Training camp, October 2016. I survived. I mentioned to a teammate over a meal on the last day of camp that it feels as though I have been chewed up and spit out. We experienced raw emotion, palpable vulnerability, had our physical limits stretched and so much more in those 10 days. Throughout the week, however, the Lord showed me in very real ways how GOOD he is.
Upon arriving to training camp I was so excited to meet the wonderful 53 other people whom I would be doing life with over the course of the next year. I proudly trekked my gear in (mostly borrowed) and excitedly began to pull things out of my bag for set up. I had only packed on Monday night and this was Wednesday. My busy schedule didn’t allow for any other opportunity to pack. Pulling out what I thought was my tent I quickly realized that what I had instead was a very nice sleeping pad. Tents were popping up around me and some even began to put up their hammocks. I had no tent. How could I have no tent? All I could think to do was pray about the situation and step away from the shameful thoughts that would have loved to pour in. Prayer and action, I thought, there is NO time for condemnation. I told my squad leader that I didn’t have a tent and instead I had my hammock. A squad mate overheard and offered me her bug net while two others (whom I had only known for about 20min now) offered for me to stay with them in their tents. A cocktail of pride, embarrassment, adventure and individualism stirred in me and I chose to accept the bug net. Sleeping overnight in my hammock would be cool, right?
For me, life has contained the message I am still inundated with now. What do I want? What are my needs? What do I feel like doing? I showed up to camp knowing it would be a stretch for me to open up and enter into the community that we are called to. Training camp was a way for me to gracefully move into that community and living with other believers in a way that I had not experienced before. I know God wants to do a good thing in me and through me. I know He wants to change my heart and this is where I began to walk in the changes that He began in me prior to camp. Acts 2:42-47 says,
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
THIS was training camp and the days following. The church as a way of life and an example to those around us versus a building we enter once or twice a week. Sunday service is amazing, but it doesn’t stop there.
There is something different about the people I encountered in those 10 days. Gratitude abounds as I look back on the ways in which my needs were met with no questions asked and for the ways in which I was able to serve others. I am so thankful to have met these wonderful men and women of God and incredibly excited for what the Lord has planned for us by living as His church in the nations. I know there are so many ways in which the Lord desires to show up in our lives here as well. As we go through our week let’s create space for God to move and exemplify to those around us what His love and His church looks like.
