The night before I left to training camp, I finished packing, then got ready for bed and wrote something. It read, “So in the morning I’m leaving for training camp and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a lil bit nervous. It feels like the devil has been planting thoughts in my mind today telling me that I’m not strong enough to get through training camp, much less the full 9 months… but I do know for sure that these are lies from Satan and because I have the Lord, I am able to overcome them. On the other hand, I’m extremely excited to FINALLY meet my squad and hug them all and grow closer to them. ahhhhh serving the Lord with them will be so much fun. okay. Im signing out. Goodnight.”
Now so the next morning I left to training camp. Let me tell you, training camp was so much more difficult, fun, exciting, and enlightening than I had ever expected. It’s hard to summarize 10 busy nonstop days into one blog… so instead I’m going to go through my journal from the 10 days, and write down some things I learned, heard, or did that impacted me in amazing ways.
– “God didn’t save us to be comfortable, he saved us to be affective” I loved this because it made me realize that sometimes I can get too relaxed in my relationship with Christ but when I realized this plus the fact that I can’t grow if I stay in my comfort zone, it made me excited to go on the race. It made me curious to see how the Lord can transform me in the span of 9 whole months of me constantly being out of my comfort zone. So cool!!!
– “Salvation costs nothing, but following the Lord will cost you everything.” (so good and so true)
– So here’s a verse from one of the morning devos that I find to be a beautiful image of the beautiful, joyful, chaos, that results from when you decide to full heartedly follow the Lord. “For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all of the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” Isaiah 55:12 (Amazing thing to picture right?!!)
– “Don’t worry about not being affective. Instead, be brave because what if something does happen?” I thought this was cool because it really shows that when you listen to the Holy Spirit and say yes when he tells you to do something even as simple as going to speak to someone, you needn’t worry because what do you really have to lose? Nothing!!! When you choose to follow Jesus, you can only gain so much more than what you sacrifice.
– “If you only speak of others, you become an echo but when you speak of your own experience, you become a voice.” I like this because it reminds me of how important it is to speak of personal expieriences to be a voice for the Lord.
– God’s purpose in a verse: “to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Ephesians 1:4-10
In closing, I leave in a little under two weeks to go to launch and then to begin my journey of fulfilling God’s purpose in Romania, Guatemala, and Ecuador. It feels surreal every time I say it, but everyday it is starting to feel more and more like my reality. I so greatly thank the Lord for this opportunity to love on his people around the world.
See you soon, Romania. I’m praying for you.
