For 10 days, I got to spend time with my squad in Gainesville, Georgia. It was everything but a luxurious retreat into the mountains for team building and memory making, but a member of another squad said it best “we had million-dollar days”. In fact, we did this while sleeping in tents that absolutely needed their rain flys in the midst of some heavy Georgia storms, “showering” with 5 gallon buckets full of cold water, eating everything from rice and curry to fried crickets, and carrying 30+ lbs of stuff we thought we needed on our backs.
How did you do all of this in just 10 days, you say? Well if you ask me, the physical exhaustion I am experiencing might try to speak first and will shout “I HAVE NO IDEA”, but if you ask my very full heart, I’ll tell you we made it through this extended week because we saw and experienced the love of the Lord in a new way. We met 55 squad mates that we get to spend the next 11 months with and quickly bonded over our lack of sleep, excitements and fears about the race, and our calling to the same thing – a missional life.
No, not our calling to a missions trip.
Our calling to live a life of mission. At training camp we were reminded that we are called to be sons and daughters of the Father, not to be “missionaries” for the sake of posting cool instagrams, writing exciting blogs, or becoming well-travelled hipster-backpackers that have lived in dirty clothes for a year and are full of stories to tell. We’re called to love communities; we’re called to look into the faces of hurting people who have nothing and show them that we see them as human and equal. We’re called to laugh, play, and sing with kids. We’re called to love and care for women who have been trapped in human trafficking or abusive relationships.
More simply put, we’re called to live as Jesus did.
It’s as easy as that. Well, it’s easy to say.
You know what isn’t so easy? Leaving behind friends and family for 11 months – missing birthdays and holidays and weddings – doesn’t look so easy. Living out of a backpack doesn’t seem simple. And no matter how pumped we are to spend a year together, doing life living in close quarters with the same friends for months will present its tough times too. I don’t say this so I can turn around in 11 months and say “look at me, I did it”. I say this because we were reminded that the Lord does not need us to go. If he did, he would use our strengths. He wants us to go; he wants to use our weaknesses so that his strengths may be perfected in them.
And how sweet is it to know of the freedom, peace, power, and boldness we can have in the Lord? Our entire squad was so empowered all week knowing that we are called to this, that we have been brought to this place for such a time as this, and that we get to go because our Father wants to take us on an adventure.
Also – N squad is the freaking coolest. From night one, we realized that there was something special among us. We were so encouraged by the unity that quickly spread through our squad and truly experienced a bond that we could not create ourselves.
“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” – Ephesians 4:3
Now that unity is ours to press into and cultivate. If you asked each of us our stories, how we got to the World Race, none of them would look the same, yet the reason we said “yes” is exactly the same. We have realized that the Lord has placed a call on our life to go and live like Jesus, leave behind the comforts we have been blessed with and seek the Kingdom.
Here are some other fun things I learned at training camp:
1. Always stake out your rain fly.
2. Bucket showers really aren’t that bad.
3. Look where you stand and where you set up your tent because those Georgia ants bite hard.
4. There’s a remix to Oceans out there that is ‘litty-lit-lit’, as my teammate Alex would say.
5. When you hear the lies of the world, remember that the Lord is asking us “who told you that?”
6. The Kingdom is full of freedom and peace, not chains and hurt.
7. The people I get to do life with for the next year are some stinkin’ awesome people with some crazy amazing gifts. And huge hearts. Huge huge hearts.
8. You really don’t need as much stuff as the world has convinced us we need. Everything I needed really did fit in one pack. Crazy, right?
9. I could re-read Ephesians 100 more times and continue to be amazed by it.
10. This trip is much MUCH more than a missions trip. I can’t hear or tell myself that enough.
So that sums up the whirlwind they call training camp!
Thank you for reading and for doing this thing called the World Race with me! I am also about to share a new way for you to partner with me as I get to my next deadline, so stay tuned!
Love always,
Sequoi
