Hi lovelies… welcome back to my blog 🙂 It’s been about a week since I’ve been home from training camp. I survived!!!! Below you can read all about this hard, but rewarding experience.
So my last blog post was written while I was on an 8 hour drive to Gainesville, Georgia for training camp. Oh boy, in that moment, I had no idea what would be in store for the next 11 days.
Pulling into the Adventures in Missions parking lot, I had a huge smile plastered on my face. I was SO ready to meet my squad (the group of people I’ll be spending the next 9 months with). After messaging these amazing people for months leading up to training camp, I was finally going to meet them in person!!!! Honestly, this first day felt sort of like a dream. Setting up my tent was pretty easy because I had practiced doing it about 10 times the day before. Next, I blew up my sleeping pad and made my bed that I would be sleeping on for the next 10 nights. After setting up camp, we all went into an air conditioned building (oh how I was thankful for that) and ended the night with some extremely powerful worship music. As I laid in my tent that night, I thought to myself “Wow, this isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. This week will actually be fun”. And then I woke up at about 2 am…
Now if some of y’all know me personally, then you know I have a pretty big fear of storms. So when I woke up in the middle of the night to rain pouring down on my tent, thunder booming what felt like every 15 seconds, and wind rattling my tent, I was just a teensy bit scared. HA, I was actually terrified. No more sleep for me! Now, I think it’s humorous because that’s what I deserved for feeling a little too confident about camp that first night. After a few hours of unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep, my alarm went off at 6:30 am to wake up for the day.
The first night was just a taste of the hardships I would be facing during training camp. A few of the others include: using porta potties for 10 days along with 200 other people, ice cold bucket showers, forgetting to close my rain fly which led to the inside of my tent becoming drenched, millions of mosquito bites, blisters all over my feet, hiking/running 2 miles while carrying my 40 pound pack AND being timed, terrential downpours, the extreme Georgia heat, and my favorite, waking up every morning to some lovely little (or big) friends… spiders!
The point of this blog is not for me to share about all of the harder experiences I underwent to try to gain sympathy. I want to share all of this with you because Shelby Norder a month ago would have called up her parents after that first night in the storm and told them to pick her up asap. I would have given up right then and decided that a 9 month mission trip out of the country wasn’t for me. No way would I have been able to deal with the bugs, storms, no running water, porta potties, and the heat. But, I did.
How? How in the world was I alright with being so extremely out of my comfort zone? The answer is so so simple. All of that courage and strength didn’t come from me. When people say how impressed and proud they are that I was able to make it through camp, I give all the credit to God. That first night, while terrified by the storm, I sat in my tent wondering “how the heck am I supposed to do this for 9 months in 3 different countries?” Then it hit me. At this point, I had been awake in my tent for an hour and I didn’t even think to converse with the Lord for comfort. Instead, I was feeling sorry for myself. Realizing this, I began to pray. I prayed for the safety of everyone else at camp, I prayed for my family back at home, I prayed that I would have the strength to make it through the rest of camp, and most importantly, I prayed that in these types of situations where I am consumed with fear, my first instinct is to give it to God. Not hold all of it in until I am flooded with anxiety.
The remainder of camp was still super difficult and I was still counting down the days until I would use a real toilet, but instead of letting anxiety consume me, I embraced my feelings and talked about them with God and those around me. Before, I would have kept all of my emotions, thoughts, and fears stored deep inside, but I truly opened up to the Lord. I fully surrendered for the first time in my life. Let me just tell y’all. That is the best feeling in the whole entire world!! First, I was just overwhelmed by emotion. I couldn’t stop smiling/crying out of joy. I probably looked like a crazy person, but I had never experienced feeling so free and loved before!
Training camp was quite the rollercoaster, but I ended up being so very thankful for the experience. I feel that I am better prepared for the unknowns that are bound to happen during the trip. Now, I am more excited than ever to spread the Word with my amazing brothers and sisters. Instead of feeling more anxious than excited for the next nine months, which is what I have felt since I committed to going, I am wayyyyy more excited than scared. Which is such a cool feeling.
p.s. The title of this blog, “I am No Longer Afraid of Storms” is super special to me because by the end of the week, I was outside dancing and enjoying the storms instead of being fearful! Not only did I overcome my fear of storms, but I also began to grab spiders by their legs and remove them from my tent. Again, something I would’ve been able to do before. I think that is such a great comparison to my relationship with Jesus. No longer do I hide away with my problems and fears, but I give them to Him and embrace it!
Thank you for reading my blog and following along this exciting journey!!!! God bless 🙂 Next stop: South Africa!!!!!
Love,
Shelby
