Hello Everyone,
So the team finally made it to South Africa. We had a long day of traveling from Monday morning until midnight on Wednesday. We are 6 hours ahead of everyone back home in the states. Training camp (last week in GA) was amazing. I learned so much about God and His abilities than I ever thought possible. My whole team was there, so i finally got to meet everyone in person. I don’t know how God did it, but he put together the perfect team. Our 7 guys bonded so quickly and the 34 girls are still bonding. We all really get along well and we grew so close during camp by being vulnerable with each other, trusting each other in team builders, and conversing with each other over meals and during free time. Our schedule every day was similar during training camp: we woke up and prayed for our leaders and one of the 5 teams (since there was another FYM team going to Nicaragua, a Real Life Team going India for three months, another team going to Kenya for three months, and a third team going to Swaziland for three months) at 7:oo am. Then we had breakfast around 7:30 and from there we had quiet time with the Lord from 8:00-9:00. At 9:00 am our sessions started…from 9:00-12:30 we had two different sessions about various topics that would help quip us for ministry (childrens ministry, listening prayer, time-lines for testimonies, spiritual warfare, public speaking, relational evangelism, cultural tips, and how to minister to our leaders). These sessions had such an impact on my heart and really gave me more confidence about working in the field over in South Africa. After our sessions we would go to lunch at 12:30 and then get ready for team builders. We had team builders every day after lunch from 1-5. Since our team was so large we were split up into two groups and then we did different team builders each day with the same team that we started with. My team, on the first day, had ice breakers to try and learn everyone’s name. In one activity, we were given minor obstacles to try to overcome in the middle of throwing a water bottle around the circle tyring to beat the time that we previously made. Then we were all given the scenario of a plane crash in the middle of Canada and we had certain objects that survived and we had to rank those in order of importance and then we figured out whether we died or not based on a professional’s opinion on the matter. Some other team builders we did involved a huge spider web we had to get our whole team through only touching the string/trash/or out of bounds less than 300 times. A few of the team building sessions were used to teach us drhymes, which are dramas to music, and we learned two of them so that we could perform them in our countries and get the message of Jesus’ love out to people in the towns where we will be ministering. We also had an obstacle course relay we had to complete and then the last day our whole team of 41 got together and had to gather random materials and then our leaders gave us a task of building something off the ground that could hold our whole team and only 6 points could be touching the ground. We successfully completed the task working together as a team. It was an amazing experience to see our team grow to the point where everyone could contribute in one way or another. So each day followed that similar routine and later in the evening, from 5-6:30 we had ministry prep for our individual destinations. After ministry prep we normally had 30 mins to an hour of free time before dinner. This was when it was best to take a shower (if you could call it that) since we had no hot water and the cold water was warmest at that part of the day. 
Then following free time we had dinner and right after dinner, around 8:00 pm we had some sort of worship service. Each night we had a different speaker speak about their life experiences to help us figure out where God was in our lives and if we had any sin or guilt keeping us from being more intimate with Him. This was also a wonderful thing training camp did for us…there was a night where God jsut convicted me of sin in my life and previous sin i had never confessed before, and our leaders gave us a chance to confess it to them and pray forgiveness from it. It was such a freeing experience and i really feel like a load was lifted off my shoulders. After worship we had team time each night and this was time that our whole team got together to learn more about our leaders and each other. Some of these sessions were serious and some were light-hearted and fun. In our last session, one of the leaders suggested that we share the things that we have to leave back home that we may worry about like our family and friends. It shocked me how much baggage people had at home with parents on the verge of getting a divorce, or deaths of friends, and so many other things like that. It was amazing how everyone shared and we prayed for everyone individually that God would give them peace about it and take care of it while we were gone. After that Matt (one of our leaders) played a song about redemption and in the beginning of it he told us to ask God to break our hearts for each member of our team and i asked God to do that for everyone by name and He did. It was so wonderful that after my heart was broken for my teammate God redeemed me from it just by listening to this song and hearing the words that it offered. It was the best experience ever and it really brought our team close together. The last day at training camp we were all running around trying to get packed up for the next day of travel, doing laundry, doing walmart runs, and at the very end of the evening we had our commissioning service. It was one of the most eye opening experiences i have ever had. I told some people that just going to this training camp had already changed my life and my perceptions of Christ and my place in His world.
Then following free time we had dinner and right after dinner, around 8:00 pm we had some sort of worship service. Each night we had a different speaker speak about their life experiences to help us figure out where God was in our lives and if we had any sin or guilt keeping us from being more intimate with Him. This was also a wonderful thing training camp did for us…there was a night where God jsut convicted me of sin in my life and previous sin i had never confessed before, and our leaders gave us a chance to confess it to them and pray forgiveness from it. It was such a freeing experience and i really feel like a load was lifted off my shoulders. After worship we had team time each night and this was time that our whole team got together to learn more about our leaders and each other. Some of these sessions were serious and some were light-hearted and fun. In our last session, one of the leaders suggested that we share the things that we have to leave back home that we may worry about like our family and friends. It shocked me how much baggage people had at home with parents on the verge of getting a divorce, or deaths of friends, and so many other things like that. It was amazing how everyone shared and we prayed for everyone individually that God would give them peace about it and take care of it while we were gone. After that Matt (one of our leaders) played a song about redemption and in the beginning of it he told us to ask God to break our hearts for each member of our team and i asked God to do that for everyone by name and He did. It was so wonderful that after my heart was broken for my teammate God redeemed me from it just by listening to this song and hearing the words that it offered. It was the best experience ever and it really brought our team close together. The last day at training camp we were all running around trying to get packed up for the next day of travel, doing laundry, doing walmart runs, and at the very end of the evening we had our commissioning service. It was one of the most eye opening experiences i have ever had. I told some people that just going to this training camp had already changed my life and my perceptions of Christ and my place in His world.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen in temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:18
