Slowing Down (Internship Week 4)

This week at my internship, things began to slow down. Overall, it was an uneventful week.  But, sometimes that’s how things go. Even so, here are a few highlights of my rather relaxed week:

As usual, I spent Wednesday working at UCF. Just after lunch, I stopped by Ms. Sample’s office to pick up my scrapbook. As always, Ms. Sample greeted me with a smile and encouraging word! Upon getting my book, I went next door to my office where I began going through the scrapbook to catalogue its metadata. Before long, my co-worker Rebecca showed up and we worked on our scrapbooks together.

As we were both working, at one point in time Rebecca asked if I had noticed anything in the church scrapbook that was related to social events outside the church. It was an interesting question. Reflecting on all the articles I’ve read, I couldn’t think of anything in the scrapbook that was not church related. While the scrapbooks talked about social events like VBS, or Senior Adult Day at Bok Tower Gardens, or Mission Conferences, all the events that I read about thus far had been church hosted/related. That was an interesting realization. Now, from here on out, I’m keeping my eye open for any thing in the scrapbooks that talk about social issues outside of the church.

After that one question, we got back to work and busied ourselves with our separate jobs – me with metadata and Rebecca with labeling. Then, a little while later, Rebecca shared that one of the articles in her scrapbook talked about the church hosting a six-week seminar on cults. This was an interesting discovery that sparked a fun conversation about cults. On a more silly note, Rebecca also found an article in her scrapbook that warned church members about beehives on the church property. We laughed that the church would have to make a formal announcement about beehives, and then, that someone found that announcement important enough to include in the scrapbook.

After my uneventful, but fun day working with Rebecca, I spent the rest of my internship hours looking up historical background information on the items in my scrapbook. One of my favorite things I discovered was the history of First Baptist Church Sweetwater.

In my scrapbook, I found a bulletin titled “Day of Dedication” that described the ceremony for the dedication of First Baptist Sweetwater. Reading the bulletin, I discovered that First Baptist Church Sweetwater was founded by First Baptist Church of Winter Park. I thought this was pretty cool to see a local church like FBWP branch out and start a new church in a new location. So of course, when I started doing historical background research, the thing I wanted to learn about most was First Baptist Church Sweetwater and its connection to First Baptist Winter Park! Well, sure enough, if you go to First Baptist Church Sweetwater’s website, you’ll find the history of the church which includes its connection with First Baptist Winter Park.

Here’s a screen shot of the website. But, I encourage you to read it for yourself! You can do so by clicking here.