I just got home from training camp. It was amazing and crazy and kinda hard if I am being honest. The first few days were the hardest. I’ve never been thrown into a group of people before where I basically know nobody. I felt alone. Also, those first few days made me realize how much I really am going to miss my family and friends and all I wanted was to come home to them.
In addition to that, I walked into this week feeling defeated and unjoyful. My walk with the Lord has been so up and down and I have prayed for a while that God would pick me up and help me to steady myself on Him. Cool story though: One of my leaders came up to me during worship one night, not knowing any of this, and told me that the Lord gave her a vision of a evergreen tree for me. At first I was like this makes no sense, but then she went on to explain. The word that came along with this was “sustain” because in this next season the Lord will sustain me like an evergreen tree and teach me what it looks like to have a steady walk with Him. I’ve kept this in the front of my mind ever since.
Throughout the rest of the week God began showing me what this looks like and how I can practically live it out. He reminded me that when life gets hard, He is still so good and that the joy that comes from Him is always being offered to me, its just up to me to receive it.
I also realized this past week that satan is smart and he knows my weaknesses. This is why I am always hearing lies that make me feel unworthy and unloved. They are to make me ineffective for the kingdom, but once I acknowledged those and disregarded them, they lost a lot of their power. Along with that though, I had to realize that I don’t have to fight the battle, I just have to hand it over to God because He fights for me and news flash HE ALREADY WON!! So yeah..I am feeling pretty full of joy coming home and thankful that the Lord pulled me up off the ground and onto his shoulders where I belong.
Now let me tell you more of our day to day that we experienced at camp.
Bucket showers- not as bad as I thought, I kinda enjoyed them.
Sleeping in tents full of mud and spiders- except for 3 nights we had to sleep inside due to the storms and it was GREAT
Crickets for breakfast- yeah you read that right, they were pretty good
Seeing how long I could hold my breathe in the porta potties
A 2.2 mile hike with our packs on- it shouldn’t have been that hard, right
Racing everyone else to be the first to get dinner
A bomb squad dance where I may or may not have fallen out of a stunt
Spending lots of time with my awesome team!! Our team name is Selah, meaning to pause or reflect in praise before the Lord does something big. So excited for the big things the Lord has in these next 9 months.
Also, if you haven’t heard WE ARE GOING TO MALAYSIA!! So it will be Thailand, Malaysia, India, Costa Rice.
Thank you all so much for your prayers and support!! T- 7 weeks til I am off to Thailand!!
