I got up this morning and headed out at 7 AM for a 3 mile hike around my neighborhood with my pack on my back. Shout out to a healthy lifestyle! It is the morning after World Race training camp and I am trying to process everything that just happened. Over the past week I spent 24 hours of every day with 56ish (can I get a head count?) of my squadmates from district H who are wonderful. I have fallen in love with them and can't wait to spend the next year travelling around the world with them! Oh, how can I fail to mention the amazing squad leaders, trainers, coaches and AIM staff who were there all week pouring their lives and hearts into us. They saw the potential in us and are leading us into realizing it ourselves.
I've decided to make the theme for this blog entry the word, carry. While I was walking this morning, I was trying to think of how I could share my experience at training camp, and somehow this word carry is how I'm going to do it!
We all carry a lot of things into training camp, some of which are expectations. It turns out that WR training camp is not Marine Corps boot camp. (I was secretly hoping someone would get right in my face and scream at me all the while I'm screaming back, "Aye, sir!") But it did turn out that training camp was a lot of fun!
We carry "baggage" with us to training camp! Good news is, there are a lot of opportunities to unload it while you're there. Picture a dozen or so half-naked men standing in the woods dripping wet, screaming out their frustrations at the top of their lungs. You'd love it, trust me.
We carry a God-given identity! Each of us are created uniquely with a specific character traits, gifts and purposes that were hard-wired into us from the moment we were conceived! There is a true definition to who we really are and what we are created for, and we get to explore that.
We carry people… on our shoulders! Team building exercises give you plenty of opportunities to get up close and personal. You'll have to get creative to accomplish goals, and that might mean sitting on top of one of your squadmates. Or, it might mean holding a squadmate in the air like Rafiki held Simba in the Lion King, while your squadmates dance around you like an array of wild animals in the African bush!
We carry strong odors. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then there was a lot of ungodly stuff going on… I won't get into the details.
Finally, we carry a banner with us to the nations. On that banner is the name of Jesus Christ and the good news that there is hope and grace for every person, wherever they are. And the flip-side to that, is that the person whose name we carry into the nations is carrying us, so that everywhere we go we know we cannot fail, because we carry (and are carried by) the most powerful thing ever to confront the darkness of this world and our own hearts: Love in Jesus' Name!
