This will be long.

Okay, I am back.
I know it has been like ten days since I said I would be back.

Since it is now impossible to give you a blow-by-blow considering I can barely remember what I ate for breakfast, I will hit on the high points.

Two Tuesdays ago we went on an "international journey." We met early in the morning at EPCOT and were divided into teams that represented several of the countries present in World Showcase- Italy, China, Japan, Morrocco, the US, and Mexico. I was in the Mexico group, and we spent the whole morning at the Mexico pavilion learning about Mexican culture and attempting to "assimilate." We talked about how much family was a huge part of Mexican culture and we each were assigned a role. I was given the role of mother. Go figure. All my roommates already call me mom. But we also had a father, a grandmother, and four kids. We had to pray the Hail Mary prayer several dozen times throughout the day. We couldn't do anything unless "Abuela" or Papa said it was okay. At one point, one of my "ninos" was kidnapped by a Mexican drug lord. We talked a lot about Mexican Catholicism and the impact is has on the culture and then related it to our lunch, or at least what we thought would be our lunch. After promising us a grand traditional Mexican lunch all day, we were served two corn tortillas and a spoonful of salsa each, and we shared a one liter bottle of apple soda between the nine of us. This is related to the gospel in mexico because the knowledge of God is easily accessible but very boring, and most are satisfied with just that. After a long deep discussion about this, we were surprised with a lunch reservation in the San Angel Inn restaurant inside the Mexico pavilion, which was the most delicious meal I have had on project to date. It was fabulous authentic Mexican food, but I think it was even more satisfying because I had just spent an hour convincing myself that I was full after a lunch that was probably 150 calories of food. It really hit home for me because before I was a Christian I truly believed that my life was great, but I had no idea what I was missing.

After lunch, we met up with the other groups and shared our experiences. Some other groups had it much worse off than we did, and the American group had been forced to walk around all day and act like ignorant tourists, which was funny, but really representative of how other cultures see us. They had all these luxaries that we pined for when we saw them. They had so much food that they tried to give it away to us when they visited Mexico just because they didn't want to carry it anymore. I really admire our staff, the whole day was so incredibly well thought out. Every action and plan represented something else.

We spent the afternoon walking around and talking to the international students who are there on the college program. We asked them all about their culture and what religion was like there. I got a HUGE rush from this because I am such a history/culture nerd. I loved learning about how my life compares to the life of a 21 year old living in a country like Norway or Mexico. I was shocked at how easy it was to talk to everyone we stumbled upon. After we got done talking to everyone, it was time to watch Illuminations, the firework show at EPCOT. It is all about global culture connecting and how we are all one, which means SOOO much more after spending an entire day talking about it. It was so moving. I think this was my favorite day of project thus far.

We took another one of our days off and spent it at Hollywood studios. It was a lot of fun, we got to see the fireworks there, Fantasmic, which is one of my favorite shows. It was really awesome :)

The next Tuesday was Woman's Day. We all had the day off (we have every Tuesday off for "project day") and we spent the whole day together. One of our staff women, Betsy, just so happens to be a jazzercise instructor, so we started off the morning with Jazzercise, which was a blast. After that we had some much needed "scheduled rest and relaxation" time. We all had the afternoon and had to spend some time doing personal bible study/ quiet time (quiet time is just a fancy way of describing time spent in conversation with God, whether that is prayer, studying the bible, reading a Christian book, listening to worship music, etc). This was so refreshing I can't even describe it. I read through Hebrews 10, 11, and 12. There is a lot of good stuff in there, including my favorite verse- "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."- Hebrews 12:1

We were also "forced" to do one of the following activities: Shop, relax by the pool, watch a chick flik, sleep, or play volleyball. Needless to say, they didn't have to force us very much.

That night, we went out to Macaroni Grill for dinner as a group (there are some pictures on facebook and I have to add mine as well). When we got done with that, the staff women surprised us by taking us mini golfing in our dresses lol. That was a lot of fun, and when we got back we were put in a circle, and one by one our disciplers presented us with a necklace with a single pearl on it to represent the "Pearls of Women" we had been learning about all summer in our weekly woman's time. It was really really wonderful.

The woman who disciples me (discipler=biblical mentor. Jesus had 12 disciples who were his closest friends and associates and who carried on his teachings when he went to heaven) is really amazing. Her name is Liz and I can't remember if I have written about her before and am feeling too lazy to go back and look. We get one on one time every week and she has been so patient and loving and understanding. I really admire her a lot, she is balancing being a staff woman with being a mom (her husband is one of our directors and they have two adorable daughters I have considered kidnapping because they are amazing). I am just so blessed by the people I have encountered here. I feel like with everything that was going on with my dad I came here a hot mess with a broken heart and little faith. But every single person here has, in some way, helped me get back on my feet and helped me continue to remain faithful to God. I know that no matter what, God is still good and He loves me. I am thankful that people here help remind me of that.

Fourth of July weekend was really hard for a lot of us. I was really homesick and worked like 27 hours between friday, saturday, and sunday. Saturday and Sunday Magic Kingdom had their Fourth of July fireworks show, which was apparently the most epic thing in the history of ever. I say apparently because I worked both nights and wasn't allowed to watch it. Everyone else on project besides my work group was able to watch it at least one of the nights. I was just in a horrible mood all weekend and am mad at myself now for acting like a two year old for half of it. But I am over it now, it was just hard. I missed family bbq, swimming all day and almost killing myself with fireworks.

So all summer projects that are in the United States (or "stateside" as we call them) are only led by Campus Crusade staff for the first half of the project. At the midway point, student leaders are appointed to the following positions: Director (one male and one female), Associate director (one male and one female) Woman's time leader, Mens time leader, ministry team leaders (one to two per team, and there are four teams. see previous entries) and one leader per small group, which also leads the group bible studies. I was aware of the leaders being appointed soon, but was totally not thinking about it last week. I had a lot of other stuff on my mind, such as having the closing shift six nights in a row. Jenni, one of the project directors, had a meeting with me one day which I assumed was just gonna be to catch up on life (she had really been helping me through a lot of the stress associated with my dad and family all project long) but when we met she told me that the staff was offering me the role of Associate Project Director and that I had a day to pray about it and then get back to her. I was in total shock because I felt like I had been a mess the whole time I was here, but she told me that the whole staff really admired how hard I had worked to get here and how evident it was that the project was extremely important to me. I prayed about it a lot and decided to take on the new role.

The mid-project dinner was this Tuesday, and it was also the day the staff left. It was really hard to see them go, but we had a good day. We went back to Cocoa beach for more surfing, but the waves were a lot rougher this time, and it was a little discouraging. We all got pretty beat up, but it was still good. We had a banquet at Buca di Beppo that night, and it was delicious and fun but really emotional because each group presented their small group leaders with cards and presents. When the banquet was over we had a dance party, which again was fun, but it was where we said a lot of our final goodbyes. I didn't think I would get that close to the staff in just five weeks, but it was really really emotional to watch them leave Wednesday morning. I am going to miss everyone so much, especially Liz, but I know that everything will be okay.

Work is going well, I have really started to build some great friendships with my co-workers. The hardest part is the hours that I work. I have gotten off at 4 am several times, and most nights it is around two when we finish. It takes a lot of prayer and willpower to drag myself out of bed only a few hours after getting home to go to project time, but it is always worth it. I have been getting home, sleeping 3-5 hours, getting up for project time, then going back to bed after lunch for a few hours before heading right back to work. Sometimes I sleep more during the day than at night. This exhausting schedule has finally caught up with me. I woke up sick this morning and had to call into work. Which is how I had the time to write this haha.

I am sorry I have been slacking on keeping up. I am going to try and be better but I am not making any promises. I will for sure update this weekend, since I have sat. and sun. off, and I will probably talk more then about how the leadership part is going. So far so good though :)

I love you all and never forget you are in my prayers!
Kel