Mind. Blown.

Hi all! I’m Abby Jean Ray and I will be a senior this upcoming year at Ball State University in Indiana…yeah that’s right…chirp chirp!! Anyway, this summer I am serving the Lord in a unique way. The purpose of project was to fulfill a partnership between Walt Disney World and CRU through students sharing and spreading Christ’s love through the workplace. Let me tell you….this mission has been fulfilled and so much more!!! The Walt Disney Summer Project not only offers the opportunity to share the gospel at the workplace with our coworkers, but God just blows my mind with the international prevalence all around us. I have literally met people from Mexico, France, Haiti, Hong Kong, China…and of course college students from all over the country. I honestly never thought that I personally would have a heart for the nations until God brought me here. I am so glad He did and I am so blessed to be here.

One way that I have seen God work is in my personal walk with Him. The second week of project when I found out my exact working location, I was not the happiest camper. In my mind, I did not come to Disney World to work in a fast food location…and what do you know? I work in the back-of-house kitchen with absolutely no guest interaction. This was a blow to my expectations and because of this I did not start the summer with God at the forefront of my mind. However, throughout the continuing week the Lord began to show me that His purpose is greater than anything I could dream up. The question started as “what will make me happy?” and turned into, “Lord, how can I serve you with the circumstances that I am in?” Though this was not an easy question to face and one that found hard truth in, God began to answer this question quickly. I have realized that my mission here is to serve as Christ’s servant to my coworkers. I love them!! God has blessed the Tomorrowland Terrace with a great community of people. It was so easy to come in and bond quickly with our location. God allowed me to scratch below the surface of my expectations and find joy in His. I know I will have life long friends from working here, and he has grown my faith tremendously by His wonderful provision.

A pressure that I constantly feel is that while spending a lot of time with coworkers, I am not always intentional with the Gospel. I sometimes don’t mention Jesus, and feel that that is time wasted. God proved me wrong on this assumption too. I really have learned on project what it means to “build relationships.” One night after work we went out to eat with one of our coworkers that we didn’t know so well. Nothing about the Gospel specifically was proclaimed that night, but we definitely showed Christ’s love to this coworker and had a phenomenal fun time. The next day on one of the days that we had walk-up, random evangelism time, a few of us ran into the same coworker at the mall. He was excited to see us and asked us why we were there….and what an opportunity to answer, find out where he stood with the Lord, and share the Gospel. Because we had built up the relationship the night before, the doors were open and he was able to trust us…and yet again, God provided an opportunity for that. So in summary, I have personally learned what it means that no time is wasted and that He uses everything to work together for the glory of His Kingdom.

I know God has big plans for these next two weeks, and no way will WDWSP12 stop riding the waves of faith!!

Abby Jean Ray