Crazy days

The last few days have been pretty crazy and a whirlwind... On Wednesday we started off with a little lesson and some testimonies on time management. It is increasingly crucial that we have this as we are starting our training and work schedule at Disney while trying to manage project activities and our own walk with God. As I said earlier, if you don't want to be challenged physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, then don't go on a summer project! After we finished that little time, we headed over to the Cru International Headquarters in Orlando. It was really neat to see the amazing things that are going on all over the world with their ministries and really encouraging to me. It was amazing for me to find out that they have translated the "Jesus Film" into over 1000 languages! They are just doing some great work to try to reach the whole world with the gospel and I get to be a part of that this summer with all the people from around the world coming to Disney World. Since we got a taste of this mission, the staff gave us some time to have fun, but also to realize that every time we go to the park, we should be going with a purpose. We were told to go to Epcot last night and go explore, but talk to all the cast members there. In Epcot, they have a bunch of different nations with exhibits and the people working them are from the country they are trying to represent. We were supposed to go talk to them and make connections, maybe invite them to hang out, or just love on them. My buddy Nick and I decided to go off and see if we could just talk to a bunch of people in the short amount of time we had. We were able to have quite a few good conversations and we were even asked by a guy in "France" to come back and talk later after his store got less busy, so we did and were able to give him our numbers, so hopefully we will be able to build a relationship with him. It was really awesome to see how receptive they were to talking to us, so I just am hoping that we can build a lot of relationships quickly.
(Quick side note, we saw Topher Grace at Epcot, the first celebrity actor I have ever seen in person.)

Then today, we had our first day of training for our positions in the Magic Kingdom. We had to wake up really early in the morning, so it has been a long day. We were shown all around the Magic Kingdom because we need to familiarize ourselves with the whole park so that we can assist guests in the best way possible. I have already learned more about Disney than I ever thought I would in my whole life; I never envisioned myself working at Disney, or on a summer project at Disney, but that shows how God has other plans than our own. After we got a general overview of the whole park, we were split up into our groups of what we will actually be doing. I was hired in attractions part, and I have been eagerly awaiting knowing what I will actually be doing as a "Main Street Daily Operations" person. Now was the time to find out; I will be doing greeting/turnstyle working and Parade Audience Control or as Disney says "PAC." We walked through all of the Main Street area in great detail because we will probably be asked a lot of questions about this area since it is where we will spend all of our time. We need to kind of figure out what stores sell what and where the nearest restroom, ATM, map stands, ect. are located. It was a lot to try to remember, so there is definitely a learning curve with it. Then we got fitted with our new costumes for our different jobs. I will put up pictures later, but as a greeter I get to wear these awesome dorky looking yellow/orange shirts with dorky blue shorts and as a PAC I get to wear a white button-down shirt, dark pants, and a vest.
This will definitely be a big push for me personally since I am not exactly the world's biggest outgoing, friendly person, so the Lord definitely wants to push me in different ways this summer. I am a little low on sleep, so I am going to not go into too much detail about training or anything.
Then later this evening some of the lovely ladies on project had our condo over for dinner kind of for our condo-mate Johann since he broke his arm and won't be able to work at Disney this summer. Hopefully he will find out how he can best serve this summer and stick around to bless everyone on project. After supper, we a great men's time where God is continuously challenging me in different areas in life, sometimes when I think I maybe have more of life figured out, God comes and gives me plenty more things to work on that I didn't even think of before, but have needed work all along. This will be a great summer filled with magic, hard work, growth in life, and God. I am so excited, but we as a project and I personally could use all your prayers for God to really work and allow us to do everything for His glory.