Well, it’s official. I survived Training Camp. Yes, I know I’ve been neglecting my blog duties yet again and this post is coming about three weeks late, but hey, better late than never, right? When I applied to the World Race I knew there would be a week of intense preparation before I launched, so by early October my stomach was already tying itself in knots at the thought of not surviving “missionary boot camp.” To be honest, I had no idea what to expect. I’d never gone to camp before-especially not missionary camp- so for all I knew they were going to feed us fried tarantulas, make us dig our own potty holes, and have us do one-armed pushups while simultaneously reading Bible passages in the red dirt of Georgia and balancing a ten foot pole on our backs…you know, because that’s realistic. In all seriousness, my image of Training Camp wasn’t far from this one in the few days leading up to it. But don’t worry faithful readers. It wasn’t quite that intense.
So, what was Training Camp like? For starters, each day they introduced us to different food from a specific region of the world (fried tarantulas were not on the menu). Some food days were easier than others. Eastern European food is very similar to American food: potatoes, sausage links, chicken and noodles, delicious fruit filled breakfast pastries; African food is not: yellow corn-flavored mush and green leafy stuff that smelled and tasted suspicious. However, I think we were all pleasantly surprised to find our African dinner consisted of pineapple slices and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because apparently you can find peanut butter anywhere in the world. Good to know. For Latin America we got to make our own tacos and for Asia it was rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Every night we were given a different sleeping arrangement. The worst night was when they split up everyone’s hiking packs into two piles and designated one pile as the “lost luggage.” Yep, my stuff was “lost.” It was cold that night. My tent, sleeping pad, and sleeping bag were in my hiking pack so I shivered all night with just the clothes on my back and a thin sleeping bag liner for warmth. Although I’ll admit I pulled a bit of a creeper move on my temporary tent mate as I inched closer to her throughout the night to steal some body heat. Hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. Then there was the airport terminal scenario. Good news is we got to sleep inside that night away from the cold; bad news is the lights were kept on and a recording of airport sounds was playing all night long. No, obnoxious American woman I do not know where gate 35B is so stop asking. Mr. Asian man if I have to hear your kid throw one more temper tantrum so help me things are going to get ugly. You get the picture.
But despite the strange, sometimes suspicious, food and the lack of sleep, I managed to keep myself together pretty well. Yes, I smelled along with everyone else because it was too cold and too wet to want to take a bucket shower more than one day in a row so baby wipes had to suffice for the majority of the week. Yes, there was dirt under my fingernails and my hair was in a half braid half knot on one side of my head that would make any cave woman proud. Yes, I wore the same outfit three days in a row because my stuff was either “lost” or there wasn’t enough time to change during our crazy, crammed packed, scheduled days. But despite all of this, I kept myself together mentally and spiritually, more so than I ever thought I could.
Half way through the week, when we started our team building activities, we split up into groups of about seven people and were given a scenario of a plane crash where everyone survived, but not without some sort of injury. We had to band together and go from point A to point B, which was roughly a quarter of a mile. For instance, a couple of girls on my team had broken arms, I had a broken leg, another girl was blind, one went mute from shock, another had acquired an infectious disease that didn’t allow her to touch anyone, and one girl was unconscious. This exercise was very hard, but we eventually managed. And after all of that, do you think they were done with us? Nope. When we arrived at point B, we were then tied together with string and given a list of exercises to complete in unison. This was the hardest day as far as being stretched physically and mentally goes, but somewhere in the middle of it I realized, I can do this! I am totally capable of doing this. I’m going to survive Training Camp. I’m going to survive the World Race. It’s not always easy for me to feel God’s presence next to me, in fact it’s pretty hard sometimes, but I definitely felt Him in that moment…that whole day really. And I continued to feel Him the rest of the week.
I never thought I was going to be a missionary. I never dreamed about being a missionary. It’s still funny to hear myself say it, “Hi, I’m Danielle and I’m a missionary.” It rolls off my tongue like water. There were a lot of lessons to be learned at Training Camp and there were a lot of experiences had that I want to keep hold of for as long as I can, but the most important thing that I want to take away from that week is to trust God wholeheartedly. One of my previous blog posts talks about my trust issues with others and especially with God, and during that week I realized just how important it is to trust. Trust that even though I never imagined myself as a missionary, God already had that part of my life planned out before I even existed. His plans don’t always make sense but I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. I want and need to trust Him and I intend to use all of the courage and strength inside of me to do so.
P.S. Check out my awesome teammates. Go Team Adopted!
