Reflections from Training Camp Round 2

About a month ago, I finished training camp in Georgia. Since coming home, I’ve been thick with sweetness and connection with family and friends. It’s felt warm and I’m thankful. It’s also taken a bit to process training, how I felt and how I’m feeling but if I don’t process now, I may forget anything I’ve processed thus far so allow me to explore my thoughts with you.

 

Leading up to training were plenty of unanswered questions about the next year and an uneasy heart when I thought about launching with a new squad.

 

This year has been patient and impatient waiting, wondering, and a lot of wandering.

 

Still healing, I was walking in obedience when I showed up to campus. As I got out of the car I remember thinking, “Wow, I’ve done all of this before, how strange.” Here I was, standing in the physical representation of the decision I had made. Walking into round 2, of, well, everything.

 

As a quick reminder, training camp is about a week of time spent with the leadership and squad mates you will be traveling with for the next year. We get assigned to teams, learn how to deal with possible scenarios we will encounter on the race, eat foreign foods and are provided with hours of education on kingdom living and how to walk in that well. It’s a beautiful fire hose of inspiration. It’s a smoothie of emotions. It’s exhausting and tender and creative and full of the spin of conjecture and hype. It’s meant to prepare you for living alongside a group of 30 others who love Jesus and hope to accomplish the same purpose you do.

 

I had felt like God was prepping me a few weeks leading into training camp. A peace that truly surpasses all understanding had settled over me right before and I felt like God was asking me to take this training camp slow. To approach it with a restfulness and a contemplation and to be wildly obedient to His voice. I knew He was asking me to walk with Him, to look at Him and to hear from Him and I knew He was asking me to put Him in first place of priority. “Ok, ok I will.”

 

For me, the temptation to jump head first into intimate friendship is always there, lingering. It’s the beautiful gift I’ve been given and my worst distraction from my relationship with the Father. So I heard the warning loud and clear and kept it in my mind throughout the week. That obedience yielded a quiet confidence and peace that was felt by those around me and the best part is I still walked away with the budding of some beautiful new friendships. I’m trusting Him with the blooms.

 

It was difficult not to compare this experience to my first training camp. In fact. I couldn’t. I compared. I contrasted. I wept. I questioned God. I wondered why my first squad wasn’t re-launching together. I wondered why we got sent home. I wondered what travel was going to look like with Covid. I wondered if all of this would be more useless than before. I wondered what the heaven I was doing back here again.

 

And I’m sure some of this wondering won’t be settled cleanly. On this side of heaven there will still be plenty of it, in fact.

 

In short, I want to express that it wasn’t easy to face all of this again. It didn’t feel new or shiny or exciting like it did the first time. I was experiencing a head nod, an agreement, a quiet “yes, I know,” whereas last time I was experiencing jaw drops, surprise and “I can’t believe its!”

 

And though I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was supposed to be there, my heart was still healing from the broken dreams of 2020. Aren’t we all in some ways?

 

And there in the midst of all those feels and all that healing and all of God’s directives towards me was the simplest of things: Peace.

 

And so I carried the aroma of the peace that surpasses understanding, in this case mine, everywhere I went during training week.

 

This years training camp would be marked by late night worship sessions, balancing seeking refuge and comfort in my old squad mates and pursuing my new squad mates, some spiritual warfare, a call to leadership and that quiet confidence that felt like a new me.

 

When upper leadership asked me to be a team lead, I smirked. God had been talking to me about leadership the whole waiting period. I remember saying out loud, “Lord, I don’t want to return to responsibility, I like letting someone else do it. It’s been a rest and I love it!” and like a parent that knows their child’s potential far more than they do, He simply said, “I made you like this to complete MY purposes. I promise my burden is light.” And I believe Him.

 

And though there may have been a lack of bubbly excitement, there was an increase in spiritual maturity and a falling under authority that I didn’t recognize in myself. I suppose a year of questions and waiting and leaning on God even when the future is dark will get you at least a few steps ahead in that direction.

 

I’m ready. Not because I’ve prepared well or done all the right things, or healed completely or feel perfectly trained.

 

I’m ready because He’s given me peace to move. And where there is peace, there is the spirit. And where the spirit is heading is where I want to go.

 

I’ll be heading to Guatemala as my first country in January with the intense hope that God will introduce us to the unreached and we will complete His purposes. My greatest hope is to get back to Asia at some point next year where I can swim in the thickness of the unreached and watch the Holy Spirit hover over the waves of uncharted territory. Is there anything more thrilling?

 

Please pray:

–       That Covid does not disrupt our ability to leave the country, preach the gospel or connect with others

–       That my body would experience quick and complete healing from the parasite that has continued to affect my stomach even after kicking it

–       That my team and I would be growing in spiritual strength as we wait for launch

–       That God is softening hearts of people we will meet and interact with