Today was yet another good and amazing day! Woke up early, Bethany and Anthony pick up Josh from the airport, and while they are gone… I get the opportunity to finally sweep the floor entirely and get rid of all the food on the floor. Then I did my devotions. When the guys woke up, we had breakfast and by then the gang was all there. We pretty much just relaxed all morning.. Kirk had errands to run, try and get DSL up and running so we have good internet up at the guys house… so we all just hung around waiting till he and P. Jimmy got back so we could go on the boat, which was the plan for the day.
Dionis wanted me to make sure that I blogged about how we wouldn’t let him nap earlier. See what happened is, we were all super hot, it was a little unbearable this morning. Then Bethany suggested to Marissa and me that we go hang out in the guys actual room because it’s air conditioned. We didn’t know anyone was in the room. Well I was about to jump onto the mattress when I noticed that the giant bundle of white sheets was Dionis mummified. So glad I noticed as soon as I did! Well I didn’t jump onto that mattress but there were two others that the three of us climbed onto… then later Anthony and Ian decided it would be a good idea to come into the room too and poor Dionis couldn’t sleep… not that I feel too terrible for him cause he was up tonight on my laptop and keeping me from writing this blog sooner so he must not have been that tired! Oh and he wanted me to mention that were making him breakfast specially tomorrow because he always wakes up late and never gets any.
Oh I also want to mention that Feisty… the crab that Anthony caught last night… CRAWLED OUT OF THE BUCKET overnight! Those crabs are nuts! The one I caught was still there tho!
Once Pastor Jimmy got back with Kirk, and after a lot more working things out…. We get on the road to get on the boat… after buying water and gas, we head to the docking beach and shipped out. P. Jimmy just drove that thing as fast as it went around these beautiful islands… we just got 30-45 minutes of just enjoyment of the ride and the view… so beautiful! After pulling by a few islands, pastor Jimmy turns to me and says that he was going to show us the coolest beach in the whole world… the best one he says. I remember thinking about how I would react, if it would actually be that cool… what would make it so cool… I believed him, I just didn’t know what to expect… well were going and going out on the ocean, and then all of a sudden, when were a 1000 yards away from this island… he slows down, in what looked like the middle of the ocean. The thought kinda flickered through my brain of what it was but it was just so unbelievable to me that I shook it off…. The beach was UNDERWATER!! It extended all the way to the island and far in two directions… P. Jimmy said that when the tide is low it’s just perfect white sand… but we could get out and it was just ankle deep water…. It was crazy, trippy, and unreal.. but gorgeous! We all want to go back there again, it was probably the coolest thing ever!
While we were in that section, we saw a Nurse Shark, that was pretty cool too, we chased it around for a while poor thing. Then we were off once more, into the ocean blue. We get to this strip of rock and put on our snorkel gear, grab some spears and head out to spear-fish. I didn’t spear fish, but I did snorkel! So cool! Being able to see everything and all the fish, and watching the guys dive after fish, trying to spear them.. pretty awesome.. We looked for fish on both sides but couldn’t really find anything worthwhile. Out there though, further out, the swells were so high.. we would get the boat air borne and then land… which caused a lot of bruising, mostly for Marissa. But it was sweet… even Kirk just loved it! Sometimes a little to intense, there was one point where I thought he was going to fly out of his chair, I was standing right behind him… and it scared me… Praise God he was fine! We drove under this raincloud, and the drops were like bullets, shooting like crazy!
Everyone wants to make sure I tell the story about how a flying fish came out of the water and hit Josh in the arm and made his arm slimy.. I missed this whole thing, I don’t know what I was looking at, but I remember looking over and wondering what was going on.
We tried out a few more places for spear fishing, but mostly drove the boat around a lot… Anthony got a little motion sick and started throwing up over the side… that was pretty gross… glad we didn’t swim there. I don’t know why they wanted me to make sure I said something about that too. Then one of the last places P. Jimmy took us spear fishing.. I got out but after a while got pretty tired, it’s hard to swim against the swells while you’re holding your breath (I wasn’t using the snorkel, it limited my breathing so much that I figured I might as well hold my breath). All us girls were in the boat but the guys were still on the hunt… P. Jimmy was thinking about joining them (he never ended up doing that), so he wanted me to drive the boat. At first I was just like.. he must be joking! He was dead serious! Kirk is just like “why not?”….so I finally said I would but P. Jimmy has to show me how… so for the next hour, I’m maneuvering this thing on these swells that want to push us into the rocky islands! It was actually pretty fun, you have to get the hang of it, and I was still kinda off with my steering sometimes by the end of it but it ended up ok!
There was one point where we were trying to pick up Anthony after we decided that that was it for the day and I was up alongside him when P. Jimmy was like, ok go around.. so poor Anthony was about to go in when I start going around in circles around him… it was funny though!
I have to say…Josh and Anthony had spear-fished before, but Ian was beast! He caught a few of the fish! And loved it! He did also spear a blow fish though… which we all felt bad about… you can’t eat those things, and when you spear them… they tend to explode.. I mean, it’s like popping a balloon.
Going back, the sun was setting and it was gorgeous! Awesome trip back too.. we were all exhausted but it was a good feeling. While we were getting the boat out of the water… all my bug spray had washed off in the ocean.. so within minutes of being on land… I got bit by some kind of horsefly (which hurt really bad!), and later I found 10 more bites all over my legs… and these ones are bad compared to the ones I’ve had before.. Marissa faced the same problem on her arm.
Heading back we were dropped off at our house to get cleaned up and then we went over to P. Jimmy to have dinner! It was amazing! I honestly am so blessed by P. Jimmy and his family right now… I wanted to cry at dinner… Just how generous and loving they all are, the ways that they help us and provide for us and take care of us is just incredible. They barely know us! I pray that I would never be ungrateful because it is truly amazing and an amazing blessing! I mean they help us out with groceries, so we don’t have to spend 100s of dollars everyday on food, they make us food, they take us out on a boat all day… they invite us into their home… they show us around…. They give us anti-itch cream that is the best that they have on the island…. They are amazing people! Again, I am more than blessed!
At dinner (which was amazing), we had some interesting conversations…. We were all pretty tired I think and in an interesting place haha… but it just made me think a lot about stuff. Just how different our perspectives are, and yet how the same they can be, about our disagreements and differences really… just the group that God put together down here in general I guess… I just had a really cool thought that encouraged me so much… I really believe that a lot of what God is going to do down here through us is through our relationships with each other. How fitting is that? After our church has been diving into community to have that be part of this trip? What a demonstration of who God is! Not only that He is going to use our relationships with each other but who He chose to do that with. Our group has so many odd puzzle pieces that you wouldn’t really know how they would fit…. But what God just kinda put on my heart that really encouraged me was that none of that really matters… because we are unified in His Spirit… we all serve the same God, love the same God, and love each other through the same God. He is good and He is bigger than who we are, bigger than our differences… and He uses those differences, because He can. How awesome is He that He would use the least likely circumstances for His glory?
What’s really cool is that reflecting on it now I am reminded of my S.O.A.P. from this morning which was:
God is love. Whoever lives in love, lives in God, and God in him. --1 John 4:16
He just spoke to me through that verse this morning about that… living in love, living in God, and what that would look like, what it actually means.. How it would change relationships and perspectives. God is love… love conquers all, and love lives in us. So what does anything else matter? By our love for each other, His name will be known! Praise God that He always has the end in mind, He always has a plan, and it’s always for the best! Miss you all! Keep up with the blog!
No comments:
Post a Comment