I’m currently on the field in Thailand in Chiang Dao! I’ll share more about that in my next post, but first I’d like to share a little bit about my experience at training camp at World Race Headquarters down in Gainesville Georgia in preparation for launching on the World Race! I’d also like to give a little more context and define some World Race terminology!
Everyone’s World Race experience is different, but some things are the same from race to race. I’ll share the basic structure here:
Expedition: This is the type of World Race I am doing. It’s 11 months long in 6 different countries for people aged 21-30/35ish. There are other types of races that are shorter in length to fewer countries with different age ranges as well.
Squad: This is my group of 16 people (18 including squad leaders) that I will be traveling country to country with. Our squad was given the name S Squad.
Team: The squad gets divided up into teams and placed with different ministry partners throughout the country the squad is in. Right now we are divided into 3 teams of 5-6. Sometimes these teams stay the same throughout the whole race, sometimes they switch. Sometimes, there will be times when the whole squad serves together at one place, or the squad gets split into a team of men and a team of women, it all depends on each race and the different ministry partners. The team I am currently on is called the Lean Green God Loving Machine (Or God’s Beloved, depending on who you ask!) The story behind our name is that we found out our teams by being given different colored sour patch kids and ours were green.
Debrief: A few times throughout the race (3 times for my squad), our team leadership and support will come out and the squad will come together in one place to talk about what we’ve all been up to, the ways God has worked and continue to learn and grow together. It’s also a chance to rest from doing ministry and spend some intentional time together as a whole squad and do a bit of exploring. We will also have a final debrief once we arrive back in the states.
Squad Leaders: There are alumni racers that come along for the first half of the expedition race to help ensure things run smoothly and to provide guidance. After that, people on the team are selected to become squad leaders. My squad leaders are Jessie and Elijah, and they will be with us in our first 3 countries, bouncing around between the 3 teams.
Squad Advisor: This is the person that helps provide information leading up to the Race and answers questions. My squad advisor’s name is Hannah.
Squad Mentor: This is the person that supports the squad from the Adventures in Missions headquarters and comes out a few times throughout the year for Debrief. In our squad’s case, our advisor, Hannah, became our mentor!
Ok. Now that you’re up to speed on World Race terminology, here’s an overview of how training camp went:
Training Camp:
I spent about 2 weeks at training camp in Gainesville Georgia, where Adventures in Missions is headquartered. I was there along with the rest of my squad, and 3 other squads that were launched at the same time. Our days were packed with worship, sessions, discussions, prayer, scenarios, and more. One of the goals of training camp is to condition us for some of the living conditions we might encounter while we’re on the race.
In our sessions, we covered a variety of topics including the need to fully surrender our lives to God, not just parts of our lives, our purpose as Christians to carry out the great commission and spread the good news, how to share the gospel, the importance of forgiveness, the power of the Holy Spirit and how He works in us, how we can hear God, our identity in Christ, how to live in the world but not of it, the importance of sabbath, understanding and appreciating cultural differences. I filled up half my notebook already just from the sessions! These sessions were packed with so much wisdom!
Our squad quickly became close on many levels. We played games, shared riddles, and got to know each other. We also shared our thoughts and takeaways from the sessions, prayed together, and began to share our testimonies with each other, and connect on a deep level. We also split into smaller groups and went through various team building exercises and reviewed how they went. This allowed us to assess how we worked together as a group, what went well and where we could improve. This played into how the teams were determined, but the squad leadership selected these based on prayer and the leading of the Holy Spirit. At the end of training camp, we also participated in squad wars, where we competed in various games like dodgeball and relay races against the other squads which was a lot of fun!
As far as what living there was like for two weeks, we slept on the floor all together in very close quarters, and we packed all our stuff every day because that room was being used during the day. We also ate our meals outdoors during the first week. It was quite cold; unseasonably cold for Georgia. It was tough because everyone was packed for the countries we are all going to, which all have warm climates. During the second week they let us take the tables and chairs inside to eat because it was too cold outside and they were running out of propane for the heaters. This is the first time this has ever happened during January training camp! It definitely made me look forward to the warmer climates I would be heading to soon! We also used porta johns throughout the week, portable sinks, filled our water bottles with water sourced from hoses that did not taste very good, and took showers in converted shipping containers that had rows of shower stalls.
We went through simulations of various things we might encounter, like experiencing high stress situations like navigating a busy market or an airport where half of everyone’s luggage gets lost, or going on a long walk carrying all of our belongings in our backpacks. We also went through various ministry scenarios like house visits and children’s ministry with misbehaving kids. These scenarios were meant to prepare us for situations we might encounter in order to prepare us for how to handle it if it does happen. All the scenarios we went through were based on real race experiences people have encountered in the past. After each scenario we reviewed how it went and had a Q&A panel.
We also had a couple of revival nights of worship, and at the second one they invited anyone who wanted to be baptized to do so. I knew before coming to training camp that this was something they did and I had already thought about it and prayed about it for quite some time. I was baptized as an infant when my family committed to raising me as a Christian, and when I was 13 I publicly professed my faith in front of church as a symbol of choosing to make my faith my own.
I decided to get baptized at training camp as a reaffirmation of my faith and a symbol to recommit to living my life fully for Christ. The experience of full submersion baptism was a new one for me, and a significant one because it represents dying to my old self and committing FULLY to God. Several other squad mates also decided to get baptized and it was such a joy to share that experience with them and support each other through prayer and celebration!
Training camp was a great experience that allowed us to grow in our relationships with God, with each other, and helped prepare us for the field! Stay tuned for my next post that will go into detail about what my team and I have been up to in Chiang Dao, Thailand with the Fountain of Hope Ministry!
