As you can imagine, the anticipation of spending 10 days with 50 people you don’t know can be a bit overwhelming. This is exactly how I felt walking on to the campus of Adventures in Missions for the first time. Rows of cars on the front lawn, hundreds of packs sitting in the driveway, and crowds of World Racers all meeting for the first time.
How am I going to remember everyones name?
Tomorrow we won’t all be wearing green so how will I even know who is on my squad?
Check -in passes in a blur; faces and names come and go as I eventually meet all 50 members of my squad.
Thus begins the start of the longest, hardest, craziest, most exhilarating week and a half of my life.
To paint a picture of what life was like, imagine this with me for a moment. You see a gravel lot in front of you filled with 50 tents, the air is humid and you feel sweat dripping from every pore in your body. You hear voices around you laughing and talking. You see your shoes already tainted with red dirt and maybe catch a slight scent of the port ‘o potties that will be your only bathroom. Oh, and did I mention no coffee? For 10 days. Lord, help me.
Day 2 rolls around and I wake up after an amazing night of worship and teaching. My phone is off and I didn’t bring a watch so all sense of time is gone and suddenly I don’t care. I let go of my 9 to 5 pace and revel in the fact that time doesn’t control every thought of my days and I begin to breathe.
To accurately describe to you the changes and growth that happened over the next 8 days would take a skill level that I’m afraid I don’t have. But I would like to share it from my heart.
This porch right here? This is where it all happened.
This porch is where we came in the morning to be alone with God. This porch is where we sat during free time and shared our stories. This porch is where after learning about forgiveness and identity we came and poured out our hearts. This porch is where I said out loud for the first time that I am Worthy of Gods love. This porch is where we sang and worshipped night after night. This porch is where we danced and laughed and slowly transformed from strangers into family.
Something beautiful happened on that porch. I went from being a girl who found validation in people and approval, to a girl who found security in Christ’s love. My view of my struggles went from seeing them as weakness to seeing them as human, which is how God made me. I went from wanting to be so much like the good I see in everyone else to accepting the beautiful qualities that God gave specifically to me. I cried, I forgave, I let go of shame, and then something amazing happened. I was free.
As I looked around me on that porch I realized I wasn’t alone. I had made myself vulnerable to these people like I never had before. They knew all of my shame, my faults, my insecurities, and they still loved me. The bond that I formed with my squad is one that is permanent. We are in this together. They have been an amazing example of what the community of Christians was meant to be like. I have never had so many words of life spoken in to me and prayers of encouragement prayed over me than I did in those 10 days.
As I look back on that last night of us sitting together on that porch, I was no longer looking in to the faces of 50 strangers. I was looking at my family.
