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!
