Everyone has expectations for the World Race, including training camp. Having 2 days to prepare and a heaping mound of anxieties I wasn’t quite sure what mine were. I remember having spontaneous bouts of crying on my drive there and questioning whether or not I should even go. I felt a little crazy throwing myself into something I didn’t really prepare for. But each time I felt God say, “Keep going Katie. Don’t turn back. It’s going to be ok.”
Thank God I listened to him. The moment I pulled up I was welcomed by the 44 other members of H squad. Everyone was pumped to be there and equally excited to see me. I’ve never felt so easily accepted in my whole life. Whenever I told someone about my crazy, last minute acceptance, they declared that God must want me here because there’s no way it would have worked out otherwise. And they were so right.
Every night we underwent a different potential situation on the World Race. (I’ll talk in greater length about those in my next post.) Every time we faced difficulty we found ourselves bonding together and putting God in the center of the situation. Like Rob (one of the conference speakers) said, it’s not about our circumstances; it’s about digging in deeper to our relationship with Christ. As we grew spiritually individually, we grew relationally as a group.
Throughout the week we had different team building exercises. I personally was pushed to my physical limits at some points (literal ministry boot camp). In one challenge I had to pretend my leg was cut off while traveling with teammates who had various other injuries. Taking a step back I must say we looked pretty hilarious as a whole. It was very humbling and we had to resist the urge to go it alone in order to successfully bring all of our team to the finish line. All that said, I’ve decided I’d like to keep both my legs from now on.
I diffidently got the most out of the conference sessions. Every once in a while one realizes that the baggage they thought they dealt with has some leftover junk still affecting their life. As Brain, one of our coaches, said, our pain/grief/etc. is like an onion. Every layer deals with a deeper aspect of the problem. Every layer is different, every layer needs to be addressed in God’s proper timing, and every layer makes you cry. But it’s necessary to keep peeling because Jesus is at the bulb, waiting patiently to bring us closer to him. Boy did I cry this week. It was so refreshing and healing. And I loved the moments when I was able to share parts of my testimony to help others with their own healing process.
My favorite memory was from Thursday night during worship. We’d been praying over each other all week and practicing prophesying over one another. I started off slow but that night I took of in the spirit. I hopped around and prophesied/prayed over a solid 12 people. It was so cool. God would put someone on my heart, I’d sneak over and pray with them, then a minute later he’d give me someone else, and repeat. It was thrilling to see people get excited about a word that I didn’t truly know was valid until they explained what it meant to them.
There’s a lot more I could say about this last week- which felt more like a month. It was a beautiful experience and my goal is to not go backwards but to keep growing in the areas God has turned over in my life. He has made me bold. I want to be bolder. He has made me courageous. I want to live life more so. He has brought me emotional and spiritual provision. I trust that he will do the same with finances.
I am so thankful I didn’t turn my car around. If I had I wouldn’t have met all the wonderful people I now call family. I plan to be present these next 6 weeks I’m home, but I can’t wait to live out this crazy adventure of surrender with like minded people who are striving toward the same goal: to serve the nations and grow in face to face relationship with our Lord and Daddy.
Moral of the story: when God gives you an opportunity to do something out of your comfort zone, do it. You can’t even fathom the amazing fruit that will come of your obedience to his call. He is good.
