A BLOG ON VACATION…

The 365 Project: Day 137 - Saturday May 29, 2010


Okay, after about 3 weeks, I was traveling yet again. The last time I traveled was to leave Louisville to head home from school for the last time. It won’t be long before I make the trip over again, and go to a new place, Fort Worth, Texas. My health may hamper my chances at getting appointed as a missionary, but I am convinced that God has a bigger plan for me than just returning to Japan. I will be looking at what Seattle would offer me, and go from there. I am convinced that there is something in Seattle that God has me doing that will be of the greatest significance. I will be praying about this, and hopefully, I will get an internship position next summer working for a church plant that works with Japanese people.

We got to Orlando early in the afternoon, and now are at the Sheraton Vistana resort, just outside of Disney. It never ceases to amaze me; Orlando is not a place where you find many permanent residents. There are more tourists here than anywhere else in the world, and quite literally, those people come here from every corner of the world. Not just the U.S, but also all forms of people are here from every corner of the globe. Orlando truly is the vacation capitol of the world, and naturally, this resort was packed when we checked in today. The hotel has obviously been renovated, because there is everything from dark wood furnishings to a gigantic LG HDTV (which we watched AVATAR on when we got here).

FLASHDEVO – 1st Samuel 18
I feel really stupid for forgetting my Charles Spurgeon devotional, but at least we have the Internet and I can get on BibleGateway.com. I am still in 1st Samuel, (today I did chapter 18). By this time, David has already been anointed by Samuel as Israel’s king and is serving the Lord. Saul had disobeyed God so severely that David had replaced him as the king. Saul was jealous of how much David was pleasing the Lord that on several occasions he had tried to have him killed. He even convinced David to marry his daughter Michal so that he could be so close to get into their room at night and may even try to slit his throat. (Imagine him for a father-in-law). All through this time though, David has been leading successful campaigns in battle against the Philistines.


The 365 Project: Day 138 – Sunday May 30, 2010

Today, among the most obvious things, was the first FULL day of vacationing. It was highlighted by an A&W root beet float, spending most of the afternoon at the pool, and getting more than halfway through the book “GREEN” by Ted Dekker (Part 4 of the Circle Series). I am happy that this week we will be going to Disney. The last time I was at Disney was 2 years ago, and now we will be spending 2 days at the parks this week…Epcot and Animal Kingdom, which I am so excited for.

So, in addition to the time I spent at the pool today, we also went out to Boston Lobster Feast. Much like the counterpart, Angel’s Buffet on SR 192 in Orlando, the restaurant offers an all-you-can-eat seafood and prime rib buffet with lobsters for $25 a person. Such a deal. So after spending time on the computer researching restaurants in Epcot and watching Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, we left our hotel to meet my sister, brother-in-law and 2 nephews. If you look at the picture for this day, you’d see the sight that makes this restaurant famous. There is a red VW Beetle parked outside, only there is a gigantic plastic lobster glued to the top of it. It truly is something to see.

FLASHDEVO – 1st Samuel 19
More and more times throughout the book of Samuel (1st book more specifically) you see that David is being pursued by Saul, seeing as how he wanted him dead. Even after the time David had spent running away from Saul, God still kept his eye on David guarding him from every possible attack. An evil spirit enters into Saul causing him to commit evil. He is determined to make the people like him again so he will kill David hoping that people will notice him again AND approve of what he does as a political leader. Because he is being tormented by an evil spirit, his ability to see the truth has been clouded.

This reminds me a great deal of a character in Ted Dekker’s Circle series named Qurong. Qurong used to be a man named Tanis. In the earlier parts of the series, Tanis was a curious soul who wanted to know what lied on the other side of the colored forest where a hoard of black bats dwelled. He was deceived and crossed the river, and ended up becoming the servant of Teeleh, the Satan character in this story.

The 365 Project: Day 140 – Tuesday June 1, 2010

The day that I was waiting for, the trip to Disney began. I haven’t been to Epcot in 7 years. I know it sounds so stupid to sort of “complain” about it, but that was such a great experience…I walked through Future World, a little angry that I couldn’t go on the cool ride MISSION SPACE, but quickly got over that when I realized I would be waiting in line for probably 3 hours…So we went on all of the slower rides, and the a/c ones…and went to the world showcase after that. That place is so much fun because all of the workers in Epcot are checked to see what country they are from, and will end up working there. My favorite experience came when I went into the Japan pavilion and spoke with some of the workers there in Japanese. I had my IMB tee shirt on from last year’s internship, and spoke with them a little bit about the fact that I lived there. I could tell that it was encouraging to them. I even bought a pin at Epcot with the Japanese flag shaped like Mickey Mouse ears. We went to lunch in Germany to have bratwursts and had lamb and hummus in Morocco. Also we had a dessert in Japan, shaved ice. I forgot the name for it. After we exhausted ourselves, trying to make it to see the fireworks show at 9:00, we left the park early and then went home to watch the audition segments of America’s Got Talent, and it will be going on for the whole summer. Some of the things that have been on the show are just spectacular.

FLASHDEVOs – 1st Samuel 20-22

Through these chapters, the reader is seeing how God’s hand is upon David. David truly is the man after God’s Own Heart, because every time something good happens to him that pleases God, Saul, is convinced that he can upstage David and earn God’s approval somehow for a second time, and maintain the throne of Israel. Jonathan was convinced that David was making up the story that Saul was trying to kill him, but when Jonathan sees his father’s anger, it was made clear to him that he really was trying to kill him.

Day 141 Wednesday June 2, 2010

Today was a break day, away from the parks for the day, but somehow, I still manage to end up at Disney. Today, me and my dad went to Downtown Disney and saw Prince of Persia at the movie theater there. It’s like a glorified Disney-themed mall which happens to have a Cirque Du Solei theater attached to it. (Who knew?)
Prince of Persia was the first experience I had with a video game themed movie in which I was not disappointed. I personally have never played the video game series (which will soon change) but the movie had overwhelming special effects and an actual enjoyable story. I recommend it to you this summer.

Well also, we went to the pool today, and I finally finished reading GREEN. I am going to start reading another book, “The Red Pyramid”. I may have mentioned it a few times before, but I did go see the other book series 1st movie: PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS…Rick Riordan is the author who was inspired to write his series based off of the stories he would tell his son about Greek Mythology to go to sleep at night. When the author couldn’t come up with any more stories, he started writing his own about Percy, a demigod son of Poseidon. His real life son has ADHD and Dyslexia and the main character Percy has the same issues which he uses to his advantage. These new books are called the Kane Chronicles, and it is about 2 kids who are the children of a famous Egyptologist Dr. Julius Kane. I haven’t gotten to far into the story yet, but I will let you know it goes. I cannot wait to go to Animal Kingdom tomorrow since this is my first visit there.

The 365 Project: Day 142 – Thursday June 3, 2010

So today I changed some personal history and have now officially been to all four of the Disney Parks here in Florida. Today me and my dad went to Animal Kingdom Park. I have never been there, despite the fact that the park has been open since 1999. We moved down to Florida and just never had the chance to go there. It was fun, but I wasn’t able to go on all of the rides. There wasn’t as much to do as I would like, but what were able to do was fine just the same. We went on the river rapids ride first, I watched my dad get soaking wet, and had to laugh at that. Also, we went to a stage show, Finding Nemo: the Musical. Much like the Lion King musical, the actors utilize puppets and acted out the entire movie. I enjoyed that. We ended the day with a wet journey across the Kilimanjaro Safari ride, which mimicked a real safari car, and went across Disney’s own savannah with all sorts of native African animals. It was a very rainy experience but it was worth it.

A lot of time during our trip we watched the show GOLDEN GIRLS. Let me very clear when is ay there are few shows that make me laugh like that show does. Tonight I learned through a friend that one of the stars of the show Rue McClanahan died today at 76 of a stroke. It makes you wonder when people who are famous die, do they know the Lord. I especially thought that when Christopher Reeve died back in 2004. I was a big fan of Smallville back then and when I found out he died, it was heartbreaking to me.
I will still watch the Golden Girls as a tribute to all of the stars that are now dead.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my vacation blog posts, I will be leaving for New York on Saturday afternoon; look for some more posts of that. Last time I was there was in 2006, right before I left for Boyce.

GRACE AND PEACE!