Today is my first day home since training camp in White, Georgia and all I have to say is that all the blogs I read prior to leaving for training camp were completely opposite of my experience. People said that training camp was the hardest week of their lives, but I say that training camp was probably the best week of my life. Here is what happened.
I arrived last Saturday to a camp in the middle of nowhere Georgia with my pack full of gear that I, a So-Cal Suburban girl, had pretty much never used in my life. As soon as I stepped out into the hot sun I knew I was in way over my head, I had already met roughly 20 people that I would be living with for the next week and potentially year and I couldn't remember a single person's name, great. After we checked in I was overwhelmed by how many people were dressed in our team color of orange and I looked at my own orange shirt and realized that I was nowhere near as prepared for this week as I thought I was. I have done Residence Life, I have been on leadership, I am extremely spirited but some of these people were WAY more spirited than I had ever been. Needless to say I became fearful and decided that I didn't really need new friends, no one was going to like me anyways. Man was I wrong.
Immediately we set up our tents and entered into the activities of the week. Dinner the first night was rough (I didn't eat gluten before this week because of stomach problems) and of course dinner was mainly bread, but luckily the Lord had already started healing my stomach before I came and it didn't hurt that night. (Praise the Lord, that was his first healing in my life, and many more were to come which I will talk about in Pt. 2 of my training camp blog.)
Later on we came together as a squad (p-squad) of 47 men and women and learned a cheer that would become not only a motto but a sort of truth that was spoken over our group. We chanted, “P-squad! Power squad, prayer squad, party squad. Ain’t no party like a p-squad party because a p-squad party don’t stop!” Little did we know at the time that these three words to describe our squad would be so true.
As the week went on our squad saw the power of God in a whole new way, through his love poured out on us, the words he spoke over us and the gentleness of his guidance. We saw that our squad were warriors for prayer through the constant string of healings that were prayed for, the overwhelming voice of God in our group that we saw in prophecy. And let me tell you, WE WERE THE PARTY SQUAD.
I arrived last Saturday to a camp in the middle of nowhere Georgia with my pack full of gear that I, a So-Cal Suburban girl, had pretty much never used in my life. As soon as I stepped out into the hot sun I knew I was in way over my head, I had already met roughly 20 people that I would be living with for the next week and potentially year and I couldn't remember a single person's name, great. After we checked in I was overwhelmed by how many people were dressed in our team color of orange and I looked at my own orange shirt and realized that I was nowhere near as prepared for this week as I thought I was. I have done Residence Life, I have been on leadership, I am extremely spirited but some of these people were WAY more spirited than I had ever been. Needless to say I became fearful and decided that I didn't really need new friends, no one was going to like me anyways. Man was I wrong.
Immediately we set up our tents and entered into the activities of the week. Dinner the first night was rough (I didn't eat gluten before this week because of stomach problems) and of course dinner was mainly bread, but luckily the Lord had already started healing my stomach before I came and it didn't hurt that night. (Praise the Lord, that was his first healing in my life, and many more were to come which I will talk about in Pt. 2 of my training camp blog.)
Later on we came together as a squad (p-squad) of 47 men and women and learned a cheer that would become not only a motto but a sort of truth that was spoken over our group. We chanted, “P-squad! Power squad, prayer squad, party squad. Ain’t no party like a p-squad party because a p-squad party don’t stop!” Little did we know at the time that these three words to describe our squad would be so true.
As the week went on our squad saw the power of God in a whole new way, through his love poured out on us, the words he spoke over us and the gentleness of his guidance. We saw that our squad were warriors for prayer through the constant string of healings that were prayed for, the overwhelming voice of God in our group that we saw in prophecy. And let me tell you, WE WERE THE PARTY SQUAD.
There is a song called the Wobble and our squad did it everywhere, everday. I can’t believe how much I have come to love my new family and in light of other racers having blogged about training camp being hard I have to say that the challenges that came were not so much as hard for me, but life giving and unifying and filled with LOVE.
