I've been at training camp for two weeks now, and I have learned so much. My relationship with the Lord has deepened greatly, and I have found many brothers and sisters in Christ who I will be journeying with to the nations. I was put on squad L, which is the squad going to Nicaragua, Nepal, India, and Eswatini. We have been having sermons and worship every day for two weeks, along with a lot of prayer time.
In these last two weeks, the Lord has broken down many idols and revealed to me the things that I have been putting before him. As someone that has grown up in SoCal my whole life, I have been very privileged. However, at this camp, we live in tents and take bucket showers, which is very different from my normal life. This was hard at first, but honestly bucket showers are fun and living in a tent isn't that bad at all.
I have many stories of the things that have been happening, but I have two that really stick out. One story was of a healing that I was a witness to. This guy at training camp was on a hike, and he stepped between two logs and fell forward, messing up his ankle pretty badly. This guy was a football player and played on sprained ankles all the time, but in this situation he needed to be physically carried down the mountain. His ankle was black and blue, and he was going to need to go to the doctor. Adventures in missions gave him some crutches for the meantime, but it was safe to say that he was pretty upset and frustrated. Many people had come to pray over him, but there were no healings or signs of improvement. He was so frustrated with this and with god that he had begun to refuse prayer for his ankle. This all changed, however, when his entire squad walked over to him in a line for food and decided to pray over him regardless of what he said. And praise God, because the Lord healed him! All discoloration went away and this guy started jumping up and down after throwing his crutches on the ground. Crazy! The Lord is so good!
Okay, now another story I have is of my first evangelism trip. My entire squad went on a bus and journeyed down to some parking lot with a ton of stores to go and share the Good News. We paired up in groups of two, and me and my friend Thomas grouped up. We were letting the Holy Spirit completely guide us that day, so we went into prayer right off the bus to try to find out where the Lord wanted us. The Lord revealed to me and Thomas the same person, so we walked over to this guy sitting next to the entrance of a store and went to go talk to him. He spoke only Spanish, so me and my high school only Spanish skills were humbled pretty bad, but thankfully Thomas was fluent. The man we were talking to knew Jesus and was in a Christian AA group, which was great to hear, but he didn't have a church that he went to. We gave him directions to the nearest church and prayed over him, which was cool. The rest of the evangelism went pretty well, praying over whoever the Holy Spirit directed us to, at least until the end of it. The Lord very randomly directed us to this auto parts store, and we were talking to the workers about God and our journey. They knew Jesus, and so they all prayed over us and talked to us for a while. Then, the owner of the store looks at us and starts talking about this place in the woods where there are some dangerous and crazy people who do not know God. He said that the police won't even go in there, and that we should definitely not go. However, he was very specific about how to get there, which I believe was the Holy Spirit guiding me and my friend. So me and my friend left the store, and with the conviction from the Holy Spirit, walk into the woods. It was probably the most spiritually oppressed I've ever been, it just felt so heavy and crushing. The Lord was giving me and my friend strength the whole time, and we had been in constant prayer walking through the woods. Then, we see these two people farther up, and we approach them. One lady is completely possessed, and another man was there with her. I was definitely scared, and after attempting to talk to them, me and Thomas began to leave the woods due to time purposes. This was so frustrating, and I can't even begin to explain what I was feeling here. We went into prayer before we walked out, and met up with our squad leader and told them what happened. Instead of leaving on the bus that we had ridden to get here, we went into a time of prayer and God gave us the armor of God to go back into the woods with our squad leader.
This next time in the woods, the Lord had filled me with so much more boldness, strength, and peace. Both Thomas and my squad leader felt the same. The Holy Spirit continued to guide us further into the woods, until we reached this clearing in the woods where there was a massive homeless community. We approached this man name Kenny, who was old and struggling to move a cart back to his tent. He was a previous addict who had found the Lord about 7 months ago, and it was so inspiring to hear how grateful he was for all the Lord had given him despite him being homeless. He was talking for at least 10 minutes about all the Lord had done for him recently, which was just crazy. We helped him move his cart and helped him move some stuff in there, then we said a prayer and gave him a bible because he did not have one. We continued to walk around and prayed over another man at the homeless community, then the Holy Spirit guided us out of the woods and into a bus driven by adventures and missions to get us home.
I don't know if I explained that well, but it is so cool to see how The Lord moves here. Spiritually, I've never been more alive and the Lord is working in my life. Praise God, and I hope you are all doing well!
