I made it to Gatlinburg! Woohoo! I'm here with 30 other cool kids. The drive down was gorgeous and I remembered why I love the mountains! (has anyone been to Cherokee, NC? interesting place...) I was super nervous showing up and got that "ah-wow I don't know anyone" feeling but the past couple of days we have all spent a lot of time just chilling and getting to know each other which has been great. There are a TON of people from NC State and USC but everyone is pretty fun. Oh-and one of the staff girls is a Clemson grad (Go Tigers!)
First full day on project I got a job working at....
*DRUMROLL PLEASE*
No Way Jose's!!! (It's a Mexican Cantina) I'm going to be a waitress! Craziness huh? I've already starting working a few days and it's hard but I have some cool co-workers, a boss who loves Crusade kids (and invited us to church with him), and I'm getting to work with 4 other people from project. I work 10:30-4 4 days a week so I won't be super busy all the time...but that's just fine with me! It's about a 15 min walk from where I'm staying. I wear a really cool bright shirt they gave us (I have one in turquoise and red) as well as khacki capris, tennis shoes, and a lil apron...let me tell ya-I'm lookin adorable! lol... We got to try the food the other day though and it's pretty good. They have some amazing flour tortilla chips which might be the best ones I've ever had (dont worry though...nothing has topped my Texas Mexican yet!) I'm still following around my trainer (Shelley) and learning all about how to be an exquisite waitress. I don't think I'll quite get there but it will be fun trying...
Last night we all went to a Smokies baseball team (Double A team I think?!) and it was soo fun. Me along with 8 other project kids got to go sing "Take me Out to the Ball Game" from the press box area during the 7th inning stretch. We also cheered on the Smokies like crazy...even though most of us didn't even know who they were before that evening. They had an amazing fireworks show at the game which I think beats Kingwood's 4th of July celebration (kinda sad...lol) We also made a Krispy Kreme run. Tonight a bunch of project kids went to No Way Jose's for dinner (got to pull the employee discount-woowoo), then to listen to some live bluegrass music, then we came back to our main meeting room and danced! I learned 2 line dances, practiced my shag, and learned just a lil of the foxtrot and cha-cha! Now I have a new goal to learn all kinds of different dances because they are so fun. After that a few of us played BS by the pool and then called it a night.
The basic schedule is to work T-Sat, have growth group (bible study) dinner/meeting on Mon night, project dinners T-Th, Weekly meeting type deal on Tues, Wed is reflection (just spending an extended amount of time with the Lord on ur own), Thurs is training (learning how to share ur faith, disciple peeps, lead groups, etc), Fri/Sat are free nights, Sun is church/outreach/prayer, and Mon is a free day. We stay pretty busy but it's fun.
My growth group leader is from Marshall and she's really great. She's married to a guy who went to UTenn and was discipled by John Strange-pretty cool eh? The girls in my growth group (aka my room mates) are Gabi and Hannah. Gabi is from Slovakia and is involved in the Crusade movement there-she has pics of random Clemson kids in Slovakia who have done that project in the past. Hannah is from Purdue and is really great as well. Our condos we stay in are actually pretty nice-I had myself prepared for much worse.
I've been reading and spending time with the Lord a lot. It's great to be able to be in a community so focused on glorifying God. There have already been some cool stories of project kids getting into spiritual conversations with people and such, which is exciting. Let me know if you want me to keep you updated on what I'm doing. Hope all of your summers are going marvelously-please keep me updated! | 