WDWSP12 may be done, but life continues on...

So I my summer project at Disney World is officially over, but my life will not be the same. I have made my way back to good, old Nebraska and have started the process of processing through all that has gone on this summer. I'll wrap up how project finished here first, since I these last few weeks have been so insane and draining, I have not had time to really update on the final happenings of my summer.
Since my last update, which was quite a while ago (Sorry), I had a lot of opportunities to be able to talk to people and share the gospel. One of the really cool stories was when we were doing initiative evangelism, which just means we are going out and randomly starting conversations with people to try to get the opportunity to share the gospel. My friend Aaron and I were going around, and before we started, we tried something that we had been taught to kind of just rely on God with who we were to talk to. You ask God who he would want you to talk to and the different shapes or objects that pop into your mind, sometimes give you a clue on who to talk to. Sometimes it is amazing to see how exact God works when everything that came into your mind is all about one person. I was talking to Aaron about how throughout the summer, it seemed to me that everything that I thought that God was leading me to do and people I thought God was leading me to get to know this summer seemed to not work out, and God gave me completely different people to get to know and reach out to and different roles than what I thought I would have. And just as we are talking about this while not finding anyone who fit the things I thought God had given me to find someone, we just start talking to this guy sitting on a bench. We ask him a few questions and he had an extremely high interest in wanting to know God, so we just started going through the gospel message using a little booklet that we gave him that describes it quite well. He was really engaged in it and was just so amazed at how everything worked together and how cool it was that we did not have to do good works to get to heaven, and that it was just through the grace of God that we could get there. We don't have to do anything besides accept that God has sent his Son to pay the wages of our sin, which is death. And that He rose again and conquered death. Unfortunately he then had to go to work, so we didn't get to ask him if this was something he wanted to do now, but if it is in God's plan, it will happen. One random, kind of cool thing that happened while we were sharing with him was that as we were going through the gospel, we found out his name because when we were talking about how we were Christians, he said that his name was Christian, and then as we were going through a verse in Romans, he said that his last name was Roman. It was kind of weird, but what a cool name, Christian Roman!
Throughout the last half of the summer project, I had the opportunity to disciple 3 awesome guys and co-lead a co-ed Bible Study. These were great ways for me to really get to put into practice my gifts of leadership in our summer project environment in ways that were new to me. I know that I failed to do somethings in my responsibilities, and I know that not everything that I said was perfect, but I was blessed by the encouragement that I got from the people in Bible Study. I pray that I was able to help people really understand the gospel, either for the first time, or in a better way. We had coworkers, who are Christians and those who weren't, attending our Bible Study and so I tried to make sure that the gospel was clearly presented every week, because really everything comes back to the gospel that is important in life. It changes, transforms, alters lives. I have heard good things about it from others, so I pray that God would have really used me this summer through that. And my guys who I got to disciple, I couldn't have asked for a more diverse, interesting, challenging group of guys for me. I loved it and wouldn't have wanted it any other way! The accountability, talking about life back home, life on project, knowing God better, and just everything was something that I really enjoyed. Even though it was my role to build them up and teach them, the opposite is also true, and for me since I got to meet with all of them, I think that I got more out of it in total than they did. I am really grateful for these opportunities that I was given and I know that they will help me in the next few years back at school at UNO, building into other guys at Cru and people in general.
The last week and a half of work, we were making so many friends and so it was really sad to have to leave since there were so many people that we were just getting to know. I was really good at my job the last few weeks of work, so that when there would be new people working PAC or people who had just picked up the shift, the coordinators would ask me to help them out and explain what they needed to do and how to do it effectively. This was something that was really helpful for me, because it just gave me such an easy opportunity to start talking to the people and I could get to talk about why I and the other people on project were down working at Disney this summer and a lot of times that would lead into deeper conversations. I am glad that I was placed into the position that I was, because honestly it was the most fun thing that I could have done and gave me so many opportunities to grow. Then the end of project was soon in sight... The last few days of work when we were having to tell people that we were almost done with our program at Disney, it blew me away how many people were sad that we were leaving and the impact that we were able to have is more than anything that we can see right now, and it will only be realized when we are with God in Heaven. All the coworkers, even ones that I didn't think we had really gotten to know were sad that we were leaving, and quite a few of the coordinators were disappointed that we were leaving. There were people who really wanted us to try to extend our time there, and honestly if it was realistic, possible with my educational plans, and I didn't have some of the responsibilities that I have back here at home, I would have loved to stay there for a lot longer and get to know the people there a lot more. I think that if you have not been on this project, you will not understand how much of an opportunity we had to really impact peoples lives while we were down at Disney World. Unfortunately you cannot understand because you have not been here and not seen how broken of a place it is and how the people down here just really need to be loved and cared for like only God can do, and in this case, that is via us on the summer project. You cannot see how much the people really didn't want us to leave and how much they really cared for us and how much we really cared for them. I have been so blessed this summer to get to know a bunch of people who were on this project with me and all the coworkers that I got the chance to know. I hope to keep in contact with them and still have an impact even though I am no longer at Disney World. I have learned so much about myself, loving others, being a man of God, and living life intentionally all the time this summer, and I will not be the same as life continues on post-WDWSP12. I miss all my friends that I have made over the last 10 weeks, and hope to see you all again! PPD (Post Project Depression) has set in, but I am glad that I got the opportunity to get to know all the people I did this summer!
This concludes Andrew's crazy summer of 2012 with traveling to Italy, living in Florida and working at Walt Disney World, and living on mission for God throughout the summer. I hope that you all have enjoyed my blog and even though this is a wrap up blog, I may post another blog or two after more processing has been done, because I have learned so much over the summer, it is hard to even realize it all now. I will definitely not be the same after this summer because of the awesome experiences that I have had, the incredible people I have met, and the ways that God has changed me and my heart. Thanks for reading everyone!

Opportunities abound

Project is down to the last week and a half of work; it is so crazy to think about! These last couple of weeks have been so awesome and I believe we have finally been able to make an eternal impact on people here at Walt Disney World. The last few weeks we have developed some great friendships with some of our coworkers. We have had the opportunity to hang out with them a few times and we have gotten the chance to share the gospel with a few of them.

For me personally, the coolest story of my summer as far as sharing the gospel with someone happened this last week. There are a lot of Brazilian tour groups that come to Disney World and so Disney hires what they call "Brazilian Supergreeters." I had one of them, Gustavo, who just came up to me while I was working PAC a couple of weeks ago, and we just really got to talking the whole time we were working. He gave me his contact info and then we got to talking on Facebook, and I saw him everyday for a few and he kept asking me when we had a day off so that we could hang out. Unfortunately we have not had one until today since two Sundays ago, but we had one day where we got off "early" aka 9pm, so we decided that we could hang out that evening at Downtown Disney. I brought along one of the women that is in my carpool group, and he brought a girl that had just started working at Disney earlier that week. After we finally figured out a place that would serve us, we ended up in the Raglan Road Irish Pub and Restaurant. We ordered food and then started talking just about our lives. I had been praying for the opportunity to share the gospel with him, because it has really been on my mind to just get as many people exposed to it as possible. I just was asking him about his life and what he believed. He is gay and says that he just wants to find happiness in life. He used to be catholic, but now chooses to believe in different parts of different religions that he agrees with. Just by asking him a lot of questions and then getting the chance to respond for myself, I was able to share the gospel with him. I talked about how Jesus came to earth to pay the price for our sins and how he died in our place so that we could live with God forever and how God give grace to us all for the things that we have done. After our conversation about all sorts of things like purpose for life, love, and much more, he thanked me for the conversation and I thanked him for it as well. The girls had been talking, while we were outside because Gustavo wanted to smoke, and she mentioned that they couldn't believe that I was so friendly and kind to him even though I was not gay and was a Christian. This was one of the best compliments I have ever received, because it is only through God that I could be showing someone God's love like that when so many other people don't seem to care. I am still talking to him almost every day and I am just praying that God will work in his heart. Now is the time where I have to let the Holy Spirit work while continuing to show him God's love.

There have been many other good times and spiritual conversations in these last few weeks, and I am just trying to use my time as best I can while I am here for the last few weeks of project. That is part of why I haven't been able to keep this updated as much as I would like to, but I know that God has been working in a lot of situations this summer with all of the people here on summer project at Walt Disney World.

I love to see how God works!

Well, I haven't updated again in a while, so I will try to not make this too long, partially because of how long these get and partially because I find myself pretty busy and wanting to use my time here the best I can.
It has taken a little while, but finally after being pushed and asking God for help, I can say that we have really started to get to know some coworkers and are hopefully getting some opportunities to hang out and be able to talk to them about life. I just want my passion for Christ to be evident to them all and that God loves them for who they are and wants a relationship with them as well. There are a lot of really awesome and interesting people here, and I really do want to get to know them and enjoy the time that we will hopefully get to hang out. Lately, my whole carpool group has been doing an awesome job with getting to know people and getting their contact info, so that we can invite them to hang out or come to project stuff. All of us have stuff in our lives that we are having to deal with, but through God's power, we have been able to keep going after people and hopefully we will get great opportunities to share the gospel with them.
It has been incredible to see how God has answered prayers for me just in the last week. For the last week, I had been wanting to see one of my coworkers who was really cool and we had some common interests, but for some reason we were never scheduled together, so I missed my opportunity to invite him to the scavenger hunt that we had around the Magic Kingdom this last Wednesday. I had been praying that I would see him before that so that I could get his contact info and invite him, but God was working in the situation in a completely different way. Ironically after we were done with the scavenger hunt and just walking around the Magic Kingdom, I ran into him and I think it was his girlfriend. Anyway, it gave me a way better opportunity to get his number and ask him if he wanted to hang out sometime. In the past, I haven't really been good with just being able to do this type of stuff, and God knew that this situation would be the best for me to be able to do this. Another situation that was really neat for me to see God working was when we were in the Magic Kingdom, one of my friends has a tough situation at work that we weren't really sure how it would work out, so when we ran into a situation there right after the scavenger hunt, I was quick to get her away from the situation and start praying for her. I was praying that she would be calmed by God's peace and that He would help her through it, and then when she talked to me the next day, she said that everything was okay and that she didn't have too much trouble, even in that situation. I just love seeing how God is working here and I hope that he continues to bless us in our efforts to share his love. It is tough being the first group ever from Cru to work in the "attractions" part of the Magic Kingdom, because no one even knows that our program exists, so we have huge opportunity to show what we are all about, but also have it hard to establish ourselves in such a large group when there are only 4 of us. I think that people are starting to take notice of us and how we work, and so I think that God is finally starting to help us establish a little, for lack of a better term, "credibility." We are here with Cru, formerly "Campus Crusade for Christ," and we want to share God's love to all the people working here! I hope that we can continue to do this even though it is challenging.

Philippians 4:13

"I can do all this through him who gives me strength."

Mid-way through...

It is crazy to think that we are already halfway through our summer project down here at Disney World, but it is also crazy to think that we still have half of it left! Last night was our Mid-way project banquet, which was a time to thank the staff for everything that they have done, now that they will be leaving us, and also it was a celebration of what is still yet to be done with students stepping up into the leadership roles and really taking ownership of the project and its purpose.

This last week has been insanely busy trying to balance work, talking to people, figuring out how all the leadership stuff will work out, and just the normal project activities that we have going on. We finally have gotten into a little bit of a groove with how our schedule for work is, so that has been one of the positives of the last couple of weeks. We are now working 5 days of the week, with Wednesday off to devote just to project and one other day off of work. It has been really good for us to actually get into a normal schedule at  work, so that we can truly get to know our coworkers and develop those relationships. We have really started to get to know some of the people there that we see on a regular basis. Now we are trying to figure out how we can really get to know them on a more personal level by hanging out with them outside of work situations. I am really excited to see how we can actually get into these people's lives and really share the love of Christ with them.

My carpool group has had to deal with some really odd, awkward situations at work with one of our coordinators at work, so a prayer request would be for that situation to be resolved quickly. We desire to share the love of Christ with everyone there, so we want to be as much of an example of how Christ would treat people while we are working.

At work this week, it was the 4th of July celebration on the 3rd and the 4th, but since the 4th was on a Wednesday, we didn't have to work on one of the busiest days of the year for the Magic Kingdom. We did get the opportunity to work on July 3rd, so me and my carpool group did get to experience some of the busyness of the holiday. At first, when we got assigned our positions on for the parades and fireworks, I was a little disappointed because I was assigned to the bypass, so I didn't think that I would really get to interact with the guests as much and help them out, but then I volunteered to work as one of the people who would be positioned at the entrance to the bypass and keep track of the amount of people who came into the bypass from my entrance. This was cool because I got to be out on the edge of the entrance and still help guests out with questions. In fact, I even got the opportunity to help out a lady and her older son with several disabilities with a request for a restroom where both of them could be in at the same time. Me and one of my coworkers blocked off the men's restroom, since it is less used, and directed other guest to other restrooms while they used it. It just so happened that my manager walked by while we were doing this and was wondering why I wasn't exactly where I was assigned, and after I explained it to him, he gave me a Great Service Fanatic (GSF) card. It is the first one that I have received that I actually earned. (While we were training, the manager gave us one when we first operated the turnstiles). It is always encouraging to be affirmed that I was doing a good thing, because most of the time if people do these things, it goes unnoticed since there isn't a manager around most of the time.

Today, the staff has actually left, so it is finally becoming a reality that we are now the ones who are operating this project and they are not here to work with us. The responsibility is now more a reality than it seemed to be just even last night when we were saying the things that we really appreciated about the different staff members. I am going to miss the talks that I had with my discipler Chad and my discipler at UNO Lee, but I am excited to get to go even deeper with the other people here on project and grow in my relationship with Christ. I am glad to say that I have definitely been figuring out a lot about myself and my relationship with Christ that I had not actualized before now. Chad made me a "vision plan" for me personally relating to what he saw in me as strengths and areas where I can improve. It was encouraging for me to see that what God had been just recently teaching me, were the same things that Chad encouraged me to grow in, so it is always awesome to see affirmation in what God is teaching me. He brings up things over and over for me, on purpose, and even though I hate the fact that I have lots of things to work on, it is an encouragement that I am listening to the right things that God has been revealing to me so far this summer.

Galatians 5:1 "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery."

I have been figuring out how I have not really been myself most of my life, and that through Christ and the freedom that he gives, I just need to courageously be me and leave what happens with my life up to Christ. I can say that the 7-8 months of my life, I have been myself more than I ever had been for an extremely long time, and even thought it is still a struggle, I am becoming more of myself as I grow in Christ.

Here's to the 2nd half of summer project and trusting God for what he will do with it. I'm out!

Men's Time "I'm a man; I'm 40! Come after me!"

Wednesday was full of wilderness, swamps, alligators, and manly activities. This week our project day was just devoted to Men's and Women's time, so we headed out to a state park and camping area to have our men's time learning about what it takes to be a MAN!

For men (especially me), competition can really bring to the surface exactly what is in our heart at that time, so whether or not the staff put us in these situations completely purposefully, it was something that I really noticed in myself and hit me hard. While we were competing during men's time, I was getting frustrated a little bit, and it was more with my attitude than anything, but I'm sure that it came out towards others. I've been a little frustrated with some things that were just really bothering me, and I had been trying to work through them, but this realization was probably the biggest help for me to go along with my desire to have the attitude of Christ in all things.

Now to actually talk about what the staff had more intended for us to learn from our men's time...

We have been covering what it means to really be a man and a man of God with the acronym RACE. We have been covering a different letter each week and we finished up since the staff will be leaving us soon.

R- Reject Passivity
A- Accept Responsibility
C- Courageously Lead
E- Expect God's Greater Rewards

Each one of these areas in our lives really impacts the way we treat our friends, family, loved ones, coworkers, and everyone we meet. Fact of life: men are different than women! ...Oh, good one there Andrew! Thank you for pointing that one out for me... But really, this is important to recognize, that there are roles that each one needs to fill and step up to the task because we were designed this way. Men today have in a lot of ways gotten away from what we were designed to do. Being a man is definitely not about age, physical abilities, a deep voice, or chest hair... It is easy for a guy to just sit back, be lazy, and just do what he wants. Rejecting Passivity is the first part to what we need to do to become a man. A man's role is to be a leader for others, and being passive towards what needs to be done is definitely a no-no. This kind of ties in with the next part of Accepting Responsibility. In life there are responsibilities that will need to be fulfilled and we as men need to step up to the challenge set before us. What man doesn't like a good challenge? I would say that a real man, one following after God, should always be up to battle the challenges of life set before us. As a man, I want challenges, adventures, battles, and struggles. I've got some other news: the Christian life doesn't have to be, and shouldn't be boring! It should be filled with fun, adventure, facing fears, trusting God, and leading through the unknown. We as men were also designed to Courageously Lead. Now this does not mean that there should be a dictatorship or lording over others, but as a servant willing to help others and follow our commander, Christ! Christ's love for us is great and all, but for men, we want someone great who we can follow after. This is something that gets overlooked by many people in the church today, and I agree with the staff on project, that in some ways this alienates men. It is all about Jesus' love for us, but that does not have as great of an appeal as a great commander who leads by sacrifice and serving to do what is best for us.

1 Timothy 1:12 "For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day."

Now since we know that we were designed as men to do these things, what's next? Well, Expecting God's Greater Rewards, of course! If we come to realize that in all things that we do, when we are living for things with eternal significance, the rewards are greater. God will bless us far beyond what we can ever obtain here on earth, and that in itself should be motivation to live for God. We all strive and seek for others approval, so why not seek for the one who approval really matters? Live for Christ, not out of obligation of some religious activities, but because you love God and want to follow Him as your leader, and expect Him to reward you for following him well! These are just a summary of what we learned, my thoughts on it, and what I hope that I can follow through with in my own life, living to be a real man of God.

During our men's time day, we complete athletically in different races throughout our day, and then compared the similarities to these races and how we are to live the race of life seeking after God. We were challenged in areas that most men have struggles in and were told flat out how it affects you: spiritually, psychologically, and literal changing in our brains. Great instruction and accountability passed down from men seeking after God, to us college guys seeking to become men of God. We of course had food, because it cannot be a men's time if there is no food, and we really challenged to make sure that we understood what it looks like to be a man of God and if we wanted to commit to being a man. I am extremely grateful to all the staff men for the challenges that they have given us and the instruction, so that we can go hard after God.

2 Timothy 4:6-8

“For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day —and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”

A little project switchup

Well, again I have not updated my blog in a while, so this may be a pretty lengthy blog. We have had quite a bit happen since I last updated, so I'll start where I left off.

On Friday, we had our 2nd real work shift of PAC, and it sure was interesting. It was raining most of Friday, so we were not sure if there was going to be a parade, but it finally did slow down enough that it was only delayed about 10 minutes. In situations like this, they have tuggers parked along the parade rout in case the floats were to get stuck, which is going to happen when the pavement is wet. I was working a position on one of the corners where I needed to keep it clear for an emergency walkway and I also had to lay down space for where one of the tuggers would be and keep it clear until the tugger arrived. Once the parade started, I had to constantly be telling people that they could not stand on the corner or the walkway since it is our emergency path. People see an open spot and even though every single possible space anywhere near there is full, they think that there is some empty space right up front just left for them... It doesn't make sense to me as to why people would think that everywhere else would be packed and there would be empty space for them to stand, but I guess I am no psychologist... Haha! Anyway, there were several floats that did end up getting stuck going up the hill right by my tugger, so we had to get him out there and pull it up the hill. By the end of the parade, it had finally stopped raining, and my cleanup position was to take the stanchions out in the West part of the parade rout, so I follow along right behind the float and pull them out of the ground as quickly as I can to stay in pace with the parade. I enjoy doing this part, and I get to work with different people than who I was working with on the parade rout earlier. It apparently can also be dangerous, because my counterpart taking the stanchions from the opposite side of the parade fell down and hit his head pretty good and probably got a concussion from it, so he could probably use some prayer... After we had done this for the 9pm parade, we do it all over again for the 11pm one, but it is not nearly as busy. It was an interesting day of work, and hopefully I get to see some of the people I was working with again.

The next few days we had off of work, so I just spent the time we had off from project activities working on stuff for project, resting, and hanging out with other project people.

For some reason, my carpool group was having problems with our schedule and not getting very many hours, and if we don't have very many hours, it is hard to develop relationships with our coworkers, so it is kind of imperative. As of today, we have finally gotten that straightened out, so now it will be more consistent and we will have better opportunities.

Monday was a very weird day overall, but there were good and bad things that happened. Unfortunately we lost one of our guys from project because he had some issues that he needed to take care of at home, so that was sad. Some other weird things happened as well, but then that evening, since I had not really gotten to know any of my coworkers too well yet, I went with one the other carpool groups to hang out with them and one of their coworkers, who also brought along her roommate. We went to go see a really weird movie, which just added to the weirdness of the day, we grabbed some dinner, and just hung around downtown Disney. It was really a good time and I hope that they can continue to build a relationship with her.

Tuesday was another interesting day because since the staff will be leaving here in a week or so, they are choosing leaders to take over positions that need to be filled and they announced them before we went off for evangelism Tuesday morning. We have a few new project leaders and new people who will be leading the men's and women's times, discipleship and bible study leaders, and ministry team leaders. In talking to the staff, they choose people who they thought could handle the position, while also being able to learn a lot from the experience, so just because you are already good at something doesn't mean you would be put into that place, you might actually not be put there since you wouldn't get as much out of it. It is an excellent way to have people learn by the experience of taking on a position like this. I was chosen to take over for my discipler and bible study leader, since I told him that I wanted to start an all guys bible study/community group next year at UNO. Even though it would have been easier to take more of an administration role because I already have experience and am good at that, this role does give me more room to grow and improve since I don't have as much experience at doing this, so it will be a good thing for this project and for when I go back to UNO next fall. I am excited to see how I can learn from leading these dudes in discipleship and in our bible study.

One exciting story from our time evangelizing on Tuesday morning: one of the other guys on project, Kevin Spradlin and I went out together at a mall to go try to start some spiritual conversations with people, and we decided to start talking to this one guy who was originally from Germany. We just started by talking to him about the weather and random stuff, and of course Disney, because almost everyone has an opinion on it. After a while the guy said that he had to go back to work in a few minutes, because he worked in one of the stores in the mall, so I quickly transitioned into asking if he was interested in spiritual and Christian things, and he was surprisingly excited about it. He really did want to talk about it, but since he had to leave, I gave him my phone number on the back of one of our Knowing God Personally booklets and he said that he would call me on this Friday, so I am really hoping that he does. We'll see what God has in store for him.

The rest of Tuesday was work time, and this was the craziest time that I have had at work so far. I got a position where they just had made a change to it, so they did not know how it would go, and I would say that it wasn't great. For the parade, it was absolutely packed. I don't think I have seen it that full yet, and apparently it will only get worse this next week since it is the 4th of July week. The parade didn't actually go too bad, but when we had everyone move into the street for the fireworks viewing, it was a mess because people would not move into the middle of the circle area in front of the castle unless I was beckoning them right in front of them, and if I tried to do that, then people would fill in along the edge bleeding into what was supposed to be our emergency walkway. It was a mess until we finally got a few extra people to come help clear it out a little bit, but even then, there were so many people and they were so stubborn that it was difficult. After this adventure, I was pretty worn out, so it was a good that the next parade was much less packed and it was extremely easy to help people out. During work on Tuesday, I actually met a couple of people from Nebraska, so that was pretty cool. Another thing that is cool at work is that there is one girl name Mikey, who seems to really like all of us in our carpool group, so hopefully we will get a chance to get to know her better.

This post is getting ridiculously long, so I will just make a new one for our Men's time that was on Wednesday, so stay tuned, there will be more to come! Please keep me and our project in your prayers as we are making this transition soon and are trying to spread the love of God to Disney World.

Earning my ears again, and finally starting real work

Well, this blog will be kind of long since I haven't done it in a few days, so here it goes... A few days ago, Sunday and Monday, my carpool group and I have had been training for our 2nd new position as Parade Audience Control (PAC) people. I have really enjoyed the opportunity we get to interact with guests and our coworkers more in this position than in park greeter. We get to "go make friends" around our area so that we can have a easier time getting everyone to cooperate when we need to tell people to move out of the areas we need to keep clear for emergencies.
During training, we would have instruction times and then we would go out and the four of us and our trainer would man one of the positions for whatever parade is going on. We helped with the "Celebrate A Dream Come True Parade," which is at 3pm everyday, "Move It, Shake It, Celebrate It! Street Party," which happens multiple times a day, and "The Magic, The Memories, and You!" show along with the "Electrical Parade" that happens every night at least once at 9pm, most nights at 11pm as well. We get to have a lot of fun most of the time when people are being smart and staying where they need to be. We even get to dance around a little bit and just have fun during the Street Party, so it is quite entertaining. For the 9pm parade, the whole parade rout is super crowded, so it is one of the more difficult parts of our job. People want to stand everywhere, even in the emergency walkways, so we are constantly having to remind people that they cannot stand there and that they may find a place somewhere else. We are always told to give options to the guests so that they can make the best choice for them, so we almost always recommend that they either go to the town square, Frontierland, or wait for the 11pm parade if we have one, since there are not nearly as many people around for the 11pm parade. It is still fun even though some guests get very frustrated with you for telling them that they cannot do something.
As far as evangelism is going, it has been rough the last few days. On Tuesday, we went out to a mall and then downtown Celebration. Me and my group tried to talk to about 10 people and no one even wanted to talk at all and it was sort of depressing until finally the last person we tried to talk to actually let us talk to him. He was a 12 year old boy who was fishing in a lake in downtown Celebration. He was a Christian, so he gave all the typical responses to the questions we were asking, but where the situation got encouraging was when his mom actually came up to us as we were kind of winding down the conversation. She started asking us questions about what we were talking about and started explaining that one of her son's friends was asking a lot of deep questions to her, like about if she believed in God and how that affected her, and she said that she wasn't really sure how to answer some of his other questions. We were glad to talk to her and we showed her some of the information that we have to share with people about God and the website EveryStudent.com where he could type in questions that he had and it should have relevant articles to answer his questions. She was really excited about this, so hopefully she can share these with him and he will be able to have some of his questions answered and come to know God.
On Thursday, we finally started actual work, since we had finally completed all of the training that we need for a while. We arrived at work for our 6:15pm-12:15am shift; we started out working park greeter for 45 minutes, where I got assigned to sweep the whole time... Haha! Anyways, then we went up to our meeting room at 7pm for our meeting before the 9pm parade. It was interesting since it was our first time actually having to do this all by ourselves. I was assigned to Castle 1 position, where during the parade I get a spot along the top of the hub in front of the castle, and watch and make sure that everyone stays back along the curb, there are no people using camera lighting which can be dangerous for the performers, and just making sure everyone is generally safe. Once I have my spot set up, since I am not in an essential area to keep guests moving, I got to do PACtivities! It is just different games and activities that we on PAC do with the guests to entertain them and help them have an enjoyable time while they wait for the parade. One of my fellow PAC people, Alexis, who said he was from Belgium, and I started a jump rope for the kids. At first all the little kids were kind of shy about it, but as soon as we got a few of the little kids to go, we had a long line waiting for their chance to jump rope. It was a lot of fun when the crowd around got into it and would applaud the kids when they would do well. After we had done that for quite a while, we had to get ready for the parade. There were these really young brother and sister who couldn't see if they were back where they had space so since I made myself a nice big box to stand in, I had them come up next to me while the parade was going on and they were so excited to see all the characters. I had the little girl say hi to Ashley, one of the ladies who is in my group, since she was doing the parade escort, and was telling them all about all the different characters. They were so happy and excited to say hi to everyone; it made my night, and I think it made theirs as well. Then after the first parade went by, I was the river-side rope, which means that I hold onto the rope that goes behind the end of the parade while it makes its way through the 2nd half of the rout. I also am helping the person rolling up the rope so that we can keep somewhat in stride with the other side and their rope roller. After we finished up getting all of the stanchions and ropes out of the way, we got a little break before doing the whole thing over again at 11pm. Overall it was a pretty good night, now we get to do it again Friday night, tonight. Since we are finally getting the opportunity to work, hopefully we will be able to make some friends with our coworkers and get an opportunity to find out more about them and love on them with God's love.