Scenario 1: You arrive at your new destination to find that half of your luggage has been lost in transit.
Scenario 2: You are in a church service. Midway through worship, the person in front of you starts laughing uncontrollably, the person next to you begins singing in a strange language, and the person on your right grabs your hand and starts prophesying over you.
Scenario 3: You are in a market, trying to get food. Not only does the money changer give you less than you ask for, but there are people yelling on every side. A homeless man comes up every few minutes to ask if you want cocaine. In the middle of his sentence, a guard shoves you both aside to make way for a bus.
Scenario 4: You are dropped off in the town square with nothing but a water bottle, and told to, “Go evangelize.”
How would you react?
Imagine, if you will, a glowing arch called ‘Training Camp’. One by one, people emerge from this arch wearing robes of white, smiling, completely clean (I’m talking spiritually here, people. It rained for seven days straight—we all smelled by the end). You quickly realize someone is missing and look back at the arch to see a mud-caked, gollum-looking creature drag itself over the threshold, only to collapse on the opposite side.
In case you haven’t guessed from the title, I feel a lot like gollum.
My squadmates’ reactions to training camp have all been glowing. God did some incredible and awesome things, including a miraculous healing! (Read Jewel’s Story Here!) In the face of all of the excitement, I feel ashamed, as if I should have gotten more from Training Camp than I did. In my mind, training camp should have been an incredible experience filled with the Awesomeness of God, the Presence of Jesus, and the Wonder of the Holy Spirit. Instead, I just feel tired.
If you read my previous blog post, you know a little about my mindset going into training camp. On the back end, I’ve been blessed to have some amazing conversations that have helped me sift through what I experienced. As these friends have reminded me, sometimes God wants to meet us in our most broken, wretched places. Not only that, but going on the World Race is God-sized task. Expecting to achieve it in my own strength is a grave mistake.
Training Camp was difficult. However, I’m going to share the ways that God worked through me, even though I spent most of the week feeling emotionally cruddy while battling lies, exhaustion, and anxiety.
Charismania?
As someone who comes from a more conservative style of worship, stepping into a charismatic environment felt foreign. I connect with God best through worship, and not only was the environment unfamiliar, but I also knew only 3 songs. I got to the point of begging God for at least one familiar song every day (which he graciously gave me, by the way), just so I wouldn’t feel so alone. By Day 4, I called my sisters crying and saying I wanted to go home.
My second sister, Kim, has gone on the World Race before. The night after our conversation, she woke up in the middle of the night and recorded a voice message for me. The gist of it was that there’s nothing wrong with the way I worship; neither is there anything wrong with a more charismatic style—they’re just different. Not only that, but this style is more similar to what I will encounter on the Race.
In the light of her message, I felt like God was asking me to change what I was praying from, “God this is weird; I’m uncomfortable; is their way wrong? Is my way wrong?” to “God, what would you have me learn from this, so that I can connect with people in other cultures and accurately share your good news?” The day after this realization, I actually had the opportunity to share it with the entire training camp. I stood up in front of about 200 people and shared what God had spoken to my heart during that conversation. Multiple people came up to me after and thanked me for speaking, saying it helped them feel more comfortable.
God is so good! He used my wrestling, uneasy heart to speak welcome and peace.
Press On Toward the Goal
When I first joined Expedition, the physical requirement was 3.3 mi in 50 minutes (15:09 minute mile). I had grand plans of getting in shape and running a half marathon, but as the year went on, exercise started to fall by the wayside.
Luckily, Adventures relaxed the physical requirement to 2.0 miles in 35 minutes. While I knew I could easily make a 17:30 mile, I wasn’t sure I could do it on a muddy incline while carrying a 46lb pack. The day of the fitness hike, we found out the time requirement was 38 minutes, not 35. Even so, I had to run the downhills (ever tried to run while carrying a backpacking pack? It’s not easy!) and barely made it with a time of 36 minutes.
I was the last person to finish on my squad. And while I still feel a lot of insecurity about that (the rest of my squad are all BEASTS; shout out to Hannah Sahatoo, who literally set the record), I also know if God hadn’t stepped in and relaxed the requirement, I would not have made it on the Race this year.
How gracious is our God! Knowing my situation, he made allowances for me to be able to go!
Photo-Evangelism
Another way that I saw God work was toward the end of the week, during Scenario 4. At this point we’d already been through the ringer of sleep, diet (fermented duck eggs, anyone?), and mud. Quoting the verse from Matthew 10:42, “And if you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded,” we were given bottles of water and told to drive into town to get dinner and do street evangelism.
I do not like street evangelism. In both high school and college, these conversations were about as awkward as conversations could get. While it’s true that sometimes street evangelism hits the person exactly where they are at, the way I’d been taught to do street evangelism was like playing spiritual Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
In contrast, Adventures encouraged us to seek God and partner with what he was already doing. Regardless, I was uncomfortable. (As a side note, I find it hilarious that most of our ministry this year is likely to be more of the street-evangelism variety. Whoever said God doesn’t have a sense of humor?) I finally worked up the courage to confess my fears to my team, and shortly after we met a young photographer named Eduardo. After asking about his art, I told him that we would love to pray for him if he was all right with that.
Eduardo didn’t have anything specific, so we started praying. During that time, I felt like God was leading me to pray about his sister (I didn’t even know if he had one), and something that she had done which was causing tension with his father. I prayed for all of it, hoping I didn’t sound like a crazy person. It wasn’t until much later that my teammate, who had her eyes open, told me when I’d prayed those words, Eduardo teared up.
Praise God! He used my creative spirit to make a connection and minister to someone else, even when I was hesitant and terrified!
Throw the Net In Again
Going into training camp, I had walls up. My squad mentor told me she felt as if I had a leathery callous over my heart. I will be transparent, but not vulnerable; I will openly talk about my struggles, heartaches, pain, and sin, so long as it’s not currently happening. It usually takes me about a year to feel truly comfortable with someone.
But I don’t have a year to get to know these people. We launch in 41 days.
In Luke 5, Jesus meets Simon Peter on the Sea of Galilee. After preaching from Simon’s boat, Jesus asks him to throw out his net. “Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets” (Luke 5:5). The night I spoke with Kim, she drew a parallel between this story and my willingness to trust others. “I think God is asking you to throw your nets in again,” she said.
It wasn’t pleasant, or pretty. But every moment where I felt God nudging me to trust, I did my best to throw the nets in. I confessed my fears to my teammates on multiple occasions. I opened up about ways I was struggling with other members of our squad. On the very last night, after spending half an hour crying while everyone else was singing with joy after a night of baptisms (half our squad got re-baptized!), I just wanted someone to come up and comfort me. No one came… until I walked out of my isolated little corner. Then out of nowhere almost every single person hugged me, whispered encouragement, or just rested a comforting hand on my shoulder.
It think it’s important to say that I’m still not comfortable with vulnerability—far from it, in fact. Simon wasn’t comfortable either; his reaction to Jesus’ miracle was to beg Jesus to leave him because he was a sinful man. I take comfort knowing I’m in good company.
Praise God for his faithfulness to fill my net to overflowing! Though it makes me uncomfortable, I know He will continue to work through my mess!
So yes, training camp was hard.
But God is good, all the time.
And all the time…
… GOD IS GOOD!
“Hey Sarah, who are all those people in your photos?”
I’m so glad you asked! Tune into my next blog to find out about who I’ll be spending my year with, along with other fun announcements ;).
A Word from the Author:
Hey Fam! In some countries, we won’t be able to post these blogs social media. Be sure to subscribe to get these updates sent directly to your inbox! ~Love, Sarah
