Light in Darkness

"When you girls came here, I could tell there was something special about you. You had a 'light'. You are angels coming to a very dark environment".

Whoa! This was what one of my coworkers, Mario, said to me last Tuesday. We are getting passed the awkward, "hi, I'm Leah" stage, to the "actually talking/getting to know people" stage. Mario and I were able to talk about how God has completely changed his and his family's life from one of drugs, alcohol, and being "crazy" as he said, to one centered around God. He is from Cuba and has only been here a little less than a year. It was really encouraging meeting another Christian. He was even quoting Romans to me saying "nothing can separate us from the love of God..." It was really cool meeting another Christian. Yesterday during our lunch break he said, "We pray for our lunch?" I was like yeah, go ahead! So right there in the workroom, he prayed (in Spanish) for mine and his lunch.

I was able to communicate with someone in Spanish today, which was great. I get sooo many people talking to me in Spanish. It's hard to follow sometimes. One guy I was helping was handing me clothes but I didn't know if he wanted them, or wanted me to put them back, so I was like, "tu quieres?" And he was like si!! He wanted them!! :)

I also got to talk to one of my coworkers Darrel about why we were here, etc. He asked if we were "really religious". That can be a hard question to answer because it means a lot of things to different people. To me, I would said no, I'm not religious. Because I consider religion jumping through hoops to try to get God to love and accept you. We don't have to perform for God to love us. Through Christ, we are fully accepted and pleasing to God. I said I didin't consider myself relgious, I just want to know God and have a relationship with him. We then got on a tangent about how he likes to read King James version of the Bible even though it takes him three times to understand what it was saying. I believe he feels it's more real and a better translation. Anyway.

We had our equpping night tonight. We talked about the difference between a club and a movement, which is what Campus Crusade is. The speaker related it to the civil rights movement, where there was passion, and enthusiasm, an issue that spread like crazy, and where people brought the movement out, didn't expect people to come to the movement. Anyway, just talking about how Crusade's mission is for "everyone to know someone who truly follows Jesus". It was good and I think a lot of people really needed to hear that and be reminded of that. UCF Cru does a pretty good job at working toward this mission. I don't think it's prideful to say what's true. The focus is so not on Christians huddling, but on reaching out, in whatever way we know how, to a campus that is about 95% unreached for Jesus. (Christian growth and discipleship is not a bad thing, but if that's all you do, the movement will plateau and become ineffective. The idea is for it to growth through multiplication).

Tomorrow is work, 10-5!! Must preserve! It can get tough, standing and doing store stuff for so long, but it is good and I am so thankful to have a job. Get paid tomorrow, I believe. We have to do some weird money transfer thing though because our checks are automatically put on a Visa card that charges fees when you use it... Lame.... so we have to transfer it to our bank which takes some time. Ok, this is really extraneous info now.

Decades in history dances on Saturday. My group is the 2000s. Awkward decade!! Non distinct! Be on the lookout for a video of that debauchery.

Seacrest, out.