A day of miracles!

Ah yes, the first real day of work! Way exciting. The night before, we were put onto our Summer Madness Event Crew teams. Event Crew is essentially responsible for making sure that Summer Madness runs smoothly, and our duties could range from janitorial work to security. Our teams were given certain jobs, but we were often split up to work in different places. My first job was in the kitchens with two lovely ladies who were making all of the food to feed the 100+ SM staff. Not an easy task...so we were there to help wash dishes, lettuce, floors, etc. And the cutest thing about this job was that every couple of hours, the ladies would decide to take an afternoon tea break (I could have just died..having afternoon tea in Ireland!)

Now YOU (yes, I'm talking to you!) MAKE SURE YOU READ THIS. WE'RE TALKING REAL MIRACLES HERE. PREPARE TO BE AMAZED. Okay, well maybe it's not THAT exciting, but please read on cos it is pretty cool.

My second job for the day had gained quite an awful reputation: carpark duty. It was known as being either incredibly insane or incredibly boring, depending on what shift you got. Fortunatly, this shift was the incredibly insane, as it was opening night of Summer Madness, so pretty much everyone and their mom was arriving. When I got to the carpark during the late afternoon, I could already see that the lot was nearly full of cars...yet people would still be coming for hours. My team leader, David, and another leader, Chris, put me on duty at the end of the lot, where I had the easy job of directing traffic up to another carpark located up a hill and behind another stand of trees (basically we couldn't see how many spaces were left up there, but I knew there was still free parking as long as cars weren't coming back down through the one exit located next to me.)

This continued on for about an hour...until David and Chris decided it was impossible for there to be more room in the other park (and quite frankly, I agreed with them), and we had to start parking cars in weird spots, trying not to block other cars in but cram as much metal as possible into the lower carpark. It was during this time that I noticed a car leaving from the upper carpark (the one we couldn't see very well), so I volunteered to go up and find out how many spaces were open in the upper park. Once I had climbed to the top, I was able to count five real parking spots, right off the bat. Just bam bam bam bam bam, there were five spaces!

I came back down and told Chris and David. Chris, quite possibly the closest thing to a leperachaun possible, was skeptical, so he followed me back up the hill, and I showed him all five. He was a little confused about how in the world there were still 5 empty spaces, but agreed to go back down and send some cars up my way...I would wait up at the top to make sure the cars got parked okay.

Well, two or three cars came through and parked, and when I looked around there were still five spaces! At this point, I was thinking, Okay, that's a little weird.. One of these happened right under my nose: a lady came up and parked where I showed her, but as soon as I walked away she decided she didn't feel like parking there, and she drove off towards the back of the lot, where I lost sight of her. She never came back by me, her only exit, so obviously she found another spot to park, but I had no idea where! This continued on for another couple of cars, and I still had five spaces left! By now I was getting really excited--this was a modern day version of "The Feeding of the 5000" (John 6)...it was The Parking of the 5000! (I guess God really wanted EVERYONE to get into SM!) After a few more minutes, Chris came back up the hill, and was completely dumbfounded to find five unclaimed spaces, when he had just sent up five cars! I was flipping out over having just witnessed a miracle!! (I mean, that doesn't happen every day! It was beautiful!)

Even though that's where the "miracle" is done, there is still some cool stuff left on that job. I followed Chris back down, where he and David both said that I could take off from my shift early. Now, I still had an hour left to work, and I was so hyped up about that Parking of the 5000 that I didn't mind staying, so I said so. Chris insisted that I could go get myself some tea, that he and David could handle the job. I replied that it was okay, I had come here to work. At this, Chris' jaw literally dropped, and before you could say "Bob's your uncle" he had wrapped me up in a huge bear hug! I was totally lost as to what I had said that warranted such a reaction, but Chris quickly explained: last year at Summer Madness there had been a different group of Americans on Event Crew, but this group had spent all of their time sightseeing or simply staying in their stables--they would be given jobs, and just wouldn't show up. Naturally, this had left a pretty bad American impression in the Northern Irish mouth...this was why Chris was so amazed at our willingness to serve and work hard! David quickly backed him up. (mind you, we'd only been at Summer Madness for about 24 hrs, so we really made an impression! Yay, score!) In fact, throughout the rest of the week we spent at SM, every person on my mission team heard from multiple people that we had totally changed their minds about Americans. Amazing, we went to make a difference for God and ended up able to make a difference for the American reputation as well. Yay!

Ah, and from that point on, I was Chris' official wee friend. :) And the funny thing is that I'm taller than him!