I’ve been gone from World Race Training Camp for less than a week and I already want to go back. I slept on a bed for the first time in 2 weeks and it actually gave me a back ache! I wanted to take a little bit of this post and try to summarize what happened for me at training camp. There is no way I would be able to fit all of it into one post, so I’ll just summarize. They told us at the beginning that we all had work to do in our Physical, Spiritual, and Emotional lives. But in my denial I didn’t really believe it. Within the first worship session I was bawling my eyes out realizing that I had more than enough to work through with God. He changed my perspective on the way I should love and live in his light.
When the first day rolled around and I don’t really know what I was expecting, maybe some cereal or oatmeal for breakfast, but even our meals were training for the race. We ate “normal” food from different regions we would be going to. So breakfast my first day was rice, green onions, and baked eggs. Gross. Lunch the first day wasn’t any better than breakfast, so I’ll just skip it and tell you about the rest of it. Some meals we had to eat with our hands, others we had to eat with chopsticks. Some had flavor and most didn’t. I ate a lot of things I usually would have skipped right over, like crickets and goat.
We participated in training scenarios that would blow your mind. In one scenario, half of our bags were lost and we all had to share tents and clothes for 2 days. Another was an overnight layover in the airport, and yet another was camping out. We had to build our own shelter, Survivor style, and prepare our own food that night. These scenarios may not all happen to us on the field, but they taught us to learn how to cope with our situations, stay a team, and find a solution. My favorite scenario at camp was the marketplace!
We were given fake money and told to purchase enough food for our team from the local market. It was crazy! We obviously were not at a real market, but it felt like it. There was loud music playing, but you almost couldn’t hear it over all of the shouting vendors. The vendors were the World Race staff that were volunteering at Training Camp that week. They were all dressed in different cultured clothing and speaking many different languages. My garage sale days paid off, you pretty much have to haggle the prices down for every vendor. Cars would randomly drive through blaring horns and shouting. My favorite part of the scenario was when the King/Sultan Wayne’s motorcade drove through the marketplace and we all had to stop and pay respects to him. I have a short video of how loud and chaotic the marketplace was
It took us several days, a lot of prayer, and many tests to finally get to our teams for the World Race. E Squad follows the same route to all 11 countries, but we will split into smaller teams to minister at multiple locations. Sometimes it will be in the city and other times we’ll live with gypsies for a month. I’m so excited to go on this journey with my team for a year. I know that God has put my family, Team LoveStorm, together for a reason. Alyssa and Greg Forsberg, Maggie Cooper, Cassie Dunning, and Logan Hovanec are my family for this year! I’ll be posting a few more times before I actually head out of country, so stay tuned for more stories and pictures from training camp!
