Jul
6
Becoming Equipped
Filed Under AIA Track & Field Ministry
This last month flew by. I was ready for it to being over, as far as being the one in charge and making all the decisions, but I was not ready for all my people to leave. For the past 12 hours I have felt lonely and a void. Spending a month with 3-9 people constantly makes you get used to people and when they’re gone, you can’t help but to notice the emptiness.
But anyway, I have decided to break up my trip into six different categories and blog about each one on consecutive days, in order to do my trip some justice, as well as post some pics. Today I’ll start with Training Camp.
Training Camp is a week of spiritual training to get everyone ready to head out to the mission field.We shared our Training Camp with the two volleyball teams and the tennis team and before we dove into our spiritual training, we had some fun bonding time out at the challenge course!
Once the other teams arrived, it was time to get down to business. We covered various topics like evangelism, sharing the gospel and how to integrate your faith and your sport. We cover the 5 AIA principles: Audience of One (God owns you and your sport), Inside Game (God’s love is the maximum motivation), Holy Sweat (God provides resources for spiritual training to cultivate Christ-like character), Hurtin for Certain (God allows pain and trials to deepen your character for Him), and Victory Beyond Competition (God’s playing field extends beyond your competition).We had speakers covering each one.
During Training Camp, the track & field teams participated in the SPECIAL (topic of tomorrow’s blog).
AIA Track Team USA:
Neil McArdle, David McArdle, Nicholas Cook, Ryan Chapman, Mike Crowhurst
Jodi Tarasewicz, Priscilla Senyah, Louise Duffus
For me, Training Camp was a lot of running around, chasing paper work and making sure everyone was taken care of. One of my goals for this trip was to experience God in a new way and that definitely happened that first week. A couple days before the trip, one of the girls had decided not to join our team, due to the fact that her support for the trip was not coming in. But we serve an amazing God and He wanted her to be a part of this experience. I need to set up the scene here a wee bit, so you are able to understand how this was totally God. I had a softball game the Tuesday before everything began and I told my team I’d see them in 3 weeks. They were all like, “what? what’s going on?” and I explained that I would be on project for the next month. Most of them had heard of AIA before, so they understood. I said I would send them my prayer calendar so they could be praying for us on the trip. In my email I sent out, I asked for prayers for this girl and her support. The next morning, one of the women emailed me and said she’d like to help out. I thanked her and said I’d get back to her when she arrived. The VERY NEXT email I opened was the one from the girl saying she had decided not to come. I was a bit heartbroken. The days came and went quickly, as everyone else started arriving. It was Friday night and we had just finished our team times – talking about our specific projects and what to expect and dividing up roles. It is 10:30 on a Friday night and my office phone rings. I’m thinking, “who is calling my office phone this late?” It was the lady I play softball with and she wanted to know how much my girl needed for the trip. I had not had a chance to get back to her and informed her that she had decided not to come. This lady asked me flat out if she gave the amount for the trip, would she be able to come. The words out of my mouth: “Are you serious?” I was so taken aback at what was happening. That doesn’t happen every day that someone so willingly is wanting to help someone they’ve never even met. All I could do was praise God for being our Jehovah-Jireh.
It was a good reminder for me that our God keeps His promises and He will always take care of His children. He has a plan for us and for our world and one way or another, His plan will be laid out perfectly.