ponderings for tommorrow
It's funny how long ago this past summer seems. It feels like worlds ago. But maybe that is due in part to how my life has been since this summer. It's just interesting looking back.
Tommorrow night at Crusade I'll be talking about Yellowstone, it's part of what we are doing to encourage people to go on Summer Project. Different people who have gone on project are giving a overview of what they did to give people a feel for what summer project is like. I'm going to talk about work tomorrow and my experiences with our trash ministry.
I never thought I would say I would miss scrubbing toilets. I worked as a room attendant in the Snow Lodge, making beds, scrubbing toilets and cleaning showers. It was humbling to be sure. But the huge blessing about the job is that it is what enables us to be in the park. Working as a room attendant opened me to forming relationships with the other people I was cleaning rooms with. Our team leaders knew we were there with Crusade and they liked us because we were hard workers.
Sure, work wasn't glamorous and I remember many days wondering when the toilet scrubbing would end, but it makes me think about how Jesus washed the disciples' feet. It's funny, but I would always say I spent my summer scrubbing toilets for Jesus. This may sound cliche, but I do feel it was a huge character building experience.
One of the cool things about our job is that we live with the people we work with. We have our community of Project people, but we also had the community of our fellow Xanterra workers. We all lived together in the employee dorms. We ate together and we slept together and we had fun together. When we weren't working, we'd go off and explore the park with our co-workers, who became our friends. Through our jobs we had the opportunity to form close relationships with the people we worked with.
Living with our co-workers gave us a lot of cool ways to reach out to them. I was really involed with serving our co-workers through a trash ministry. Living in a dorm, we had to lug our trash out to the dumpster near the dorm. Every Tuesday at 10 a few of us would go through the dorm and collect everyone's trash. Sure, it was crazy knocking on doors at 10 asking for trash and sometimes people were confused as to why we would to take out their trash. It was a great way to just love on our co-workers and show them that Christ loved them. People came to look forward to us coming and really appreciated us taking out their trash. Sometimes we'd get into spiritual conversations, but a lot of the time it was just about showing these people that we loved them.
I still love them. I miss Yellowstone a lot. Sometimes I think I took the summer for granted, expecting it to never end. And I think I never expected to come off of the project high.
I miss the people, the craziness of living in the dorm, donning that burgundy shirt and scrubbing toilets. I miss driving around and seeing God's glory displayed so magnificently, I miss almost running into bison (or was it having bison nearly run into me?) I miss watching the geysers spurt steaming water, I miss sitting by the river and reading and just being.
But most of all I miss the sky. The clouds are so perfect out west. And the sunsets are absolutely breath taking. What I miss most are the stars. There were so many, they filled the sky with their light. I remember the nights when the moon and the stars shone so bright everything was visible beneath the night sky.
God still speaks and God is still moving in my life. And He shows me His beauty and glory through other created things. He did make things other than geysers and the sky. This summer was such a precious experience. My heart aches for Yellowstone sometimes, I feel like the park is a part of me now, as wierd as that sounds. I'd love to go back and work there. And I probably will at sometime, we'll see where God takes me.
It's amazing what God will do when we just go. And how even after the "experience" is over, God still uses it to teach us so much.
Tommorrow night at Crusade I'll be talking about Yellowstone, it's part of what we are doing to encourage people to go on Summer Project. Different people who have gone on project are giving a overview of what they did to give people a feel for what summer project is like. I'm going to talk about work tomorrow and my experiences with our trash ministry.
I never thought I would say I would miss scrubbing toilets. I worked as a room attendant in the Snow Lodge, making beds, scrubbing toilets and cleaning showers. It was humbling to be sure. But the huge blessing about the job is that it is what enables us to be in the park. Working as a room attendant opened me to forming relationships with the other people I was cleaning rooms with. Our team leaders knew we were there with Crusade and they liked us because we were hard workers.
Sure, work wasn't glamorous and I remember many days wondering when the toilet scrubbing would end, but it makes me think about how Jesus washed the disciples' feet. It's funny, but I would always say I spent my summer scrubbing toilets for Jesus. This may sound cliche, but I do feel it was a huge character building experience.
One of the cool things about our job is that we live with the people we work with. We have our community of Project people, but we also had the community of our fellow Xanterra workers. We all lived together in the employee dorms. We ate together and we slept together and we had fun together. When we weren't working, we'd go off and explore the park with our co-workers, who became our friends. Through our jobs we had the opportunity to form close relationships with the people we worked with.
Living with our co-workers gave us a lot of cool ways to reach out to them. I was really involed with serving our co-workers through a trash ministry. Living in a dorm, we had to lug our trash out to the dumpster near the dorm. Every Tuesday at 10 a few of us would go through the dorm and collect everyone's trash. Sure, it was crazy knocking on doors at 10 asking for trash and sometimes people were confused as to why we would to take out their trash. It was a great way to just love on our co-workers and show them that Christ loved them. People came to look forward to us coming and really appreciated us taking out their trash. Sometimes we'd get into spiritual conversations, but a lot of the time it was just about showing these people that we loved them.
I still love them. I miss Yellowstone a lot. Sometimes I think I took the summer for granted, expecting it to never end. And I think I never expected to come off of the project high.
I miss the people, the craziness of living in the dorm, donning that burgundy shirt and scrubbing toilets. I miss driving around and seeing God's glory displayed so magnificently, I miss almost running into bison (or was it having bison nearly run into me?) I miss watching the geysers spurt steaming water, I miss sitting by the river and reading and just being.
But most of all I miss the sky. The clouds are so perfect out west. And the sunsets are absolutely breath taking. What I miss most are the stars. There were so many, they filled the sky with their light. I remember the nights when the moon and the stars shone so bright everything was visible beneath the night sky.
God still speaks and God is still moving in my life. And He shows me His beauty and glory through other created things. He did make things other than geysers and the sky. This summer was such a precious experience. My heart aches for Yellowstone sometimes, I feel like the park is a part of me now, as wierd as that sounds. I'd love to go back and work there. And I probably will at sometime, we'll see where God takes me.
It's amazing what God will do when we just go. And how even after the "experience" is over, God still uses it to teach us so much.