Training camp for the World Race is this monumental experience that truly transforms your perspective for 10 days. Remember when you would go to summer church camp and you’d come back totally on fire for God? Then slowly it would start tapering off as you settled back into the “real world”. Training camp could potentially be like that, albeit much more intense than summer camp. However, the best part about training camp is that everything you’ve learned, experienced, and grown in are the exact skills you’ll be needing and utilizing once you launch and leave the country for the Race. Look at every other World Racer’s blog and they will regale you with a beautiful story of their realizations, surrender, and changes at training camp. It’s intense, but it’s transformative. And again, it can be lasting if you’re intentional to use the skills you’ve learned and continue to walk in the direction the Lord leads.
I think the main thread of frustration for blog readers and “outsiders” is what actually happens during training camp. Everyone speaks so highly of it and how intense it is, but what actually happens? First, we don’t want to ruin the experience for future racers so it’s kept pretty vague. Second, it’s very much one of those, “you have to be there to experience it” scenarios. What I can tell you is that it’s specifically tailored to push you physically, mentally, and spiritually. They say if you can handle World Race training camp, then you can handle the World Race.
Day one you’re thrown into a campsite with strangers and living solely out of the pack you brought with you. You’ll set-up and disassemble your tent, unpack and repack your bag many more times than you would find necessary.
You’ll eat strange foods as a community table according to the theme for the day. This could involve eating rice and eggs with chopsticks for Asia day, eating lentils and cornmeal with your hands for Africa day, or eating crickets and goat for Adventure day.
You sweat buckets in the few sets of clothes you brought with you and clean up with a bucket shower (which has a limited 8 stalls for roughly 100 ladies). You have morning workouts with the squad and must hike 2.2 miles with your 40+ pack in 38 minutes all in the peachy Georgia heat and humidity. The airport might “lose your bags” forcing you to share everything with a squadmate, you get to create a community shelter for the squad in the woods or you get “a 12-hour layover in Seoul” giving you the opportunity to experience the joys of sleeping in a crowded airport. Sleep definitely wasn’t in abundance or overly restful.
Your days are filled with sessions pushing you to think critically about how you live out your relationship with Christ. What are the goals of the World Race? How can you push yourself and grow? What are the benefits of giving and receiving feedback to those you’re in community with? How do you handle and process emotions? How do you you view the Holy Spirit? What wounds are you holding onto? What’s your shame story? Phheeewwww! Challenging, painful topics for anyone to think about. And now you want us to discuss this in small groups? The small groups comprised of the strangers I just met? Ha!
My beautiful team and traveling companions the 7 tens.
Yet God calls and the World Race attracts individuals willing to surrender, be authentic, and let down their walls and guards. In the pain and brokenness explored by my teammates, a deep sense of trust, empathy, and community was formed. You can’t put on airs around each other when you’ve shared your lows and woes. We’re all at the mercy and desperate need for the Lord’s grace. It’s in our failing weakness that we must admit we can’t do it on our own. God has wired us to depend on Him for our strength, to share our highs and lows with others, and to utilize community for support.
In the past several months before training camp God has illuminated a number of areas in my life that I need to surrender. Conviction is deeply unsettling and painful. The enemy loves to leap in and transform a healthy guilt into disparaging shame. It’s even better if you shove it down and don’t speak of it, creating feelings of isolation and unworthiness. But that’s not God’s desire. He’s the epitome of a Good Father who wants to pull out the choking weeds of harmful behaviors and till the soil with truth to create sustainable, healthy growth. It’s in love that He gently corrects His children and patiently waits and guides them through it.
This year will be an intense overhaul of my emotional/spiritual garden. I can talk about the areas that are painful and need growth, but it’s a whole different story to live that out and make the difficult changes. I’m simultaneously thrilled and terrified to live this out on the field. There’s no hiding, no escaping, no faking.
One of the most comforting aspects of training camp was seeing the heart behind Adventures in Missions and that they “get it”. This is not their first rodeo. They’ve been around the world a time or two, have truly experienced the grace and majesty of Christ, and desire to humbly disciple the next generation of World Racers in the best way possible. Personally, I saw this in their intentionality. They took the time to be tactful and use the correct word choices to create safety and trust. Many of the practices I saw them employ were those ingrained in the culture at Calo.
They would seek to understand and ask that we do the same in our interactions. They would challenge us to not fix each other’s problems or offer too much encouragement, but rather be able to sit and be present in another person’s pain and sorrow. They spoke to the monumental difference between guilt and shame. These small things create such a huge difference in the dynamic of a community. All of the programming is perfectly crafted and designed to throw you out of your comfort zone. It would be possible to call camp mean-spirited with the busy schedule, tough topics and lack of commodities. But the time, hard work, and passion they put into it shows how loving and intentional they are. I’m overwhelmingly blessed with the wisdom passed on and the growing opportunities I encountered.
Here we go, World Race. One month until launch and I get to live out the growth God is calling me towards! I would definitely appreciate your prayers for this journey I’m about to embark on.
