I was pretty anxious to meet my “new family”. It’s a lot of pressure when you’re told “you’re gonna love each other”, before you’ve even met. My cliché advice is to try as hard as possible to be yourself. Lesson one of camp: each and every person you meet holds a beautiful and unique part of Jesus. If you’re worried about being loved, be the creation God truly made you to be and they’ll see Him in you.
The training staff is going to push you. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, you will be stretched. You’ll want to complain but don’t. You’re going to miss it. Advice three: trust your team. Wait to make any judgments. Go in with full faith that you will be put with who He has chosen for you.
You’ll probably cry a lot. It’s overwhelming when you’re completely and solely focused on the goodness of our Father for ten days straight. Despite your fatigue, take notes. You are going to be blessed with amazing, encouraging, challenging, insightful, and knowledgeable sessions. When you picture training camp, you may be thinking about squad wars and bucket showers but it is so much more than that. You’re going to be poured into this week… a lot. You are in fact being entrusted to take the gospel into the most broken of places. Focus on the “TRAINING” of training camp.
You will indeed love your squad. You’ll probably love them before you even leave training camp. Be unified- this is vital. The race is a leap for the courageous. So take a good look at the people next to you there. God chose them to leap with you.
Quick tips:
Start a workout regime prior to camp.
Acquire a variety of hobbies/talents that could be used at any given time.
Like eggs.
Pack less (the rule of thumb: if you didn’t wear it at least three times then it’s not dirty)
Necessities: baby wipes and chocolate.
