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!