Island hopping.

We visited two islands in the past week Jules and Tent.  The experience could not have been any different.  Jules was a tropical paradise.  An island of dark volcanic rock in a sea of dirty ice.  Dirty ice is beautiful, white with lines of black dust ringing pools of clear blue water.  The sun warms the rock and there is no wind.  After we upgraded the weather station a few of us laid down for a nap in the sun while we waited on the helicopter to pick us up.  Tent could not have been any more different.  Continuous 40 mph winds whipped over the island.   We had to lash our packs to the tower to keep them from blowing away.  Volcanic dust that rose with every step is not fun in the eyes!  But, we finished in time and made the call to the helicopter barely catching it, five minutes later and it would have been on another trip earning us another hour on the blasted rock!

What have I gotten myself into?!

  So as I sit and write my sermon for the upcoming Sunday I am a little overwhelmed.  I walked into this one.  I was eating lunch with the Chaplain and the other usher and mentioned that I always wanted to be an usher when I was young.  He responded that he always wanted to be an usher too.  So I suggested that I preach next week and he could usher.  "Ok, sounds good" he responded.  Now he is a teacher of preaching and I have been talking with him about going into the ministry so this isn't out of place, but still I wasn't expecting it!
  Last week I decided to start taking my faith seriously and stop being lukewarm.  So, this is an answer to prayer.  My family has been irritatingly not as stressed about this as I am, but that has also been encouraging.   I will be speaking on Jonah 3.  It is fitting because I feel like a recovering Jonah these days.  I have gotten a bit on paper after staring at the blinking empty cursor that represents writers block these days, back to work!

I am the Aeronaut!

  The first rule of helicopter safety is don't move fast because loading and unloading a running helicopter is exciting.  It really is, you feel like you are special forces in a movie!  I had three helicopter flights over the last three days and it is a great new experience.  After you take off there is a moment of wrongness and fear and then it's a blast.  On the third day we landed on a ledge on the side of Jules island.  The pilots here really know their stuff and even in the high winds are accurate.  They did manage to blow a few of our bags down the hill when they came to pick us up.  We all had to just watch because the second rule is not to chase things a landing helo blows around.  More flights to follow next week, just something about a helicopter ride that makes me feel like Rambo!