDLE: We have a competitive squad and accept ANY challenge against other squads.
What are the odds that you will fit your whole squad in the port-o-potties?
Market & Sleeping Scenarios
LEFT: King Cabe going through the market. Adventures in Missions staff are SO much fun! They set up a real life market scenario that would take place in other countries and we had to haggle, protect our gear and buy our dinner for the night here.
RIGHT: One of many field sleeping scenarios. We slept in the “airport” for the night where the recordings were nice and loud throughout the night, the lights were on and bright the whole time and trying to figure out how to fit two squads in a room without being able to move the chairs around. BONUS: we were allowed to use the bathrooms inside the building this night! Oh glory.
Offsite Camp Night
This was one of my favorite nights! Me and two other teammates were asked to lead this night and organize all the activities. It was a bunch of fun!!
LEFT: Building shelter for everyone to sleep in
RIGHT: Hanging out during camp!
LEFT: Cooking our dinner. We know how to cook!
RIGHT: Taking our showers in the lake
LEFT: What are the odds you’ll eat a bug Anissa? hahaha
RIGHT: Morning lake view
Squad Wars!
I absolutely love that my squad is competitive! We killed it in basically every part of squad wars. There was swimming, sudoku, running, relay, dance, and obstacle challenges. Anddd we pretty much took the title of winning, right Z squad?
LEFT: Obstacle course portion of the race
RIGHT: Tug-o-War!!
My people!!! Love you all!!
Third Generation Z Squad
September Route 5
Uganda – Rwanda – Ethiopia – India – Nepal – Malaysia – Cambodia – Thailand – Nicaragua – Guatemala – Honduras
W, X, Y, Z Squads
All the squads that are launching in September to travel around the world and share the love and Gospel of Jesus Christ!!
