Wow! The past 5 days have been so incredible that I don't even know where to start. I did promise you more background on my story but that will have to wait since I have so much else to post about!
I flew to LA last Wednesday and it has been an all around wonderful trip so far. Both of my flights were great. In Philadelphia I met a remarkable woman who worked for Reebok and was travelling to Australia. We had a wonderful conversation about life and purpose and I even got to share with her a little of my testimony and about my internship.
On my flight from Memphis to LA I sat between two gentlemen and neither spoke English well/at all. I spent both my flights getting a jumpstart on my independent study work. When we were landing I realized that one of the men was from India and we had a long (but confusing) conversation about India and he was so shocked that I had actually been to his home country. Needless to say it was really cool connecting with him and reliving my last big adventure.
Everything since my arrival in LA has been such a blur. Katie (the other intern) and I have been staying with Amber from the Thirst Project at her apartment in West Hollywood. Our office is in Beverly Hills and we started training on Thursday by diving right into presentation prep. We spent about 8-9 hours that day preparing our personal versions of a 40 min presentation about the water crisis. This was challenging and intense and took us 2 more days of work to really master it. In addition to public speaking, we have spent time going over numerous other aspects of our internship like merchandise sales, cold calls, network building, data entry, student outreach, etc. Basically we have been very busy.
But we have made sure to have some fun :) Working with the Thirst Project is a lot of fun because it is a very small staffed organization so you get to know each other really well. Everyone on staff under the age of 30 and it's really great to see how successful they have been after only a few years of work. The staff has really gone out of their way to make us feel at home and have fun. They took us out to dinner with their board of directors one night, gave us a tour of Hollywood, and took us to DISNEYLAND as a reward for all our hard work.
I have been so incredibly blessed by the people I have encountered thus far. Everyone I have met from the Thirst Project staff, as well as my fellow intern Katie, are strong believers in Christ and it is incredible to see the work they have been able to do in the secular community. One staff member is even a YWAM alum and has asked for updates on my sister's missionary work in Senegal. It is a huge answer to prayers to be surrounded by believers during this adventure.
As far as meeting famous people goes, I haven't seen many but the Thirst Project does have a good number of celebrity supporters. During our presentation training two young actors were also being trained for the school tour. They were both really cool and it was awesome to see them giving up their free time to raise awareness about the water crisis. One was even a big supporting role in the Twilight movies! Pretty cool huh?
I know this is a long post but just a few more things:
Here are some pretty awesome stats about the Thirst project:
It was founded 5 years ago in 2008. Since then we have spoken to over 300,000 students at 300 schools throughout the country. These students have created clubs and raised over $2.6million for the water crisis and given clean, safe water to over 180,000 people.. in only 5 years!
Just a few updates on our trip:
We just added stops in:
New Mexico/Colorado: March 11-15
Indiana/Ohio: March 25-29
We officially start speaking at schools on Thursday so please keep us in your prayers!
I flew to LA last Wednesday and it has been an all around wonderful trip so far. Both of my flights were great. In Philadelphia I met a remarkable woman who worked for Reebok and was travelling to Australia. We had a wonderful conversation about life and purpose and I even got to share with her a little of my testimony and about my internship.
On my flight from Memphis to LA I sat between two gentlemen and neither spoke English well/at all. I spent both my flights getting a jumpstart on my independent study work. When we were landing I realized that one of the men was from India and we had a long (but confusing) conversation about India and he was so shocked that I had actually been to his home country. Needless to say it was really cool connecting with him and reliving my last big adventure.
Everything since my arrival in LA has been such a blur. Katie (the other intern) and I have been staying with Amber from the Thirst Project at her apartment in West Hollywood. Our office is in Beverly Hills and we started training on Thursday by diving right into presentation prep. We spent about 8-9 hours that day preparing our personal versions of a 40 min presentation about the water crisis. This was challenging and intense and took us 2 more days of work to really master it. In addition to public speaking, we have spent time going over numerous other aspects of our internship like merchandise sales, cold calls, network building, data entry, student outreach, etc. Basically we have been very busy.
But we have made sure to have some fun :) Working with the Thirst Project is a lot of fun because it is a very small staffed organization so you get to know each other really well. Everyone on staff under the age of 30 and it's really great to see how successful they have been after only a few years of work. The staff has really gone out of their way to make us feel at home and have fun. They took us out to dinner with their board of directors one night, gave us a tour of Hollywood, and took us to DISNEYLAND as a reward for all our hard work.
I have been so incredibly blessed by the people I have encountered thus far. Everyone I have met from the Thirst Project staff, as well as my fellow intern Katie, are strong believers in Christ and it is incredible to see the work they have been able to do in the secular community. One staff member is even a YWAM alum and has asked for updates on my sister's missionary work in Senegal. It is a huge answer to prayers to be surrounded by believers during this adventure.
As far as meeting famous people goes, I haven't seen many but the Thirst Project does have a good number of celebrity supporters. During our presentation training two young actors were also being trained for the school tour. They were both really cool and it was awesome to see them giving up their free time to raise awareness about the water crisis. One was even a big supporting role in the Twilight movies! Pretty cool huh?
I know this is a long post but just a few more things:
Here are some pretty awesome stats about the Thirst project:
It was founded 5 years ago in 2008. Since then we have spoken to over 300,000 students at 300 schools throughout the country. These students have created clubs and raised over $2.6million for the water crisis and given clean, safe water to over 180,000 people.. in only 5 years!
Just a few updates on our trip:
We just added stops in:
New Mexico/Colorado: March 11-15
Indiana/Ohio: March 25-29
We officially start speaking at schools on Thursday so please keep us in your prayers!
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