Yesterday, I returned home from World Race Training Camp. It was 10 days spent in Gainnesville, Georgia, at the Adventures in Missions (AIM) HQ getting to know my squadmates and squad leaders, getting some training before going out into the missions field, and growing in the Lord. It was also 10 days of diverse foods (and sometimes having to use my hands to eat things I would normally use a SPOON for), surprise field scenarios, waking up early to pack up my bed and my tent to do a squad work-out, and bucket showers and porta-potties. That said, it was quite possibly some of the best days of my life.
Here’s what happened. On August 18th, I flew to Atlanta. My flight got there at about 6AM, so I then spent 9 hours waiting in the airport for the AIM staff to come and pick me up at 3 for the storytelling workshop I had signed up for (which started a day before training camp). That night and most of the next day were filled with sessions on how to be a good storyteller (video, photography, writing, etc.). Then the rest of my squad arrived, and we set up our camp (everyone brought their own tent and sleeping system). The next day we packed up all our things and did a practice fitness hike together, and the rest of the day (like most days)was filled with more sessions and training, as well as worship twice each day.
Each day had a different theme, so our dress code and food changed day to day. Some of them were India Day, Africa Day, Latin America Day, Asia Day, Travel Day, Eastern Europe Day, Adventure Day, and Coming Home. Our eating habits also changed– in Asia, we could only use chopsticks. In Africa and India, we were not given plates or utensils– we ate with our hands from a family-style platter. In Eastern Europe, we ate with forks using only our left hands.
Our sleeping situation also changed day to day. One day half our squad’s packs were “lost” traveling between countries, so I had to share my bed and tent with someone else. Another night, we camped under a big tarp in a state park and cooked our own food at our campsite. One night we had Night Watch, and a minimum of 3 people had to be awake praying or doing worship between 11PM and 6AM. Yet another night, we spent the night inside, a simulation of the airport in South Korea, and there were lights on and loud airport sounds playing all night. Most nights, though, we camped in our tents in the woods.
As usually goes with camping, the personal hygiene situation wasn’t great. The only way for us to shower was with a bucket (fill a bucket with a hose, take it into a little stall in the shower shed, dump water on yourself as needed to wash and rinse). It wasn’t that bad, but the water was COLD. And we could only use porta-potties all week. That made me really appreciate real toilets.
Every day we had several training sessions- some on making sure that each of us has a right relationship with the Lord and with the people around us, and others about logistics and things. I’ll write more about what I learned and what the Lord showed me at Training Camp in the next blog.
I hope you thoroughly enjoyed this peek inside my Training Camp experience! Thank you for reading. Please subscribe for updates!
Also, only ONE MONTH until LAUNCH! And I still have a few thousand dollars to go to meet my next deadline: $10,000 by September 22. HUGE thank-you to those that have provided financial and prayer support; if you haven’t, please consider doing so to send me into the missions field for the next year!
