Travel and My First Full Day

and boy was it full! To start off, thanks for reading me :)

So, my flight into Orlando wasn't eventful yesterday. I arrived on time and got window seats the whole way. Happiest moment on the flight was when I realized you can see the shadow of the plane on the clouds below, and it's beautiful when the clouds are fluffy and the sun's shining bright. I prayed that the girl who gets back on a plane in 2 months is not the same girl at take-off yesterday.

My mentor Aleesha picked me up from the airport, took me to register at the Clubhouse, and dropped me at the house I'll be sharing with two other girls-Melissa (Univ of S. Indiana) and Claire (recent college grad from N. Carolina). We had dinner where I got a chance to meet all the other interns and a bunch of great staff. There are 10 interns here now and one more will arrive in a few weeks. Later, we successfully navigated the new city to grab some coffee and cereal at Albertson's so we'd be ready for a big day today!

We started early with an intro of the schedule and other general info before some interesting activities to illustrate miscommunication and the necessity of community. The staff shared their expectations for us, and after lunch we listed our personal and professional goals for the summer as well as questions we'd like answered. To hit the high points, we want to: develope devotion to spiritual disciplines, seek God's next step for our futures in ministry with Wycliffe, practice being genuine and living in community, determine or allow God to use our strengths and weaknesses, and above all make a direct impact on the Bible translation movement between now and Aug 7.

Jamie Farr and Karen Snyder -the internship directors- also dropped a huge bomb on us. Apparently in 4 weeks, after lots of training, we actually take over the internship and the staff step down. We've been divided into activity planning teams. My team's responsible for planning outreach events. The evangelism team includes our staffer-Dan, Melissa, Amy, and myself. Pray that we learn well these first weeks! That team will have its first planning meeting tomorrow. The 4 activity teams are praise & worship, social activities, leadership/Bible study, and evangelism.

Tonight we split up to grocery shop and make dinner with housemates-chicken alfredo for us, pretty yummy. And as far as team building, it was definitely a success.

Overall the group's pretty diverse and hopefully soon I'll have the energy to write about each one. I'm excited to learn from who they are and how they do things.

As a pointless side note, my skin's already tanning.

I should've started with this

THANK YOU
So many people are supporting me right now with prayers and finances and I want you all to know that God has completely just eliminated all the concerns and insecurities I had about the foggy details of the internship and my abilities. Bible translation is why I'm here. 200 million people around the world who can't read God's incredible, life-giving truth in a language that speaks to their heart. I'm here because God loves them. I'm here because after last year's experience in Guatemala I know I'll be miserable if I don't go wherever God wants, if I don't pursue that. I'm here because I needed time away from my everyday life to learn and change. I'm here because God has a place for me in His dreams for the world. I'm praying tonight that everyone who reads this will want to know theirs too.
I love and miss you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you for praying.

In case you'd like to write this summer, here's my address:

Joy Washburn - Recruitment
c/o Wycliffe Bible Translators
PO Box 628200
Orlando, FL 32862-8200