Seeing God Work

Hey everyone!

I want to start off by apologizing for not blogging in a while. I haven’t had a lot of time, and recently, haven’t had any service to be able to upload!

As you might have seen from my last blog post, training camp was a mix of many emotions. I made another short video of some of the best times and have uploaded to my YouTube channel!

During training camp, I was pushed in many of my comfort zones. While this was something that hurt at the time, I can now see God’s goodness through it and see how I’ve already grown so much.  Here are a few of many examples:

The first was my tent situation. I lived in a tent for over a month and a half. By the end of life in Georgia, it had become a home to me. But my dream house started as one nightmare after another. While this wasn’t too challenging for some people, I think God was using this to show me areas where I had room to grow-especially in my patience. The issues started during the first week of training camp when it rained pretty consistently. My tent was in a poor spot of the campsite, so I had about 5 inches of mud surrounding it. To further push my limits, water was forming under my sleeping mat inside of the tent because of how much rain there was. Instead of focusing on the fact that, at least I had a tent to sleep in and was warm at night, I texted my friends in the surrounding tents and complained. They joined in, and we were all just upset over the situation we were put in. The next morning, I did a Bible study with those same friends who I had been texting. One of my friends suggested we read Psalm 106. When I opened it, a verse stood out to me-verse 25. Psalm 106:25 reads, “They grumbled in their tents and did not obey the voice of the Lord.” I pointed this out to my friends, and we just sat there and laughed. We realized that even through the rain and mud, God is still good and we still have so much that we should be thankful for. 

Another challenge I faced while living in Georgia was the shower and laundry situation. During the first two weeks, we took bucket showers. This meant filling up buckets with hose water and using that for shower water. This process taught me patience because I couldn’t just go from my room to the bathroom across the hall like I did back at home. I had to wait until the time I was allowed to shower, walked from my tent about 1/4 of a mile to the showers and used the cold hose water to clean myself. 

There’s not much to say about how we did our laundry other than it was hard work. All our laundry was washed by hand and was left to dry on clothes lines. At one point, the post holding the line broke and our clothes dried in the dirt. I never realized the luxury that a washer and dryer was until I struggled with doing laundry by hand. While it was difficult, so much good came out of bucket showers and hand done laundry. I was taught to rely on God’s strength and lean on Him when I really just wanted to complain.

Psalm 37:23-24 says, “The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.”

Training camp made me stumble over and over, but because of the strength and power of the Lord, I did not fall. While the 6 weeks I spent preparing for the field were hard, they were necessary and so worth it. I am so excited to share more with you all and am so thankful that you are continuing to walk with me throughout this journey!