I still can’t believe it, I have raised all of the money I need for the world race! I would just like to take a moment to brag on my family and friends who helped me get to this point. I am blown away by everyones giving heart! When I first signed up for the world race, I thought to myself “how on earth am I going to raise almost $14,000”. Now, I realized through Christ, anything is possible!
I am also going to take this time to talk a bit about my World Race training camp. I have been back from training camp for about a month now, and I still can’t believe the impact it had on my life. It was 10 days of sleeping outside, portapotties, bucket showers, and much more. This all took place in the middle of the summer in the Georgia humidity. You’re probably thinking, “that sounds terrible”, and it was at some points. But, through it all God showed up in big ways!
One night in particular, I felt Gods presence in a huge way. To start off, our squad of 39 people were going camping for a night at the local camp grounds (about 15 minutes out from where we were staying). Right when we got to where we were staying the night, one of my squad mates passed out from heat exhaustion, so she was rushed to the ER, next another one of my squad mates had to go to the ER because of other complications, about an hour later another guy was chopping wood and ended up with a big ol gash in the middle of his forehead, he also had to go to the ER. So about 2 hours in to our camping experience, we had 3 ER trips. We knew we were being attacked by an evil presence not of this world. As it began to lightly rain, our team proceeded to go underneath the tarp that we had set up earlier. As we did that, another squad that was camping right by us came to pray over us because they had heard about how we were being attacked. As we were sitting underneath the tarp, the other squad circled around us and began to pray over us. By this time the rain started coming down hard, this was a beautiful moment for me, I felt safe. The Holy Spirit told me everything was going to be okay. The other squad prayed over us for about 10 minutes in the pouring rain. When they were done, we wanted to pray over them so we got out from under the tarp and immediately, the sun came out and the raining stopped. God was reminding us that he will protect us. And, from then on out we did not have any more injuries for the rest of the night!
I have many more stories from training camp that I can barely put into words. I cannot wait to see how God uses me and my team for the 9 months that he has called us to spread his word overseas. All in all, Training camp was hard but I am so thankful for it because he showed me so much through it.
Much love,
Ross Van Gorder
