HEY EVERYONE!!
Now begins the new series of blogs for my squad leading trip to South Africa! I want to update about the last two weeks, which consisted of leader training and the first week of training camp.
Leader training was a crazy roller coaster, but God pulled through so much. I had my friend Carter from M Squad, who’s leading a gap year, on my flight to training. We flew from Denver to Chicago, spent the night in the airport, left at 5:00am to fly to Atlanta, then waited in the airport for 8 hours to get picked up. That travel was wild but awesome. The first morning of leader training I got stripped down during worship. Feelings of insecurity, insignificance, and unworthiness flooded over me. I realized how far my identity truly has been from the Lord where I’ve been hiding in approval from people and living out of my own strength. I was crying while we were worshipping– remembering that I’m literally just clay, the Lord is the potter, and I can’t do anything on my own. Especially fix my own heart. My heart felt like an open wound for the first few days, not only with feeling lack in confidence of my identity, but also feeling lonely. I saw how all the leadership teams were getting to know each other, and I was there preparing to lead alone. There was little Alleah: feeling insecure and lonely. THEN things started to get easier. I had so much support from the other leaders and staff covering me in prayer. With the overwhelming training sessions, I started finding my footing again with Jesus. Sure enough, 4 days later my co-leader Wesley arrived to the camp. He had just gone on this exact trip as a racer in January, and he gave his last minute yes to be here and lead. I am SO thankful for him, and also my mentor Raquel, and other semesters leaders Ellie and Michael. Even though the South Africa and South America leader slots had been filled, we were still missing leaders for Southeast Asia. BUT GOD PROVIDED BIG TIME!!! A few days later we got Lianne, then Matt. Our team for semesters went from 3 to 6 in a matter of days, and I’m just blown away at how the Lord is so faithful. I’m so grateful for all the leaders and even though this week was hard, it was so good and refining.
That next Friday, August 29th… the racers arrived.
What a full circle moment. This exact time last year I was here just a scared girl trying to act confident out of her own identity she tried to build up. Praise God for how He’s changed my life. This past week has been a lot. There are an abundance of things in the background that I had no idea were a thing, so I’ve been humbled. We only have two weeks here as opposed to four which is interesting and a little hard in its own way. Just lots and lots of stuff to fit into our last couple days here. God has been mooooovvvviiinnnngg on my squad already. Marcus and I are on the same squad!!! It’s been so sweet. I could not be more grateful that he’s here. It’s been so cool watching the Lord already transform and wreck his world. We have 9 people on our squad: 5 girls and 4 guys, which is such an awesome balance. I’m seeing God already change their hearts too, so I’m thankful.
Ready for the second and last week of training camp. We leave for Africa on Thursday!!! I’m so excited for what God is going to do.
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