And What's Joy Up To??

A great deal of learning! That's what I'm up to.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for the staff's thank-you party last Thursday. I'm so proud of the way that it turned out; what matters most is that the staff appreciated the special evening. They were so grateful and blessed by all the personal touches. As initial entertainment, a slideshow game-Name That Intern-quizzed everyone with random, hilarious trivia. We each presented an award to at least one staff member, most of them completely and ridiculously off the wall. And we got to speak about what we had learned from them or appreciated. Dessert was fabulous too.
Friday was a wonderful day of rest and a little grocery shopping with my roommates, Melissa and Claire.
Saturday's outreach at Lake Eola was a lot of things, but mostly-HOT! We camped out on blankets at the beautiful park in the middle of downtown Orlando until the fireworks show at about 9 to meet people and mingle in the crowds.
Sunday was a really refreshing day for several of us. We visited at Cross Point Church again and I especially enjoyed the message from I John 5:14-21 about the wonderful results of our assurance in Christ.
This week the interns are large and in charge! We decided to combine Bible study with our worship night on Tuesday this week. Amy and Rachel arranged and served dinner; Sarah, Claire and Ruth led us in songs and worship; and Sarah, James, and Melissa each shared their experience with and the Bible's insight into some key spiritual disciplines (fasting, silence, solitude, and prayer.)
Today's "EnterMission" (the weekly chapel service for all of Wycliffe USA and open to guests) had the entire staff focusing on one of Wycliffe's core values: diversity. "We commit to follow the commands of Scripture to love all neighbors and act as one body of Christ, such that we intentionally engage and reflect the diversity of His Church in order to fulfill the Bible translation task at hand.” Sarah took a lot of responsibility in planning this with Ruth Hubbard (senior VP.) Sung Ah and Jean also, as a panel, honestly answered great questions about cross-cultural misconceptions and assumptions. It was a total blessing to me this morning too!
When people ask how I like the internship and my job, I keep coming back to one particularly funny event. It's an event that happened a lot more when I first started to give tours, but thankfully occurs less and less. I'm pretty excited when I get to lead people through the Discovery Center and tell amazing stories about Bible translation. So I go into as much detail as I know. I also happen to love languages, so it's natural for me to try and make visitors understand what great work this is. Well, I had to develop a new part to my introduction to avoid one thing specifically; I now ask how familiar the group is with Wycliffe. You see, when I haven't asked this question, I've spent 15 to 20 minutes explaining the process and signirficance of a task which some in the group have devoted up to 15 or 20 years of their life to! So I know now the importance of understanding your audience :) Free lesson, learn from my slip up. What's cool though, is that these people never interrupt or correct me. Instead they wait til the end and if I ask they'll admit they've been to headquarters before but not the museum and when I ask more then it comes out. And I feel like a fool. Period.