If you are a future racer- do yourself a favor and don't read on… you want your training camp to be a surprise 🙂 seriously 🙂
Back to what we did- every day we ate different types of food and learned that areas culture. Example, on India day, we only ate with our right hand (the left is used for wiping and is unclean…don’t worry-I’m forever a toilet paper kind of gal), we also sat on the floor and all ate out of the same bowl. Each meal we also only had a small portion of food. So needless to say, because my normal diet is that of a 500 lb man, I was starving. We also had nothing to drink except water, so a lot of people had caffeine headaches. I accidentally grabbed a cup of coffee-because I didn’t realize I was in a staff only room (whoops) and was excited about a cup, when a man chases me and says, “hey, you aren’t allowed to have that!” I begrudgingly said, “oh poop, ok” as I handed it back. Insert sad face :,(
(Indian food day) (doing dishes)
Sleeping wise-we may have or have not got half of our stuff taken away and had to share our 2 man tent with another couple one night. Drew said he may have or have not woke up to accidentally holding hands with the other married dude, lol. We also may have or have not had to fit all 55 of us, plus 55 daypacks, and packs onto a school bus. Even after cramming people in every place possible we had 7ish people have to stand up all night! Wow! And we may have or have not, had other stuff taken away and slept on a tarp.
All of this stretched us physically so much. I already only had 4 hrs of sleep the 2 days before camp, so by day 3 of camp- no sleep or caffeine, having to have all our stuff packed up including tent by 7 and going to bed late- I was so tired I literally was having a hard time staying awake during worship! Me! You know this girl is tired if she does that! We also didn’t have anytime during the day to shower so you either had to stay up late (ice cold water) or skip a meal. Drew and I skipped a meal and showered one day and took a bucket shower. Some people didn’t shower the whole week. So, it goes without saying- our squad smelled bad!!! You’d get us together and the room would just reek!
It also stretched us mentally. We had team building exercises to see how everyone worked together before forming teams. We had to carry a girl up a trail. “There was an airplane crash and we all had ‘injuries’. “Me and another girl were missing a leg, another 2 girls were missing an arm, one we had to carry was in a coma, and one was covered in green slime and couldn’t do anything but talk. Poor girl in a coma, we had to put her down so many times. We tried several ways to do it before getting a way that somewhat worked. She had scrapes all across her back. Each couple of minutes another “ka boom” happened and we had more injuries- such as mute, blind, etc. We finally made it and were able to go over what just happened. Who felt heard? Who didn’t? Exercises like that are especially hard for introverts, because they like to have time to think things through and also aren’t as loud as us extroverts. I’m learning it’s good to ask them specifically what they think and give them a second. I think that’s so valuable in learning because I’m married to one.
All the time I will ask Drew something and he won’t respond and I think, are you ignoring me? But really he is thinking. I learned extroverts think out loud and talk it through. So thankful to know that!
(team sweet somethings)Howard,Jody,Avery,us,Casey,and Lindsay
One of the last days, they finally announced teams! Hallelujah we LOVE LOVE our team! I believe we are going to balance each other so well and be so unified. I adore each person. We got to have a day of team bonding and eat out! Hurray!
This week was hard on us married folk- there was slim to no privacy or alone time. Shout out to my hubby for being amazing. He was supportive, waited for me, carried stuff when my back was and wasn’t hurting. It was an experience and I can’t imagine doing it without Drew! I love being married and always having someone to share things with. I’m so thankful we have the opportunity to serve Jesus for a year and to do it together. This trip is mostly all single people. Single people will say, “How in the world can you do this married?” And we respond, “how can you do it single?”
All in all it was a great, exhausting, smelly, worshipful, learning, difficult, exhilarating, hungry, healing, wonderful week. Thank you for praying for us! Please don’t stop!
