Adventures At Training Camp

These are some things that we did during the last few weeks of training camp before we left for North Carolina.

Squad Wars,

We did squad wars on September 10th. It was an exciting day of competition. How it worked, one expedition, two gap, three semester, all fighting for the win. The war included four competitions between the squads. Dodgeball, wearing a t shirt that had been frozen into a cube (yes really), a relay race, and a squad dance. Each squad had been practicing their dances for a week leading up to the day. The actual competition started after lunch, so before the competition we had time to prepare, by wearing lots of blue gear. Gotta represent the squad. For Dodgeball, 10 brave representatives from each squad had to fight. 2v2, then 2v2, then the losing teams fought for 3rd and the wining teams fought for 1st. We got second! Semesters won dodgeball. Next up was the frozen T shirt challenge. I don’t remember who won that but our T shirt was so frozen that we ended up ripping the shirt in half. After that challenge was the whole squad relay race. It included a slip-n-slide that every person had to go down, then we had to move water form one bucket to another with sponges, then a throwing competition, and to top it off we had to stack blocks onto someone to spell out a word (the word was “World Race”). As you might of guessed this was all very chaotic, but awesome. Here’s the kicker, C squad(us) and D squad(the other gap) tied! So, we had to fight it out with good ol’ rock paper scissors. Joshua and Tony, C and D, for one final battle. And…….Joshua won!!! But, we still had to do our dances, after days of hard preparation we did our dances. The dances were for the squad wars win, and who had the best dance. For the dance we got second, D squad got first. Hey we got the podium. And finally, for squad wars 2025…………WE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! By 10 points. So we definitely get bragging rights for the rest of the trip.

Mount Yonah,

We hiked up mount Yonah on September 16th. We were given the option to bring what we want. Some people brought their big packs with everything they had. Most people brought daypacks. I brought my daypack, sleeping bag, and a pillow. The hike up was two miles and some people had to carry up coolers with our dinner. The hike was a lot of rocks. I would’ve thought that living in Colorado would have given me a speed boost, but no. Some people got up in an hour, others got up in 4 hours. I got to the top around an hour and a half from starting. We were able to hang out and take pictures and look at the sun set. It turned out to be a very rewarding hike. For dinner we cooked hot dogs over a fire that we made. Remember how I said I brought my sleeping bag and a pillow. That’s right I slept on the grass. Cowboy camping, and I actually had a fantastic sleep. The stargazing was wonderful. The next morning we got up at 5:30 and began making our way down just after 6 am. And the reward, stopping at chick-fil-a on the way back to Gainesville. It was an amazing experience with my squad. 

Photos above by Ethan Beatty

Sabbath day’s,

On our sabbath days which have been on Fridays we have been able to Uber off campus, which has made it easy to have more adventures. We have done things like going to the lake, coffee shop, thrifting, Texas Roadhouse, Walmart, and the greatest of them all, Pho. I was finally able to get a vermicelli bowl. 

We have were at training camp for three weeks before we left for domestic ministry. Those three weeks felt like forever but they flew by so quickly. I’m already back from domestic ministry, I’ll make another blog about that soon. I am very glad that training camp was as long as it was because it gave more time for activity’s like these. More time to grow relationships with the people that I’ll be spending the next eight months with. Thank you so much to those who are supporting me. I still need to get to 50% fundraised. My goal is to achieve this by October 4th, which is when I leave for Columbia!! Thank you all.