I spent my Spring Break serving the Lord in sunny, tropical Orlando, Florida. We embarked on our journey on the evening of March 19, and about six stops, two bus drivers, and twenty one hours later, we arrived at our destination. The Orlando United group consisted of seven other students, ages 19 to 30, and our week consisted of nothing but fun times. The training meetings leading up to Spring Break had informed us that we were only to just love on the people at Orlando United. Once I was there, I found that very easy to do. In fact I do believe that they loved on us more than they would allow us to do in return.

            On Sunday we all went to church and the Orlando Restore group joined us at church too. That whole afternoon we ate pizza with the youth group, played sand volleyball, and played video games until the evening service. Our group performed a skit about how we should be more childlike and come to God as a child of His. One of the guys from our group, Josh True, gave the sermon at the evening service. It was great to see him up there as a future leader of the church receiving affirmations of amen and praise God from the congregation.

             Tuesday we started to work and paint Joyces house. Joyce is a member of the church and also helps in the office. She was so ecstatic that we had painted her house in less than a day. It was a great feeling to see the joy you can bring to a persons life through a simple stroke of a brush. We also power washed her back porch which had mildew on it, and Carrie Flack was fearless and climbed up on the roof to clean out her gutters. Later that night, we went to Pastor Bobs for a cookout and to fellowship with the youth group.

            Wednesday night we hung out with the youth group during their meeting time. Josh gave a message on how we should not follow the crowd or feel pressured into doing something that we do not want to do. We helped Josh visually demonstrate this by his questioning us and then going to four different corners of the room for answers A through D. Our whole group answered with the same response to persuade the teens, and eventually the teens were pressured into going with our answer. It was great to minister to the teens and tell them that they did not have to give in to others, but can stand firmly with God on their own decisions.

            Thursday we got to work clearing brush on the side of the church, and we also tinted windows in the classrooms. Clearing the brush was tedious, and I was terrified that I was going to get poison ivy all over my feet, but God gave us the strength all day to cut down the brush. I cut down my very first tree all by myself with an axe, and used a machete for the first time too. Even though most of us had no experience clearing brush we all tried our best at it, and it was awesome to see the results in the end. It also rained that day which almost prevented us from finishing, but we persevered through the storm and continued to clear out the brush through the adverse weather conditions.

            Friday, half of the group finished tinting windows and the other half helped the youth pastor move into his new house. I helped finish tinting the windows, even though we were tired and irritable that day, God gave us strength to finish every last window to make it look picture perfect.