Training camp for the World Race was the most amazing 10 days of my life, I am pretty sure, which is insane because I haven’t even left the country yet. So, I can’t imagine what the next 11 months will be like because I know that God will do even more in the 11 months abroad than He did in those 10 days.
It’s hard to put those 10 days into words. There were prayers answered, healing in multiple ways, and God showing up in big ways. There were three things that have truly stuck with me since training camp that I want to share with you all.
The first is freedom. Unencumbered, unaltered, undeniable freedom. It wasn’t necessarily that I felt it myself but I also saw it in others. You cannot offer people what you do not have and the first step in bringing freedom across the world is that you have to accept it and live it out yourself first. Not only were people coming to the camp living in freedom but so were the people and staff members of Adventures in Missions. They have embraced and brought their darkness and sins into the light in front of God to accept and embrace the freedom that He offers through grace. I have experienced this in my life as well, taking all my stuff into the light, but the one step I missed was embracing that freedom to it’s fullness. Seeing the way that my teammates and people around me embraced the true and full freedom that is found within Christ was unlike anything I have ever experienced.
Second, the thing that came along with this freedom, is pure communitas in Christ. Communitas is a group of people coming together with a purpose greater than themselves. It’s deeper and more intimate that community. The years I have spent in the church have been people talking about community and what the apostles started in Acts 2 but I had never seen it truly lived out until training camp. I saw people living within the Holy Spirit and being lead by Him to be truly intimate with people. With my team, I learned the most intimate details of people’s walks with God and what they experienced in life in a really short amount of time. There are people that I have been in community with for a year or more and I cannot tell you why they are following God or what God has taught them and showed them throughout their lives because they don’t live out community, they talk about it. There are people who have been leaders in my life, who were in a powerful place of influence in ministry, that I have known most of my life and I couldn’t tell you why they were there or why they are passionate about God. I was looking through rose colored glasses my entire Christian life of being told what this magical coating on top of my walk with Christ was that would help seal and bring me closer to Him but never truly experienced or saw it to it’s fullness. Community is more than just reciting Acts 2 or saying that you “do life together”, it’s actually sharing your life with people, all parts, the ugly and the pretty and living and walking in freedom that the Holy Spirit offers to you. That sounds simple but it’s actually really hard, difficult, uncomfortable, not always pretty, but one of the most rewarding things you could do besides accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior. This is one of the things I am most excited about for the World Race, true, beautiful, messy, crazy, fun, iron sharpening iron, community!
The third is unwavering confidence in what He has called me to do. The day before I left for training camp and the day I was traveling to there I really reached out to my Father and asked that through training camp He would really instill in me unwavering confidence in my call to missions, the World Race, route I am on, and the work that He will be able to do through me on the field. In order for Him to do that, He first had to uproot all the fear that I hadn’t acknowledged in my life associated with leaving and going on this new journey. Like the fear of leaving people I loved behind, that I would change too much and when I return the people I loved would be frustrated with me, and other lies that the enemy was speaking to me through people and in my mind. The truth is God is big enough to change people here just as much as He is going to change me on the race. That His love stretches across borders and can encompass me and the people I love at the same time. That He will chase away any and all fears that I have by bringing light and truth into my life and covering me with it to give me the confidence to go out and boldly bring the gospel to other nations.
The stuff learned at training camp has stuck with me for two weeks and will continue to be on my mind for the next year and the rest of my life. It’s hard to forget when God so clearly touches your life in moments like that and I know the next 11 months will be filled with more moments like that than I can imagine.
I also want to send out a special “THANK YOU” to everyone who has donated up to this point. Because, without your call to give to the world race to send me on this journey, I wouldn’t have been granted this amazing opportunity to grow more intimate with God and get to know my new amazing family! This journey is going to be filled with more stories of God’s intervention, change, and growth in intimacy with my community and with God!
