During October 2012 I attended a week long camp in White, Georgia (north of Atlanta) where I joined over 200+ racers to learn about why we were doing the World Race. We all came in expecting to camp out in our tents, while carrying only our backpacks, & trying out some clothing we were going to wear on the race. Other than that, I had no expectations going in, other than meeting 50 people who were going to become my family in a week. To say I was nervous was an understatement.
Upon arriving, we were told that we needed to dress in the color of our squad, which my P Squad was labeled: orange. Me, being miss school spirit, showed up in an orange onesie, orange dress, scarf, glasses, orange fake hair, and basically anything else I could manage to fit on my body from the dollar store. I do not slack when it comes to dressing up for events!
Upon meeting everyone, it was fun to put facebook pictures and names with my fellow racers. We were told we had to set our tent up, and get everything situated for the night, for we weren't coming back until nightfall. We then went through various sequences of daily 6 a.m. workouts, quiet time, breakfast, meetings with our squads, worship, sermons by Ron Walborn, free time of praying over other teammates, barefoot soccer, Dutch Blitz games, 50 people singing Disney songs during cleanup time for meals, "losing" half of our gear and sharing with a teammate, and cooking meals over a fire. Funny thing that happened the most that I was not expecting was dance parties. Literally everywhere we went, if we found speakers, the wobble magically turned on and everyone began to do the dance. We ended the last night of camp with Squad Wars, where all four squads, M, N, O, & P, decked out in their squad colors, gathered in the worship room, and did various competitive events. At the end of the night, I had to stuff my face with crackers in a race and whistle Happy Birthday, watch one teammate down a lemon, one eat an entire bowl of spaghetti, and one man put panty hoes on his head. I had lost at least 1,000 calories by the end of the night because of all of the laughter and dancing!
Morning came, and the goodbyes couldn't stop. I did not want to leave. I couldn't. This was my family. We all had a huge desire to serve the Lord and show His love. We barely knew each other, but became more vulnerable with each other than we had in relationships with people at home. This made no sense. How is God this good?
I can honestly say I have no hesitations with the team that God put me in. Hell is dancing on its tippy toes scared to death of the power that my group with bring to the world through Jesus! God is so good!
