Weeks 2 and 3 (and the beginning of 4)

Wow time flies when you're crazy busy! (I think that's how the saying goes...) So sorry for not updating sooner but I have been going at the speed of light or so it seems. Let's see where did I leave off? I believe my last post was right before our fishing trip which was awesome! Here are some of the pictures I took just on the drive

Once we got there we saw that our lovely staff had already set up camp for us and so once we unloaded all of our stuff we did the obvious thing to do at 11:30 at night on the Kenai, we went fishing. We threw on our waders, grabbed our poles and hiked about a three quarters of a mile to our fishing spot. We got our lines in the water as soon as possible and started fishing. Not all of us decided to go over night though some of the guys decided to come at a much more reasonable 4 am. We were fishing for Reds aka Sockeyes. The funny thing about fishing for Reds that I didn't previously know is that it isn't so much fishing as it is snagging. At this point in their run they aren't eating so the only way to catch them is to snag them in the mouth as they swim upstream. I hooked into a few but none of them in the mouth which is the only fair way to catch them. Even though I didn't get to keep them, fishing for them and reeling them in was a blast! After a good days worth of fishing we headed back to camp and heard a message from one of the former leaders of the Alaskan Men's Project and then immediately after some of the guys went right back out on the water. I didn't though for fear of falling asleep on the river and drowning. Justin, one of the staff, and my co-worker (I'll get to that in a second) Ben all decided to get cozy for a couple of hours in our little tent in camp bromance. All of the camps were named and as it happened that was ours. After a few hours of sleep we all headed to the river to meet up with the diehards and fish for a little. I didn't hook into anything this time but had a blast none the less. Below are some pics of fishing, fish, my action group leader Byron, and a mama bear with her two cubs who was pacing the other bank the whole weekend.

The day after our fishing excursion was Ben and my first day of work. Work is pretty cool and the people there are pretty nice but it is pretty difficult to keep up with it all day and the hours can be really long. Basically it can be a little stressful since we are technically driving shuttle for 3 hotels and moving bags and stuff for 2 hotels and there is only 2 of us on at any one time (unless there's a bag pull which I'll explain later). Usually there is one guy running shuttle most of the time and the other guy has to go back and forth between hotels to put away/get bags from the bell closets or rooms. When things are busy it definitely gets hectic but so far so good. The reason the hours can be long is that when a big tour bus comes in the hotel makes all of the bellman who can come in come in so that we can manage the sudden appearance/disappearance of bags which happens sometimes 3 or 4 times a day so if we are able to work at that time, we are working. The pay is great though. I get paid $10.68 per hour and then for each bag pull they charge the tour companies $8 per person that we pull bags for and that money gets split between all of the guys working that day. Plus tips are always a nice contribution. All in all last week I made around $850 when you factor everything in (and out...darn you taxes!).

During our first week of work we also had our first week of our city life team's ministry, the sports club. We weren't expecting a very large turnout which proved to be true with just 2 kids coming. This was a little disappointing but it was really fun anyway and afterward we got to treat them to some Taco Bell and drive them home.

After our first week of work a few of us guys decided that we would go floating/fishing down a river one of the days of a weekend. That was really neat but we really did not give ourselves enough time so we only got to fish for about 2 hours and nobody caught anything unfortunately. It was still really fun though! You can see the pic of our inflatable raft crew below.

After this trip we had another long tiring week at work but an amazing experience when it came to our city life team time. We weren't expecting too many more kids than last time and were hopeful for 6 or 7 so that we could play a full court game of basketball but the Lord definitely provided and more than 20 kids came! We were so shocked and excited at the number! We had such a good time too! We played a variated version of football and then we played some basketball and the kids all had a blast! We are even more optimistic for next week because unbeknownst to us, the front door actually locked on us this week on accident so there may have been kids that tried to come but who couldn't get in. It was just so cool and we are so excited to see how the Lord is going to lead us in this and we would all definitely appreciate all of the prayers that we could get for us and the kids involved.

After this week of work was done we went on a backpacking trip on a trail down near Seward. Again we started out pretty late and actually got on the trail around 10:30. The hike up was really great and I was privileged enough to get to spend time with and get to know better some more guys on the project. I set the pace for the group and when I first saw the lake that we were going to be staying at I was breathless. As you will see in the pictures below the scenery was spectacular! We rolled into the place we would camp at around 2 am and immediately my friend John and I set up our little tent and passed out. The next day we got to sleep in and then spend some discussion time with our roommates which was really amazing. We got the rest of the day to ourselves as well so I just spent some time near the lake and just taking in God's beauty. My tent mate and I found a beach near the lake where every single rock was a perfect skipping rock and we spent some time just skipping stones across the dead still water. The next day we took our time packing up and taking off and eventually we got going back down the trail which was even more beautiful than the way up! There are so many things that I'm probably leaving out but it was an awesome trip and I'll let some of my pics speak for themselves. Oh and that picture of the lake with that speck sitting on the snow beside it, the speck is me.

Prayer requests:

For work not to overwhelm me

For the sports club to grow in numbers and in opportunities to share the gospel

For perseverance

For sleep

Thanks so much for all of you who have been so faithful in praying for me and the project!