Training Camp and my squad

I am now home from our 10 day training camp in Georgia!!

The experience was overall incredible!!

We may have slept in our tents enduring the cold weather.

We may have had 3 showers at the most. 

Oh did I forget to mention they were cold bucket showers… yea…and finding a scorpion on my shoe after a shower…no big deal…yea

We shared one plate per table and ate rice, beans, chicken curry and more with our fingers!.. “where’s the hand sanitizer?” haha

Every day we were introduced to a new culture. One culture included us eating crickets and a century egg for breakfast..did I have the stomach for it 8am in the morning? … no I did not… but others on my team handled it pretty well! 

We were challenged in worse case real life field scenarios…

• half our luggage was stolen for 24hours as if  they were lost from an airport…so we paired up in tents and shared hammocks, clothing, and sleeping bags.
• slept in an airport scenario overnight with loud “airport like” sounds
• placed in a foreign “market like” scenario where things could have been stolen from us, learned to exchange currency, and running into homeless, beggars, drug dealers, and tourists in a market place. 

Every challenged we faced over the last 2 weeks we were given time to process and learn from them to equip our ideas/decisions in future field scenarios next year. 

Not only were we challenged but we were changed and transformed. For me the Lord used the time to show me I had put Him, as my heavenly father, my papa, in a box. I didn’t realize that I hadn’t allowed him to care for me as if a dad would. All week God had broke down hurt and bruised areas of my life and allowed me to see that all He wanted from me was to recognize that He wants to care for me. He showed me that He has called me to be his daughter and he wants to love me just as a dad would. I could not believe how much of His love poured into me this week as I called out for Him and thanked Him. 

“I LOVE YOU.” God said to me softly. 

again…and again

“I LOVE YOU.” 

I will be pretty open about this… I am not a crier.. I’m pretty sure the last time I cried was a year ago. But God showed up these past 2 weeks.. and I cried just about every day! Happy Tears! Those tears explained how much  I missed out on and how I recognized how much He longed for me to call out to HIM as my papa! 

Every promise He has given me I declared them out loud once again, and my hope resides in Him. He has given me a choice to follow Him and I here I am.

Lord Here I am, I lay down my life, I surrender all of myself so that your will will be done in my life to further your Kingdom and to LOVE. I recognized that every traumatic and blissful moment of my life that God, you were there and you were GOOD in EACH MOMENT!! You are so GOOD GOD, and there is nothing that will take that declaration from me! Your Goodness will always be GLORIFIED! 

^{15 “}All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. ¹⁶ We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. ¹⁷ And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect.”