Today we took the students to Sea World.  Because of the heavy rains we let them sleep in and then headed to the park around 9am.  It rained a little on the way over, but once we were in the park for a few minutes – the rains stopped and the sun slowly began to peak around the clouds.  All in all it was a great day.  In fact, most of the students liked Sea World better than Disney.  The rides were cool, the shows were outstanding, and the weather was wonderful.  My favorite part of the day was the dolphin show.  The Shamu show was good, but the whales didn’t behave and they had to stop the show to get them back on track.  I also never saw a trainer getting in the whale tank either.  I guess they are still a little careful since the incident a few weeks ago.  I think everyone has had a great time on our Twenty Ten Spring Retreat.  We’re heading back to Spartanburg in the morning and will arrive around dinner.  Be sure to join us Thursday night for the Maundy Thursday Service at the church…I’m giving the Lord’s Supper Message.

Today was a great day at Magic Kingdom.  It was the free day that our students earned because they all “gave a day” serving in our community in Spartanburg.  Cool thing for us, is that we were not only able to serve…but serve in Jesus’ name.  We started our day at 6:00am with breakfast and were fast on our way by 7:00am.  We were in the park by 8:30am and off for a “magical day.”  Everyone had a great time in the morning, but by late afternoon it was raining so hard we thought we would need an ark to get to the hotel…lukely the church bus made due.  Now I wish I had ordered mside youth ponchos to go along with our mside youth bags and notebooks.  In the end we got all of the students safely back to the hotel to dry off and then took them to dinner and a movie.  Now it’s time to sleep again before another big day.  Day three of our trip will be spent at Sea World.  Hopefully everyone will stay a safe enough distance from the “killer whales” so we don’t have to do the Jonah and the whale message for morning devotions.

Our first day of Spring Retreat is coming to and end. We’ve got 41 in Orlando, FL for three days at Disney and Sea World. It’s our way of treating the teenagers for all their ministry service this semester through mside out. In fact, tomorrow we’re going to Magic Kingdom for free (a $3200 value) because we served at TOTAL Ministries in Spartanburg with Disney’s “Give A Day, Get A Day” program. It’s going to be awesome. But for now, we’re all heading to bed for the night. After a ten hour drive and a few hours at Downtown Disney – I’m spent. Night!