I am going to walk you through a “typical” day at training camp which is really impossible because every day is so different and challenging in its own way but here is my best effort.
5:00 am- Wake up either because you can hear birds, you have to go to the bathroom, you are getting up to spend time with the Lord, or you are too cold or hot to sleep any longer.
5:30 am- Meet with a small group and pray. Listen to God and speak healing over teammates and family members. Watch the sunrise in the Georgia countryside.
6:30 am- If you haven’t woken up yet, there is no way you sleep past this time. It is too bright. Hear your teammates moving around, packing up, laughing, knocking on tents asking if people are awake, and hear someone yell “Chase wake up” at the cluster of hammocks the boys have set up in the woods right next to the campsite.
7:00 am- Exercise. This could be hiking with packs, running, dancing, or some other sort of exercise typically led by Zachery or Leah. There is minimal complaining but plenty of jokes and a lot of encouragement.
7:30 am- Attempt to get in line for a bucket shower with the entire rest of training camp. Wish that you were male since females far out number males at training camp yet they have the same number of showers. Get ready for the day. Be sure to dress for the culture you are in that day. Make sure your packs are either safely in your tent with the rain fly up or on the tarp (on which we found what had to be a record-breakingly large Daddy Long Legs) and covered because a 10% chance of rain in Georgia typically means a torrential downpour.
8:30 am- Breakfast: could be crickets, could be fruit and bread, could be eggs, could be a meal that was meant for 6 pm. Crave coffee if you’re addicted to it (cough cough Allina, cough cough). If it is Africa day men and women must sit apart and not associate with one another which means the boys typically get less to eat because they can’t strategically place themselves at tables of mostly girls that will eat less off the community plate.
9:00 am- Start session in the training center. This could be anything from a conversation about expectations of World Racers to a sermon about discipleship or the power of the Holy Spirit. Don’t forget to bring your chair from the Pavilion or you won’t have one. Basically, you always need your Bible, journal, pen, and chair.
10:00 am- Go to your squad meeting point and discuss the session in detail with people you barely know. Find yourself spilling your heart’s deepest secrets, frustrations, burdens, and lies to said people that you barely know. Feel the weight of sin and shame lifted from your shoulders as the encouragement of those people fills you with love and hope. Realize that your past no longer has power over you. Cry- not because you are sad, but because you are filled with joy and relief at the acceptance you have in Christ. Thank the Lord for your incredible squad mates and trainers.
11:00 am- Go on the dreaded hike. Awkwardly try to run with a pack on (the best way is to hold the straps- Kirsten showed me how early in the hike, thank goodness) Absolutely crush it with your teammates cheering you on the whole way and encouraging you up that awful hill for the second time by whatever means necessary (thank you Zachery).
12:00 pm- Eat lunch with your hands with no tables or chairs. Really bond with your teammates over conversations and germ-sharing. Thank the Lord that you got to do the hike before eating a heavy yet amazing lunch so that your new friends didn’t have to see you vomit.
12:20 pm- Dish duty. Clean big dishes in the kitchen and get tootsie rolls from the cooks or run the assembly line of dish washing on the parking pad. Collect dishes from all the tables in the Pavilion- look for anything good left on any of the plates (like plantains) and either eat it or give it to Reece. Be sure to eat any leftover bread off any of the dishes cause Jesus is life. Jesus is the bread of life. Bread is life. Don’t ask questions, eat the bread.
12:45 pm- Go back to training center for another session. Try and get a seat under the vent so you won’t be hot. Fidget a lot because you don’t sit still. Have Madison acknowledge that you fidget a lot. Smile and laugh, wait 5 minutes, continue to fidget incessantly. Listen to awesome stories of healings, boldness in Jesus Christ, or the power of story telling.
2:00 pm- Team formations with the squad. Go to the squad meeting point and break up into teams and do challenging yet pointless tasks that are meant to see how you operate as a team (and frustrate you). Learn how to adapt when Safety Seth turns a water hose into a python and takes off one of Carly’s legs or when everyone is blind-folded and Paxtyn is explaining how we should do the activity with hand motions that none of us can see.
2:30 pm- After laughing a lot and usually getting a bit frustrated, debrief the activity.
4:00 pm- Get your sleeping scenario for the night. This could be a team camp-out (as if we weren’t already camping… but without tents and with only half the bags, we had a lot of fun on our camp-out), airport night (12 hour layover during the day in South Korea so the lights and sounds stayed on all night long. Our squad discussed and in real life, we would have definitely gone exploring in South Korea.), lost luggage (half our squad’s bags were taken because the airline lost them. We all shared tents, hammocks, toothbrushes, towels, hairbrushes, sleeping bags, life rafts (thanks Kat) etc.), or really any other thing that has happened to teams on the field before that the trainers want to prepare us for just in case.
5:00 pm- Personal time- try to shower because even if you showered that morning, you’ve spent 90% of the day outside and you have definitely been sweating. End up at the girls’ showers with only members of your squad and sing Frozen together for ultimate team bonding.
6:00 pm- Dinner. Eat curry and rice with your fingers and continue to grow closer through the exchange of germs and good conversation (don’t go on the World Race if you are a germaphobe). Open Susan’s sour Skittles and watch as Zachery nails Mack in the head with one that bounces off her head onto and table and then, in true WHY squad fashion, watch as she realizes it is a Skittle and happily eats it. Then continue to throw Skittles and eat them until someone misses and hits someone on another squad and she thinks it is a bug and we are all bursting with laughter but trying to hide it.
7:00 pm- Dance before worship. Carly and Austin have their dance faces on and get into the Christian rap that is always blaring from the training center before worship or session.
7:15 pm- Worship like you’ve never worshipped before. This is worship with no rules, no boundaries, no limits. Praise the Lord for all He has done for you and the new friends He has brought to you. Close your eyes, dance around, put your arms up, fall to your knees in awe of the incredible God who loves you. Open your heart and your mind to truly hearing from the Lord and be amazed at what He can do inside of you. Worship how you want to worship and feel the presence of the Holy Spirit moving in the training center.
8:00 pm- Session with incredible speakers and messages that encourage and inspire you to strive after the Lord in all that you do.
9:00 pm- Head to the back porch. Avoid the countless frogs that inhabit training camp. But if you see one, tell Leah so she can see it or pick it up and use it to scare Chase. Shower if you haven’t found time throughout the day or don’t when you realize we have exercise in the morning anyway.
9:30 pm- Hang out with your squad. Laugh until you cry, feast on Oreos, learn new card games or add rules to classics, talk about home and what you’ll miss, talk about the grand adventures that are awaiting us, have deep conversations about anything under the sun, organize a group to pray at 5:30, enjoy the amazing community. One by one, games and conversations end and people head to sleep. Brush your teeth by the water coolers and take your contacts out by the red light of your headlamp (the white light attracts bugs so always use red). Get into your tent or hammock for the night and just as you drift off to sleep, thank God for the wonderful people that you know are sleeping just feet away (some of whom you can hear snoring or rolling around on their sleeping pad).
Between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am- Wake up a few times either hot or cold, feel water in your tent because you forget to close your vents or stake your rain fly far enough from your tent, re-position yourself because you realize you set up your tent on a hill and are sliding down, wake up to head to the Pavilion for your squad’s Prayer Watch that must go from 11 pm to 6 am and your shift is from 2:15- 3:30.
There are plenty of special events that simply couldn’t fit into this “typical” day including: Men’s and women’s days, the market, Team reveal, squad wars, breakout sessions, etc. But I’m hoping that this gave you an idea of how things went throughout our time in Georgia.
Training camp was hard and this “typical” day was a combination of many different days but throughout the entire experience, the main thread was the love of Jesus and the incredible power of community within our squad. We went into training camp hardly knowing each other’s names and left as a family. Life with these people is incredible and full of joy and laughter, even in the hard moments. I will fight for them, they will fight for me, and together, we will fight for Jesus.
