Boot Camp

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words… if they’re right, you better buckle up cause this is going to be a lonnggg post.

Last week I talked more about my personal thoughts and experiences over the first week of training, and now I thought I’d just talk (with pictures) about what it’s actually been like to live out of a tent. Getting adjusted has been hard in a lot of ways, but very good in many more. One of the coolest things about it is that you learn an appreciation for the simple things, like bucket showers and hand washing your clothes – something I very much did not enjoy whenever I had to do it back home. Also an appreciation for the luxuries, like actual toilets and sinks. The absence of all these things was hard to get used to, but honestly, some of my best prayer times over the last few weeks have been when I’m just sitting there scrubbing away at one of my socks. It clears my mind in a way not much else does.

Let’s get into the pictures.

First of all, we have an aesthetic picture of me gracefully dipping my shirt into a five gallon Home Depot bucket of water:

And here, some clothes hanging up to dry with a giant joro spider to keep them company:

 

These are the showers we get to use twice a week:

And here are the bucket showers I use every morning:

These things are actually amazing. All you have to do it fill up one of those big buckets with the hose and then use the little cup to dump it over your head. That first cold cup right when you wake up in the morning is my new favorite feeling.

 

Here are our bathrooms:

And our sinks…

(Don’t worry, we have actual sinks to brush our teeth, but this is the hand-washing station)

 

We call this place the cul de sac. Basically it’s where most of the boy’s tents are (these are the ones that survived the rain)

This is the rest of the boy’s tents and all the girl’s tents (again, the ones that survived the rain)

If you look closely, you can see the hammock triangle on the right side. We got them stacked five high.

 

And here are the tents that didn’t survive the rain: (mines the green one)

Funny story about this… so last night, I was just snoozing away, and around 3am the rain woke me up. I registered in my brain that it was raining, and had this uneasy feeling that I left something important of mine outside that was getting wet. I was only half conscious though, so I just went back to sleep. The rain woke me up again at 5:15, and I guess I was processing stuff in my sleep cause this time I shot up, threw off my sleeping bag, unzipped my tent, and zipped up my rain fly. Unfortunately, it was too late. There was already a sizeable puddle of water sitting in the entrance to my tent. So besides my tent, somewhere in that picture is my pack, my camping pad, and my tent footprint. yes, rain is all of our arch-enemies over here. It’s ok though, we have a lot of sun the next few days so it’ll dry.

 

Finally, here’s the dining deck:

Three meals a day are provided for us, so each squad swaps off doing dishes afterward.

 

And now the bonus picture – my view right now writing this blog:

We set up a makeshift pickleball court in the driveway of the main office building.

 

That’s all the pictures I have, but I have one more story that I couldn’t leave out about something we did yesterday (Sat 9/17/23). We did this thing called manhike. Basically all the guys were split up into their teams of eight or so, and were shown this .7 mile trail through thick woods, steep gravel hills, and mud. We were given a giant monster truck tire (a few hundred pounds), and smaller tractor tire (also pretty darn heavy), and a big log. Each team had to take every big object around one time, and every lap one person has to be blindfolded, and one person has to be crab walking. We had to do one lap per large object and then one for each person on our team (because everyone was also supposed to be carried at least once, so it added up to 11 total). On top of that, we had to do 100 pushups and 100 squats per person per team (so 700 of each among our team). It was pouring down rain. It felt like army bootcamp, it was awesome. My team couldn’t quite finish in the four hours we were given, but it was the biggest bonding experience we’ve ever had. We walked out of that thing muddy, beat up, scraped up, and feeling even more like brothers. It was one of the hardest but coolest things I’ve ever done, cause it really forced us to lean in and on each other (sometimes literally) and really pushed us all together as a team and as brother in Christ.

Thanks again for reading.

 

In Christ,

Jackson

---

 

email me: [email protected]

whatsapp: 678-448-7943