update: 9 days left

Hello! I'm nine days from being home, and it's very bittersweet. I'm ready to get away from a lot of things and back to a lot of things, but I'm so sad to have to leave GKTW. I cannot believe how quickly the ten weeks has passed. My last day at GKTW is Saturday, August 1, then we have debriefing and that sort of thing the last few days. Oh, and a trip to Disney :) Anyway, GKTW is just such an amazing place, and I can't imagine not being there six days a week now. I've gotten to know so many of the staff at GKTW, and have become great friends with a few of them. Leandra and I had breakfast with our closest friend, Jenny, this morning, and have plans to go out with her several more times this week. We also had quite the scare this morning. After we left breakfast, Jenny was headed to work at GKTW and we were a few minutes behind her on our way back to camp. We saw a wreck on the side of the road, and the front end of the car was totaled. As we drove past, we realized it was Jenny's car, made an immediate u-turn, and went to go talk to her. She ended up having to go to the hospital, and so we went with her, because her parents live an hour and a half away and were going to be a while. We got to stay in her room in the ER with her and keep her company, which she so appreciated because she was really shook and didn't want to be there by herself. She's fine, minus a lot of bruising and cuts, but there's nothing serious.
Tonight, the girls are getting all dolled up and going out to eat at the Cheesecake Factory. I'm so excited! It's going to be a great time!
Since my last post, three more kids have been led to Christ through the Kids Clubs we do. It's so great to see the fruit of our hard work. God has been doing a lot of work, and we've been able to share the Gospel with so many children over the summer, and even though we haven't seen a lot of salvations, I know we've been planting seeds.
I can't wait to see everyone soon! I miss being with my family and friends back home, but have been so blessed to have made new friends from all over the country since I've been here.


Continue praying for the innovators from Montana that I sent out a Facebook message about. To keep up with everything going on and know how to pray for them visit these sites:
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/vangsnesboys
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/scottminear

Coming to and End

Hey everyone! Hope you are all having fabulous summers! It's flying by for me, here in Florida. I only have two and a half weeks left! Things are going great here, but I'm ready to get back to South Carolina. I love, love GKTW and everything that has to do with it. But camp life is getting old, and as you can imagine, being with the same 18 people ALL the time, can get pretty hard too. Pray for us that we'll be able to stand strong in Christ against the Devil's attempts to tear us apart. God is doing great things though! I mentioned before that Leandra and I have started doing airport greets for GKTW. It is so fun to be the first people that they meet in Orlando and be able to help them through the airport. It's a great opportunity because the families we greet remember us when they see us later at the village. See, GKTW has hundreds of volunteers every day, so to all the other families, we're just another volunteer, even if we've become attached to the children. But, for the families we greet are always so excited to see us later in the week. We've really been able to build stronger relationships with the families since we've started doing airport greets.

A cool story from this past week:
Leandra and I were running the carousel on Sunday night, and a girl in a wheelchair came up with her parents to ride. We'll call her Allie. Allie was severely handicapped and unable to speak. (By the way, our carousel is the only wheelchair accessible one). We put her on the ride and strapped her in, and her mom started crying and saying, "Allie, you're riding by yourself! It's the first ride you've ever ridden by yourself. Oh, Allie!" She turned to us and thanked us a million times. It was so special to get to be a part of that memory with them, because you could tell how special it was. We later saw Allie and her family at Christmas (we have Christmas every Thursday) and got to talk to them again. They actually remembered us, probably because that memory at the carousel was so special to them. Then, we got to see them this morning (Friday) in the castle and show Allie her star on the ceiling. It was awesome, and I'm sad to see them leave on Sunday.

See you all soon!

Tuesdays

Well, I learned my lesson last week to never blog before a Tuesday night worship service. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Tuesday is the one night that our whole group comes together and we have a speaker come in, and we usually sing one or two songs a capella. Well, this past Tuesday (06/30), God blessed us by bringing in a couple to lead worship for us. I know that you don't have to have instruments to worship, and all we had was a guitar, but God just so spoke to all of us that night through the music and really prepared our hearts for the message. Our speaker was the director of church planting for the Greater Orlando Baptist Association (GOBA). He said a lot of great things, but the one phrase that has stuck with us and become our mission is "One day, I want Orlando to be more known for Jesus Christ than Mickey Mouse." How awesome would that be? But I know a lot of you are sitting there, reading this right now, and thinking, "That will never happen." And that was my reaction at first too. But then he asked us what we thought of when he said "Salt Lake City, Utah." Someone immediately said Mormons, and then it hid us like a load of bricks. How much are we doubting God if we don't think that if we all allowed ourselves to be used, it could happen. Why couldn't Orlando be known more for Jesus Christ than Mickey Mouse? Because we don't have the faith that God could actually do that? That's just sad. I know that it can't happen in one summer, but I know that it CAN happen one day. Then a friend of GOBA got up to speak. Her name is Nancy and she was there with her son Bryce. Nancy gave her testimony. Nancy, her husband, and their two boys have been coming to Orlando every summer since 2002, maybe 2003. Anyway, they were out at Pointe Orlando one night, and they heard the CA Team from that year singing. They decided to stop and listen to the show, and then when the CA Team came out to speak to the crowd after their performance, Nancy and her two sons were led to Christ. Since then, they've been CA Team groupies. They follow the CA Team around to all their venues and go to their shows, just to be an encouragement. It was such a blessing to hear from someone who had been touched through a GOBA team before. It reminded us why we were all hear. Then she talked a lot about her life after, and a lot of it had to do with her son, Bryce, who has had three friends die of cancer since that first summer. Two of those deaths happened within the last three months. I just sat there and cried the whole time because while I'm at GKTW, I don't really think about how these kids are spending their last days at such a wonderful place. I have to put that out of my mind while I'm there or I would be a wreck the whole time. So the next day, everything was still so fresh on my mind, and I had the hardest day at work so far. We were singing "Happy Birthday" to a little girl, who was turning seven, at breakfast, and I just started crying because I kept thinking about how this could be her last birthday, and I got to be a part of it. Whew, that was so hard to get through. Since then, I've been able to refocus on being there to make the kids happy, but that day was just so rough.

This Tuesday (07/07), we had an AMAZING worship service. We sang two songs to start off. Then we spent about 30 minutes sharing prayer requests and praise reports. We're never all together, and I was amazed by the some of the things that my teammates are going through that I had no clue about. It was good to know how we could be praying for each other, but so good to see how God was using our team. Then, we had a speaker come up. He talked about the gray areas of life. Basically, we all know it's bad to lie, and good to read your Bible, but what about when you're trying to decide what TV show to watch or what to wear when you get dressed in the morning. He gave us 6 questions to help us make those decisions and he really challenged us. Then, we read John 13, where Jesus washes the disciples' feet. They gave us buckets, bottled water, and towels, and we washed each other's feet. I don't think I'll ever be able to put into words how special this night was. I don't think any of us will. It was so humbling. We were ALL sobbing, from the tiniest, sweetest girl, to the biggest, strongest, guy here. After we washed a person's feet, we would pray with the person. Everyone had at least one person wash their feet, and it was just a night of healing. People who have come to almost despise each other, washed each other's feet, and prayed together. You could just feel the walls breaking down, and you could feel God all around. Like I said, I just can't do the night justice. Then, we closed by singing our theme song for the summer, "God of This City," and then had a group prayer. Wow, what a special night.

Hope you all are doing wonderfully! Four more weeks until I'm back in South Carolina. It's crazy how fast it's gone by!