First of all I want to take the time to thank every single one of you for your support, encouragements, and prayers! I’m so thankful for all of you and I’m so glad that you said ‘YES’ to God’s mission in the world. He is doing a mighty work in my team, Christians all over the world, and in me! I’m so excited to share my heart, thoughts, and experiences with you! I want to update you all in what the Lord has been doing to prepare me for this mission. Just recently I came back from training camp in Gainesville, Georgia. I was challenged in many ways, but from those challenges I heard from the Lord, I grew, I became strong, and I became more prepared for what He is calling me to do.
WOWZA!! Umm where do I even begin?? Well from July 10th-July 20th I had training camp for the World Race. During training camp I had the opportunity to witness God do so many amazing things through 300 young students. In fact, it was so mind blowing and wonderful it’s still hard to process everything that has happened. So, for those of you who are unfamiliar with TC (or training camp) it is a period of time before my mission trip in which they prepare us spiritually, physically, emotionally, and culturally for what my team is about to go through. At TC I was able to meet my squad (which contains 42 people) and I got to meet my team as well (the 7 lovely ladies I will be spending the next 9 months with day in and day out) for the very first time.
So, I would like to introduce my amazing team of ladies!!
- Emma Briner- she is such a wise and mighty woman of God. Every word she speaks is well thought out and full of God’s wisdom, grace, honesty, and love!
- Anna Pentermann- She is an absolute joy! Anna also happens to be insanely smart and uses her knowledge intentionally in order to help others. She’s also has a gift of encouragement and a heart for those in need.
- Maeci McCullough- She has a heart of gold! Maeci is an outgoing Godly woman that brightens up any room that she is in and makes friends easily. She is also incredible strong and inspiring!
- Cammy Thompson- She is such a sweetheart and speaks from her heart! She definitely cares for others around her and is fearless! Not to mention, she’s a great leader!
- Sydney East- Syd is just like a fresh breath of air! She is so energized and joyful in the Lord. She is also strong and has a heart that chases after the Father! Syd also is really good at listening to the Holy Spirit is unafraid to speak what is on her heart.
- Braiden Chalemin- She is so so sweet! She is always there for others and supports them in every situation. Braiden also speaks with intention and is such a bold woman of God.
- Claire Hilton- She is such a happy person! She has a big heart of love for those around her and is always willing to give up what she has in order to take care of those in need. Claire is also very prepared for whatever situation we come in contact with!
Also, I would love to introduce you to my team leaders. They will be leading, teaching, and growing us during these 9 months:
- Kat Olson
- Christie Quan
Now that y’all know how wonderful my team is let me share with you how wonderful TC was. All throughout training camp there were many obstacles to overcome. TC not only trained us physically but it trained us spiritually, mentally/emotionally, and culturally.
- Physically: A big part of training camp was the physical aspect of training. Since we are going on a mission trip for 9 months with one backpack we had to get use to caring our life on our backs all the time. One of the big challenges at TC was the “Hike” which is a 2.3 mile trail uphill that we had to hike with our packs in 38 minutes. Most people made it which is amazing! Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have the right backpack (a backpack with a frame), so I ended up passing out from all the weight that was put on my shoulders and lungs. The good news is that I know what kind of backpack I need and that experience actually brought me so much closer with my team and the staff at Adventures in Missions. While I passed out a couple of ladies on AIM (Adventures in Missions) staff helped, took care, and stayed with me while I started passing out. They were so sweet, caring, and nice to me! It blew my mind how much they cared and stuck with me by my side. I was the only one on my squad that didn’t finish the hike and I was quite discouraged at first but I was so grateful for my team. When my team found out what happened they all decided they wanted to do the hike with me and be there by my side! I felt so loved and realized that this is exactly what the Lord meant by the community and body of Christ. Another physical part of training camp was the sleeping arrangements. Every other night we had a different sleeping scenario based on scenarios that could happen when we are overseas. One scenario was that the airport lost half of our squads backpacks so we had to share our tent and materials with another person on our squad. Another scenario was the airport scenario. While we are traveling it is a big possibility that we would have to sleep in an airport a couple of times since our flights may have a long layover. Because of that, they turned one of the buildings into an airport (they left all the lights on, played airport noises, kept the AC on, and rearranged the chairs and furniture to look similar to an airport). Lastly, we had a community tent scenario. This tent can hold around 12ish people including their packs and this scenario is used in certain situations. I personally enjoyed and adapted quickly to all the scenarios!
- Spiritually: Another way I was stretched at training camp was spiritually. Man, God is a good God! Not only was I stretched spiritually but I got to see how God was moving and working in and through 300 other students at camp. I got to see 300 people raising their hands and praising the Lord. Every night worship lasted twice as long as it was intending on being and there were many times where the singers would stop singing and then a burst of 300 beautiful voices would sing all on their own! It was quite an amazing sight to see! There were even times where the worship leader would tell us to sing our own songs and all you could hear was a sea of people crying out their pains, hurts, joys, etc to the Lord! We were free to sing whatever was on our heart to the Lord. It was definitely emotional and beautiful at the same time. One thing that blew me away though was the prophecies. So prophecies are when the Lord speaks to someone about someone or something that happened to encourage the person in need. It was so neat! I’ve never seen anyone prophesied to anyone before especially not young adults! There were men and women that would come up on stage and call people they didn’t even know by name, tell them what God told them (usually something that they are struggling with), and then just pour out truth and encouragement over them. At first I thought it was strange but then I realized it was real words from the Lord and it was extraordinary! Then it happened to me. We got into our teams (the 7 girls I’m going to spend 9 months with) and we prayed. As we prayed they told us to speak whatever the Lord put on our hearts whether it is a song, words, pictures, etc. Then the Lord would choose who all of those prophecies where about. One time the Lord painted this picture in my head of a sprout that bloomed into this beautiful yellow flower that swayed in the wind. I thought it was a bizarre image and I almost didn’t mention it but something in my gut told me to say it out loud and tell my team. So I did just that! Which from there the unexpected happened…one of the girls on our team started to cry! She explained that she always admired and looked up to her aunt who was a strong woman of God. Her aunt happened to have a yellow flower tattooed on her and it reminded her of it. It was really powerful. We did that exercise again….this time I was the one receiving the prophecies. There were quite a few things that stuck out to me. Multiple girls on my team either mentioned or saw a vision of a red sea splitting while I was at one end and Jesus at the other end. As the red sea split they said I was cautious at first but then I started to walk through the red sea to reach Jesus. Then I started to walk faster…then run…then sprint towards him into his arms. Another girl mentioned the song “No Longer Slaves” by Bethel. In that song there is a line that say, “you split the seas so I could walk right through it. My fears are drowned in perfect love…”! Yet another girl talked about the mountains and another about riding a horse in the wind. Lastly another girl on my team talked about her aunt when she was in the hospital and what she was saying blew my mind. You see my grandfather and her aunt had a lot in common. It just made me think of my grandfather and I was really shocked and thankful that she said that about her aunt and encouraged me. There were also times in worship where prophecies would happen too. The Lord spoke to me one night and told me to give this certain girl on my squad these three words “Beloved be still”. When I told her she turned around and explained that she has gotten a necklace with the words “be still” on it. She explained how important it was to her, where she was finding her identity, etc! It was pretty amazing! Another night I was prayed over by two teammates and what they were saying about me was exactly how I was feeling and what I was thinking. I didn’t even tell them what I was thinking or feeling. A different night this girl on my squad came up to me and told me that the Lord wanted to remind me not to fear about raising money because God has everything under control! Just the whole thing was very powerful!! One of the last nights we had baptisms and over 30 people got baptized! Words can’t even explain how wonderful and powerful it was to see the Lord working in 300 young adults over the span of 10 days! You know if this is how the Lord is working within us over 10 days imagine all that God is going to do through us in 9 months!
- Mentally/Emotionally: During this time of being at camp the Lord also stretched me emotionally and mentally. There were some good days and some not so good days. I think I had this expectation on myself that when I went into the mission field to help others that things were going to always go well. I realized that this world isn’t perfect and that I shouldn’t have that expectation. In fact, I’ve realized that I might be stretched even more so emotionally and mentally because I’m an emotional person. In those 10 days I was able to work on experiencing what it is like to actually feel and embrace my emotions for the first time in my life. I would always bottle my emotions in or ignore them (which isn’t healthy). Believe it or not emotions are good no matter what society says! Even though our emotions are good to have we shouldn’t always rely on them either. When I was able to accept that some amazing things happened. I was able to work through a lot of my emotions that I haven’t been able to work through from the past and I was able to confront some emotions that I had based on the events that have occurred before training camp. I was able to just let go….to surrender….to be free of my pain because I laid them down at the cross. I was able to get out of the sadness I have been going through the past couple weeks prior to training camp. I was able to just be who God has created me to be. I was able to…JUST BE!!! It’s truly a beautiful thing too! Even though it was hard to surrender it was worth it because when I did the Lord was able to speak to me, use me, and grow me unlike never before in such a short period of time.
- Culturally: Something that I wasn’t expecting but that I really loved about training camp was the cultural aspect to it. The staff at Adventures in Missions or AIM for short, wanted to train us culturally on what we would expect when we go to a different country. Every single day we ate food from either a different country or a different region. We had days like: Africa, Asia, India, Central America, South America, travel, marketplace, and America or USA day. Not only did we eat certain foods from that culture on that particular day but we also had to dress appropriately for their culture as well and adapt to the cultural norms of that country or region. For example, on Africa day we had to have our shoulders, knees, and ankles covered (or basically fully clothed in long pants and longer shirts). My favorite day by far was India day and Asia day! I’m all about the spice and the rice!!!! That was definitely challenging at first, especially since we had a platter of food that we had to share with 7 other people. So our portions were pretty small. We probably had a small bowl of food around half way filled for each meal and sometimes not even that. There were days that I had no idea what I was eating and I didn’t like it. While there was other days were I thought I could probably eat this forever and love it! I got to eat and talk with people on different routes, I had deeper conversations with people on my own route, my squad and I had to clean dishes some days, and I got to eat some pretty strange foods. I even had crickets for the first time ever!!!!! It’s actually not that bad…it tastes like sunflower seeds. The hardest part of the cultural aspect to camp was the Marketplace scenario. It was a day that the AIM staff turned the whole back property into a marketplace that you would probably see in another country. Boy, did they pull it off really good! The staff dressed up in different outfits depending on the countries they represented, spoke in different languages, cooked foods from all over the world, and even gave us fake money to buy food and bargain. There was widows, people from different faiths having spiritual debates, thieves, guys in vans trying to take women into the van, homeless people, people trying to give us ads for different things, etc! It was crazy! There was so many people, cultures, and things happening all at once. At some point I was so overwhelmed that I just stood there not knowing what to do! Eventually my team and I bargained for our food and left the marketplace. Then we had a debrief and talked about our experiences in there, our strengths, our weaknesses, what we could do better in a situation like that, and we talked about strategies that we could use when approach this scenario in real life. Although it was intense it was definitely REALLY valuable to go through that! Now I know what I do in overwhelming situations and what I could do better.
Overall, training camp was an amazing experience chalked full of learning, growing, surrendering, connecting, and becoming stronger. I learned so many lessons and I was able to meet the Lord yet again where I’m at. There were definitely some things I took away from this experience:
- The Holy Spirit is always working and can speak through you to reach the deepest and most needy parts of people’s hearts.
- Community and the body of Christ is so crucially important when it comes to encouragement, support, love, and everyday life! These brothers and sisters of Christ are the people who stick with you through all situations, cry with you, laugh with you, and praise the Lord Jesus with you.
- There’s always place to grow, stretch, and learn. If the Bible and your relationship with God become “boring” then it’s probably your sin which is preventing a deeper relationship with Him.
- God has a…Purpose (Ephesians 1:4-10)- which is to have a relationship with him and to reconcile his people (you and me) to Him. He longs to be with us and to receive worship! Promise (Revelations 7:9; Mark 16:15)- He promises that at the end of time people from all nation, tribe, tongue, and people group will stand before him in the kingdom of heaven. Plan (Genesis 12:1-3 & Jeremiah 31)- He gave us the Old and New Testament! Even though He is God of the Universe He chose to use us to be a part of His plan. He chose to bless us so that we too can become a blessing to others! He could have made people believe in Him but He didn’t. He gave us free will…a choice to make our own decisions. Even after we sinned He invites us to be a part of His plan…He invites us into an eternal relationship! How wonderful is that? Means (Isaiah 56, 57, & 62)- The Lord wants to build bridges of love with all peoples, nations, tongues, and people groups of the world. He wants to build relationships with everyone and He is an example of what it’s like to build bridges of love. Instead of focusing on the differences, criticizing, and shunning other cultures, Jesus did the opposite. He talked with the prostitutes and women, took notice of the Samaritans, ate with the poor, healed the blind, raised the dead, etc! He didn’t conform to the patterns of this world, but He showed what it means to love EVERYONE with sincere love no matter who they are. Commission (Matthew 28:19-20)- This commission is to ‘go’, ‘make’, ‘baptize’, and ‘teach’. These are actions that the Lord invites us to do alongside of Him. It’s NOT just a command…it’s way more than that…again it’s an invitation to be in relationship with Him. During Jesus’ life time he WENT, MADE, BAPTIZED, and TAUGHT others and now He has given us the power to walk in His footsteps! This is God’s heart…WE are God’s heart and His inheritance! This is more than a command but it’s also who God is and who we are too!
- Prophecies are real things that are from the Lord and they come in the means of words, pictures, verses, songs, and stories.
- Forgiveness is a powerful thing. Although it won’t change your past it will change your future. God forgave us a long time ago when He gave us grace. Therefore, God doesn’t hold something against us…we are free!! But when you don’t forgive you become a slave to whomever your holding a grudge against because you are letting them get the best of you. Lastly, forgiveness = freedom!
- Also, I learned that I connect with God by an aesthetic, activist, student, and naturalist pathways. This means that I connect with Him when I’m doing artwork, or helping others, or studying the Bible, or in nature.
Well that’s basically all the amazing things that happened at training camp! I was so excited to share all of this with you! Thank you again for all your support and for investing in reaching others and helping those in need! Without you, helping others, sharing the gospel, making a difference all over the world, and advancing God’s mission would not be possible! So thank you for your investment! I can’t wait to update you all soon on more of what the Lord is teaching me! Be blessed!
P.S. Pictures from training camp are in the photo section of my blog page! Feel free to check them out
Much Love,
Courtney
