So, I’m at training camp!
We’ve been given the assignment to post one blog and one picture during camp. I can produce the blog, but the pictures will have to wait seeing as my camera is dead and the batteries I know I packed are playing hide and seek in my backpack right now.
So what have I been up to? A whole lot.
In one word, training camp is INTENSE. We started our days with exercise and each day has a cultural theme = we eat the food of those areas. Today was India – great food, just no utensils to eat it with; part of the whole ‘get prepared for the culture’ thing. God is breaking me real fast of my germ issue.
We have heard from some incredible speakers about freedom and worship and soul ties and forgiveness and listening to God and all sorts of great things. The worship band – Jonathan David Helser Band- that was here in the beginning of the week was INCREADIBLE. Like, you should all go on iTunes and buy a song. I have never worshiped with such freedom and passion before in my life.
I am staying in a cabin with 11 girls right now (mix that & wet clothes drying & Georgia summer humidity…. You guess how great our cabin smells). On Tuesday night we went camping as a squad (stay tuned for a logistics blog explaining squads/teams). We hiked through the Georgia woods and crossed a lake by canoe (thank you to all the guys who paddled everyone & all the gear across multiple times!) to arrive at our beautiful campsite where we used the gear we were given to set up the tarp lean twos and make a fire to begin cooking our dinner. After clean up some people went for a swim in the lake; I chose to stay on land and get to know some of the people on my squad that I hadn’t yet talked with (in Georgia, things don’t really like to dry and the idea of night swimming and having wet clothes and wet hair just wasn’t appealing). Camping was a blast! We bonded as a squad and made tons of great memories.
Last night we heard from the founder of HopeChest Ministries which works with woman who are involved in prostitution in Russia. It was preparing us for our ministry of Cambodia & Thailand when we are working with people in the red light districts and ministering to the women who work the bars. My freshman year of college I wrote what I think is my best paper to date; it was on human rights and focused on the sex trade industry in Cambodia and the Invisible Children in Uganda. I had always dreamed on one day working on both those issues but never thought I’d be able to do both…. It blows my mind that now through the World Race I will have the opportunity to do both. So exciting!
Training camp has been the most challenging, difficult, intense, glory filled week of my life. More will come on training camp when I get back to New York and can reflect on everything.
It still hasn’t hit me of this adventure I’m about to embark on…. Crazy.
Today we got our teams! The people who I will be traveling with this entire year and who will become my World Race family… stay tuned to see who they are!
Love from Georgia,
Theresa
