I was hoping to be teaching English in Spain by now, but during my last short-term mission trip in Pamplona in May I discovered that the process is far more involved than I originally thought. I talked to a guy at a language academy who wanted me to get some kind of training before he would consider hiring me so when I returned to Orlando, I looked into an English teaching course called the CELTA. For a number of reasons, I decided to take the course on Palma de Mallorca, an island off the east coast of Spain. I will be leaving Orlando November 1, and the course begins on the fourth. After the class is over, I will stand a much better chance of getting a job in Pamplona. But before heading over there, I’ll stop in Barcelona for three days because I can’t get anything done in Pamplona during the holidays and I’ve never really explored Barcelona. I will spend the following two weeks in Pamplona looking for a teaching job. Then, with a work permit and all my required documents in hand, I will apply for a visa at the Spanish consulate in Miami. Barring a major holdup in Pamplona or Miami, I will be back in Orlando December 17.
Of course, all of this requires money so I had to find a job when I returned to Orlando. I probably filled out about a dozen online applications and never heard anything, but SeaWorld granted me an interview the day I walked into the human resources office and hired me a week later. You know those people who ask you to stop and take a picture when you into any theme park? It is my job to sell you the picture. It turns out to have been a real blessing. I love the people I work with, especially the Taiwanese who were there over the summer. In the meantime, I joined H2O Church, which meets in downtown Orlando. I joined a “life group,” which is pretty much what Gator Christian life calls a “home group.” Overall H2O is very different from GCL for a variety of reason, but I have met some awesome people there and have continued to grow alongside them.
Orlando now feels like a big playground because as a SeaWorld employee I get free admission to SeaWorld, Aquatica, both Universal parks, and Busch Gardens. Thursday was my last day before I quit so I went to Islands of Adventure to ride the rides I’d skipped in the past and sneak a peek at the Hogwarts castle that now rises above the rest of the park, albeit covered in scaffolding. The Back to the Future music brought a tear to my eye because it simultaneously moved me and reminded me that the ride no longer exists in Orlando.
When I haven’t been working or at a theme park, I’ve been reading. My parents’ house does not have cable and lacked internet access until about a week ago, which was mostly a good thing. I will have read twelve books by the time I leave. I’m finishing the last of the Harry Potter books now. I figured that I should read them now that the theme park is being built and I’m about to take a class taught primarily from a British perspective. I think it is awesome how the wizards are able to live with mobile phones, televisions, computers, or even ballpoint pens. After reading a New York Times editorial by columnist Nicholas Kristof, I picked up The Life You Can Save. The author makes the case that extreme poverty can be eliminated if only a fraction of the residents in the wealthy countries donated a negligible sum. It really forced me to think about all the luxuries I enjoy and how I can be a better steward of what God has blessed me with.
The other half of the books I read has strengthened my walk with God. A book called Pagan Christianity? caught my eye at the library because of the title and George Barna’s name on the cover. The other author’s name, Frank Viola, sounded kind of familiar. It made sense when I found out he lives in Gainesville. In a nutshell, the book promotes something called an “organic church,” a simple house church just like in the first three centuries of the church. The authors argue that most of the commonly accepted church practices- worship teams, sermons, seminaries, tithing, etc. - were man-made inventions that came about centuries later. Reviews have suggested that church history is not as cut and dry as Viola claims so I am a bit skeptical of those sections, but there is a very good chapter on interpreting the Bible. Because we only have Paul’s end of the conversation of between himself and his church plants and those letters are arranged in order of length in the modern day Bible, the context is often lost. Lifted out of their cultural contexts, you can make Paul’s letters say anything any number of things. That’s how we got the entire Left Behind series. Viola has written a book intended to provide a context for each letter, but I would like to find a book by a different author so I am not too influenced by just one author. I’ll probably wind up picking up his book anyway just as a starting point.
Next I read The Reason for God, which I first heard mentioned at H2O about a year ago. I love how the author, Timothy Keller, reads many of the same publications that I’m familiar with such as The Atlantic, Time, and The New York Times. Furthermore, he defends the faith without compromise from the perspective of a New Yorker, not a Bible Belt preacher. In his chapter on science, he drew heavily from The Language of God so I read that too. The author, Francis Collins, who is also head of the Human Genome Project, defends theistic evolution. I loved the book, but I wish he would have been more specific. Probably attempting to keep the book short and sweet, he sums up very controversial points in a mere paragraph and hurts his case. But his critics (at least the ones I’ve read so far) don’t seem to have a very strong case either. I guess that means I’ll have to dig a little deeper. One question always leads to another. It almost seems that the more I read, the less informed I feel.
I really wouldn’t mind doing this every summer. I have a cozy little room in my parents’ house on the south side of Orlando. It is not nearly as isolated as my grandparents’ place on the east side, where I lived for two years in high school. If I can teach English in Pamplona during the fall and spring and work at a theme park during the summer, I would be thrilled. There will be plenty of ministry opportunities in both places (though, I probably didn’t pursue them here in Orlando this summer as much as I could have). Spending the summers in Orlando would be a good way to ease my parents’ pain too. My dream job for next summer is to be a character in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. But I need to try really hard not to get too far ahead of myself because I still have some worksheets to finish and things to pack before starting a possibly grueling CELTA course.
