The past couple of days at training camp has been nothing short of exciting, exhausting, and intense. To give you an idea, here’s what our days have looked like:
6:30 – All of us start to wake up. I get to participate in the largest sleepover of my life. 65 of us girls all sleeping in one big multi-purpose room, so when one starts to wake up, all of us are.
7:15 – Our room, sleeping bags, clothes, mattresses, etc. must be moved out of the room and packed back on the porch.
7:30 – Team time! We hang with our team, doing some type of bonding exercise ranging from telephone to prophesying over each other.
7:50 – Setting up for breakfast. Remember the room I slept in? Also our dining room.
8:00 – Breakfast, consisting of typical food from a country/area that one of the semesters trips will be going to (there are 5 teams currently at training).
8:50 – Clean up from breakfast and flip the room for worship and sessions. Remember the room I ate and slept in? Also our teaching space.
9:00 – Worship! Sometimes lead by staff, but sometimes lead by us. Saturday morning I played guitar while a few girls sang and one played the kahone. My fingers were shaking the whole time and I was so nervous, but nevertheless I did it. The Lord has been teaching me to embrace the gifts he’s given me and to not be embarrassed if that means being called out or in front of people.
9:30 – Session(s) – This is our time where we have a lot of learning about what God’s kingdom is, what our role in that is, how to share our story, how the Holy Spirit is actively working in our world, how to hear the voice of God, and tons more. During this time we take breaks to share with others, whether one-on-one, in our teams, or with the whole group.
11:30 – Personal time. Our time to take a walk, spend time with Jesus, listen to (or play, if you’re me) music, read, be on our phones, or whatever we need to do relax and take care of ourselves.
12:00 – Lunch. Very similar to breakfast, including setting up, eating food from around the world, and flipping the room for sessions again.
1:00 – Session.
2:00 – Team bonding. Guys, this might be one of my favorites. Yesterday, we did tasks to practice corporation, listening, and compromise. Today, we had a dance battle, done bracket style. My team won the tournament and gained points for our whole squad! Also, a poor girl on our team split her pants during our final dance, but it was for a worthy cause: I think it won us the championship!
3:00 – Another session.
5:00 – Personal time, what a blessing.
6:00 – Supper time. You know the drill.
7:00 – Worship, lead by the wonderful staff. And it’s a whole, sweet, wonderful hour of worshiping the Creator
8:00 – Another session with some time after for response. Sometimes this response is as an individual, in our squads, or even sharing with the whole group.
9:30ish – We flip the room again for bedtime. Again, we start flipping our wonderful multi-purpose room. We sweep, fold up chairs, and set up our mattresses. We also bring in all our stuff that’s been sitting out on the porch and start pulling out our clothes and sleeping bags.
10:30 – Lights out
Training camp has been so filling. Having time set to focus in so closely on the Lord and not be focused on school, work, etc. has already been growing for me. Probably the biggest way is that we had a night where we really focused on the Holy Spirit and the Spiritual gifts we can receive. That night I asked God to give me the faith that he could give me these things and actually do them through me, to which he lovingly responded that I’m already shy about the physical gifts he has given me and hesitate to share them with those around me to bring glory to him or to encourage the body of Christ. So that’s becoming my new goal: to be bold and confident in the gifts he’s given me and not be embarrassed for them.
