Today is Monday and I am home from training. Finally. I’ve been eating chocolate and sleeping a lot and it’s been wonderful. To be honest, I think I dreaded training camp since I first made the decision to go on the World Race. I tried to peek at blogs the way one does when watching horror movies, trying to get just enough of a picture to understand what could be coming next in the story, without all the gory details of fish head soup and other terrors so as to not freak myself out to the point of being unable to board my flight from NC to Ga.
Thankfully, I did not have to eat fish head soup or go to the bathroom in the woods. I did endure a long, hot night on a bus, listening to the chatter of my teammates and squeaky seats for all but one hour of the night when blessed sleep finally came and carried me away from imaginary Africa. All in all camp was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. =)
But it was still hard.
For the first three days I felt very far away from the Lord. Perhaps it is because I left feeling a little far away. Perhaps it is also because I don’t really worship the Lord with great expression and I felt like one quiet person in a crowd of bouncing, dancing crazy people. Not fun.
And then I spent the night in “Africa.”
That night, instead of sleeping I think I found my footing… who I am, what I love, how I hear… and most importantly who the Lord is to me. I got off of that bus with my feet planted firmly where they needed to be and the rest of training was wonderful…. even though I craved chick-fil-a and chocolate alllllllllllll week.
On our way to the airport one of my squad mates said that “the Lord wants to change your character, not your personality.” I love that. I think I am finding more and more peace in being who I am and taking confidence in the ways that I was created, knowing that I will change, but also knowing that to really serve and love others is to do so in the manner that I was made with the gifts that I’ve been given.
Beyond these things, I learned so much at training and cannot say enough about my lovely squad mates. It was so wonderful to hear people's stories and see their gifts at work. I now know who my teammates will be amongst my larger squad and I am super excited to live life and serve with this team.
Here we are out at Wal-mart:
Thanks to all those who prayed for me this week! I learned a lot and will update again soon! I really appreciate your love, support and prayers!!!
Carrie
