Let’s talk about training camp… I am forever changed. It was crazy, amazing, life changing, and challenging all at once. These past ten days we learned a lot about our intimacy with God, missional living, and community. These are three areas our lives have already started to change.
Your intimacy with God is more than just opening your Bible and reading a few pages. “When your driving you aren’t looking at the windshield your looking through it.” Let your relationship with the Lord be the way you look through the windshield. Also, no time is a bad time to meet with the Lord; if that means you stay up late, wake up early, or even walking down the street and you hear the Lord STOP and listen. No time is a bad time to have a coffee date with the Lord. Please understand, once you have given your life to Christ that He sees you as forgiven. He doesn’t see our sin; He sees his child; his son or daughter. Don’t loose your child like faith; your still His child no matter how old you are!
Missional living, it’s not something you do it’s who you are. Live with a mission of bringing the gospel. I am not to be a ministry consumer but a kingdom producer. Everything we do should be advancing the the Kingdom. We are leaving on this trip with one expectation; that the Lord will move. Not everyday will we see people coming to know Christ as their personal savior. However, everyday we are either planting seeds, helping seeds grow, or harvesting the seeds. Also, missional living is for everyone not just for me and my squad. We are all called to advance the Kingdom and to live missionally wherever we are.
Learning how to become a community and have unity with my squad and my team in the last ten days has been so enjoyable. We all lived very close to one another. We had an airport night; where we slept inside a building on the floor with very loud sounds and lights on. Pretending to be sleeping in an airport we didn’t have much space but because everyone thought of others more than themselves everyone had a place to put their heads for the night and we had one big slumber party together as a family. Another night we had 4 bigger tents that we had to share between all 38 squad mates; we again thought of others more than ourselves in every way we could. Again, everyone slept well and had a place to put their head. We were very close with one other, but that allowed us to have some great pillow talk and learn more about one another. We had may more squad and team building events that went every well and taught us a lot about each other. My squad learned how to be a community very very fast (we shared a lot) which later lead to the majority of us getting lice. World Race defiantly did a great job preparing us for the real world. It was a perfect bonding experience for each of us to be able to serve each other by getting the lice out. To clarify things a bit I want you to know our leadership team caught it at an early stage. They did a fabulous job getting us treatment and helping us comb out our hair. The leadership team God provided N squad (which is my squad) is seriously the best! They did a great job teaching us the be a community and what is looks like to serve the Lord in the way we have been called. Thank You to the leadership team!
These past ten days have been very hard for me with the fact that my family and I are very close. I found myself home sick day two. I thought how am I going to be able to do this for nine months if I can’t even do two days. I began to pray about it continuously. I found myself feeling like I was in a valley without my family. I walked into a time of teaching and worship with my squad feeling very down. As we began to worship I began seeking the Lord for peace. He had a different plan. I found myself weeping on the floor as I felt the Lord asking me to pick between him or my family. Of course I knew the right answer. However, already knowing the pain of losing a family member and the Lord asking me to give up the remaining three of my family members I found my heart completely broken before him begging him to let me hold onto them. We then began singing a song called “Do It Again” by elevation worship. Some of the words are: I’ve seen you move mountain and I believe I’ll see you do it again. It then hit me, I’ve learned to live without my little brother and rely on the Lord with the fact that I can’t have him; and the Lord moved that mountain in my life. Now he’s going to teach me to live without the rest of my family members for the next year and I’ll see him move that mountain as well. I then realized that my love for my family is nothing compared to the Lord’s love for them and my families love for me is nothing compared to the Lord’s love for me. I then agreed that I would be able to do the next year without my family. After choosing the Lord over my family; my squad and I went back to our camp sight. I sat there just praising the Lord that He knows what’s best for my life. I then realized that the Lord has provided a whole new family for me to live in community with for the next year.
Ephesians 4:1-3 “I therefore a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
The Lord has also provided me with a small team of four others girls that I get the privilege of living very close with during this next year of my life. Us five girls became very close to one another during these last ten days; I am so overjoyed that we get to be a family together. Each team picks a team verse and a team name.
Team Name: Talitha Koum! From Mark 5
Team Verse: Isaiah 61:1-3
The Spirt of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.
Thank you to everyone who has been praying for me and supporting me! Lots of Love!
