The Destino Adventure - Return of the White Guy

I was fortunate. On Wednesday Impact (the African American student ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ) extended an invitation for me to join them on the campus of the University of Central Florida. It sounded like a good plan to do and the do the work of Destino in the afternoon.

Dirke & Lorna Johnson, Rasool & Tamica Berry, Michelle Hardy and I teamed up and headed to campus. I love theses guys and it was fun to do the work of the ministry with them!

I am always amazed the work of the Lord on any given day. Michelle and I grabbed some Impact Kits (CDs, Water bottle, Bible, Info etc.) and headed into the student union to take a few spiritual interest surveys. In 5 conversations we surfaced a pastors' daughter, and a junior deacon. Now, this is not that uncommon in the AA community, but it was encouraging that the pastors' daughter was interested in helping get Impact off the ground at UCF. That was worth it.

By now it was HOT! Crazy HOT! South Florida 120% humidity HOT! The kind of hot that makes you sweat in the shower. Impact packed up and headed home. And I set out to put up a few posters.

Now, here is where this experiment should be noted as abnormal. Normally, I would never never never do this alone. It makes no sense. We have plenty of resources available (Destino coaching team in Orlando, connecting with local churches, the UCF staff team and students involved with Cru – there is a ton of places to begin besides beginning this way). The reason I wanted to begin this way was simple – what kind of effort and energy would / does it take to start from scratch. To know that, I wanted to act alone.

And alone (and hot) I was. UCF is a pretty cleanly laid out campus. There are not any kiosks and open bulletin boards – already I feel the plan falling apart. Even though the buildings are open, there are not many really great posting locations (of course, my decoding had been lame, so I could have easily missed some things).

The rule of thumb is a poster for every 150 students. This would mean something like 500 posters. Wow.

I made a hundred and hoped for the best. Again, minimal in my experimentation.

I was able to hang about 80 – with 40 of those going in RA boxes (which, having done the RA gig, I know that about 1/2 of those are garbage bound).

So, I started making my tour de poster about 2pm – and wrapped up just a little before 4. I walked, prayed and posted. I was worn out after the morning – but I think I got to most of the main buildings. I left thinking that my efforts were pretty feable and I could have done a better job.

The summary: Another 3 bucks for parking and about 6 for copies - and 3 more hours.

Now I am in this thing for a total of 7 hours – that is like a day and half of work for a guy like me!

As far as LaVidaUCF.com – in couple of days 15 visitors, 1 indicated decision and no emails.

Not good enough - time to revisit the plan.