Week 1- Training Camp!

This week has been such an incredible experience and seeing the Lord move so much in so little time. I have been able to see transformation in myself and the people in my squad. My own experience has been special because I’m able to feel extremely at peace and look around the room to see the Holy Spirit moving all over. And for those who know me, I am very much not a hugger and physical touch is my last love language but apparently I’m a hugger now haha, so I hope my mom is proud;) but it’s been so unique to see transformation both subtlety and majorly.

We have had about two sessions every day with worship and sermons from a variety of people and have learned so much. One of my favorites was about the characteristics of the Holy Spirit and how to have on overflow of it:) 

Our living situation is definitely a change from my typical life haha, but it’s been fun. We are sleeping in our own tents, taking half normal showers and half bucket showers, using porta potty’s, and only have our phones before breakfast and after dinner. For those wondering how I packed, we get to bring one regular size backpack and one hiking backpack. I also have my guitar, full pillow (because why not), and the sleeping bag/tent/sleeping pad are all attached. So quick rundown clothing wise, I basically have like eight shirts, a long dress, pair of jeans, four shorts, and a hoodie, give or take.

My squad is full of incredible people that I already adore so much. They have so quickly become family to me and I can’t wait to serve the Lord with them!

We have teams of five within our squad that we do more specific things together and will be constantly living and serving with on the field. What it looks like at training camp is doing team devotionals, prayer, team building activities, and learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses in order to help each other! My team is Mariah, Carley, Cortland, and Emerson and it’s been so fun learning more about each other.

We had a culture day where we dressed like we were going to be in Nepal. This meant women wore ankle length dresses/skirts and men wore pants, both wore close toed shoes, and long sleeve shirts. Each meal was a different country, we had food from Guatemala, Africa, and India. The most odd one was jelly and cheese sandwiches but were actually better than expected haha, I’d rate it a 7/10.

One of the days, we did a scenario where we had to pack all of our things up, and they took half our bags so we had to share tents for the night and didn’t have any of our stuff for 24 hours. We all came together to help the boys who basically made a fort using part of a tent and some tree haha. But it was quite impressive and everyone contributed to it. I will admit that I was freezing that night without my sleeping bag or a hoodie, but shoutout Mallorie for sharing her tent.

Anyways, today was Sabbath, my squad had a church service where one of us lead a sermon and a couple of us lead worship! I played the singular song I know on guitar haha along with my friends Thomas on guitar and Alexis singing. We sang Waymaker, Colton lead communion with cheddar bunny crackers and water bottles, and Christian gave a great sermon.

Overall, this last week has been very fruitful and I’m so excited to see where the next nine months go with this community! Good luck to us our next couple weeks of training camp! 🙂