The final day of training camp was short and sweet. I distinctly remember waking up and saying to myself “No one way is this over.” I think I was the first one up from my squad and I began to pack up all my belongings with this surrealism that training camp is ending. I pulled up my car to stuff my things in my trunk and saw some of my squad mates beginning to wake up and pack their things. Matt calls me over to help him off the hammock so he doesn’t wake Norma. Cameron welcomes me with a good morning as I wake up. Mark was still snoring. All these things and more made the fact that I had to leave that much more difficult. We helped each other tear down tents once last time, Ravi reminded us we had fifteen minutes to get to the training center, Lo unpacked all her stuff for a lighter for Matt’s birthday banana, and Myles and Taylor prayed for us one last time before we left. Then the hugs began, last minute pictures were taken, and the people driving said good bye to the people who were flying. I didn’t get as sad as I thought I would maybe because I really knew it was “See ya in six weeks!” as opposed to to good bye. So I walked up those stairs for the last time, past the horseshoe driveway, down the road to my car and began the drive home.
As I was driving questions would pop back up into my head like: “Why is training camp only 10 days ?” “Can I just live in Georgia?” “Am I ready to face what’s at home?” ” Did I forget anything?” ” Can the Word Race start today?” Then it dawned on me how ready I was to leave for the World Race now when 10 days prior I was freaking out about leaving for a year. I guess before those 10 days I had a lot more doubts and fears about leaving but now I am much more confident in my calling. Now I have to return to what’s home and properly depart from my old life before I can start my new life. There are things to tend to, words to be said, relationships to mend, and love to be given. I didn’t realize all this until I stopped at a gas station in Georgia.
On my drive back to home I stopped at a gas station at the very bottom of the state of Georgia and decided to top off my tank and get some snacks that would hold me for the rest of the drive through Georgia and Florida. I come up to the register and the cashier begins to ring me up. I hand her the cash and as as she begins to collect the change from the register I proceeded to ask her a question to make the experience more personal. I was trying to remember that our experiences should be more about the people than the task at hand and I wanted to put that to practice.
Still being in love with every thing that Georgia was I asked her (let’s call her Diane) “Diane, if I were to ask what’s your favorite thing about living in Georgia, what would it be?
She repeated my question paused and said, “Absolutely nothing.” Then handed me back my cash. That was not the response I was expecting and I guess she could tell that from the expression on my face because she began to explain. She proceeded to open up to me about how she’s lived in Georgia for over thirty years and has been suffering miserably through all those years. How she wasn’t well off financially and has always struggled and if she had the opportunity she would leave in a heartbeat. I tried to relate with her about living in Florida for the past eighteen years and wanted to do the same after being in Georgia for the past ten days. She then smiled at me and told me that she could really tell I had a heart for people. It caught me off guard when she said this. So then I proceeded to tell about her why I was in Georgia for World race training camp to see if there was a common ground about being a Christian but she didn’t confirm her faith. She instead opened up about her recent years in Georgia and how she lost her dad about three years back and the wounds were still fresh from that. Now her mother is sick and she has to take care of her and really can’t leave Georgia. Her current job doesn’t pay her enough to hardly support herself and she felt like giving up.
My heart immediately broke for her.
I asked her if I could come around the counter and give her a hug. She said sure, met me on the side and gave me the biggest hug. With tears streaming down her face Diane then proceeded to weep in my arms and I just started saying a prayer over her. When I pulled away she looked at me with the biggest smile and said that no one has prayed for her like that before. I proceeded to ask her if she had a relationship with God. She said no. Then I followed with asking if she’d like to repeat the sinner’s prayer with me and she gladly obliged. Mind you this is all happening in the middle of a gas station in the middle of the day. We prayed and put all her petitions to God. No one interrupted us, customers still came in, the rest of the workers still worked, and we finished out our prayer together. Diane thanked me and I encouraged her to get a Bible and find a church to start going to. I then left the gas station and reflected on what just happened in my car. It all just hit me. She is the reason training camp was only ten days long because God knew that was long enough to change my heart about people and about being intentional. That I would drive in that Thursday afternoon to that particular gas station in Georgia to have a divine appointment with Diane on another shift at Flash Floods gas station.
I immediately text my squad group chat and told them they would never believe what just happened. After telling them the story they all began to feel encouraged and chimed in about how our mission doesn’t start at launch but it starts right now. We have a present season to attend where the people we are surrounded by need an encounter of God and we must step out and be bold enough to reach them. Back at the gas station it wasn’t my character to just ask a complete stranger a random question but the Holy Spirit was prompting me to be do it. I’m so glad I listened and obeyed because it led to something far greater than myself. After training camp I realize that I must be intentional and Christ-like wherever I go. If I really am going to be a missionary then every where I go must be treated like a mission field. If I’m not being intentional now then how am I going to be intentional to the people with language barriers and different cultures. I have to be sensitive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit at all times, not just when I feel like it. It’s not about me, its about people.
Every. Life. Matters.
