Sept 30th - Something Different

I will probably post a more conventional post later today. Kelsey, Andy & Lydia stayed here overnight last night. Their first night in their new "home", our lower level. It is a little after 7 AM and I can occasionally hear Lydia talking and laughing. I think she is up with Andy as he gets ready for work. (They are putting their house up for sale and saving money by staying here, so that they can are better able to afford the home they want, when they find it.)

Now for something different.
 

I am part way through a “read the Bible in a Year” program (really part way because I only started in June). Part of today’s reading was Isaiah 60:1-62:5. I didn’t sleep well last and so I’m sitting here at the dining room table at 6 AM  reading today’s versus. As I started reading these thoughts came to my mind,

“Is there any reason why the promises don’t apply to Centertown Baptist Church (where Kathy and I attend); or, for that matter, to me as an individual?” Is there any reason why I shouldn’t read verse 3, which says, “Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”, to read “Neighbors will come to your light, and community leaders to the brightness of your dawn.”?

Of course the promise assumes that I am living life as God would have me do so. Also, I don’t think the things promised in the passage will happen unless we, as individuals, have an expectation that they will occur. I certainly fall short of living with that expectation being in the forefront of my mind. On one had I sense the Spirit telling me that things are going to happen, but I don’t think I live in expectation of such things occurring. It is more like a thought on the sidelines of my mind.

Sadly, after opening other bible translations and a commentary to read more about these verses I already sense the worldly side of me wanting to move this from being more of a God moment to a venue for cold, calculating study. But there is hope on that front.

As I have been reading through the Bible this past few months one very important item seems to come up again and again. I am not capable of changing myself, the way I live and approach life. Only God can do that, and He will if I sincerely ask Him to do so. For me it is never a “Damascus road experience” like Paul’s. My walk with the Lord is more like turning a supertanker around. It is a VERY slow change of direction. In fact, I think my “rudder’ breaks at times and I go extended periods with no change at all. I think those times are when I basically get tangled up in the world and essentially forget about God.

The reason I even bring any of this up is because there are so many hurting people in our world today. I, who call myself a Christian, have to do a better job of being a light that draws those folks to the peace of knowing Jesus Christ as my/their personal Savior. Once we have accepted Christ’s free gift of salvation God forgives us of ALL our sins. He promises that he will provide for us and ultimately provide us with a home in Heaven.

God can change me so that “my light” shines brighter. Not so that I can be a “grand” person, but so that the light attracts others so that they can be offered a better way of life. Jesus didn’t chase people down. They came to Him because they wanted the peace that showed in the way He lived His life. A peace that showed through no matter what hardships He was facing at the moment.

 

May God bless you and yours this glorious day.

Sept 24th -- So Out of Shape

A little warm but another nice day here today. Sunny with a high 80.

First things first. I have to wonder if Lydia might have the makings to be a plumber. She is able to handle the "plumbers crack" part of the job.

Mom & Doug arrived here last Wednesday evening and left yesterday before noon. We all helped do more work on Kelsey & Andy's house. I think we managed to get most of the things done, but there is still odds and ends to do.

Today I cut a little wood and found out how out of shape I am. I cut down two dead trees. The trunk of the small one was 8-10" in diameter and the larger one was 16-18" in diameter. I cut up all of the small one and part of the larger one. The trunk of the larger one, where it is large enough that it will need to be split, still needs to be cut up. I was POOPED after cutting just this much. Hopefully I will toughen up after a few more days of cutting <grin>.

This was our wood pile yesterday.

 And this is it today. Not a lot of progress considering I used a tank and a half of gas.

I probably need to cut at least a dozen times what I cut today, to have enough to get us through the winter.

We still have a lot of wood in another building, left over from last year. Even if I don't cut any more we probably have enough to get us through the winter, but I would like to keep the wood in the other building in reserve.

I hope you all had a good day. May God bless you and yours.

September 15th - Sunday

More nice weather last night and today. We had a very little rain today, but not even enough to settle the dust. Hopefully we will get more tonight.

We had a good service at church this morning.

Kelsey and Lydia came over for awhile this afternoon. Lydia and I had to take a ride around the property on the tractor.

Below is a photo the gift she gave us for Grandparents Day.

 Kelsey took a photo of the "artist". She looks a little like a smurf.

More on our Alaska trip.
Thursday, the 11th we docked in Skagway at 6 AM. Kathy and I rode a tour bus over to the White Pass & Yukon Railroad. We rode the train about 70 miles, to Frasier, British Columbia. The railroad is a narrow gage railroad that was built in the late 1800's. They used the narrow gage so that they could make much sharper turns in the mountainous terrain. They built it in 26 months! That would be fantastic if they had built it over that terrain in a temperate climate. These guys were dealing with 50 below temperatures and sustained winds as high as 70 mph during the winter months. They used 450 tons of blasting powder during the construction. The original line was 110 miles long. It is an interesting story. You can read more about it at http://www.wpyr.com/history/
When we got off the train we boarded a bus again and continued on to Bennett Lake and then on in the Yukon Territory. We went about another 60 miles into the Yukon Territory. Before the railroad miners had to carry their goods to Bennett Lake from there the could travel by water.

At a couple of places along the trip we saw mountains that appeared to have holes through them.

It was actually just snow on the side of the mountain, but it sure looked like a hole.

This was the path of many of the miners who were rushing to the Klondike gold fields. After they got to Bennett Lake they still had 600 miles to go, but it was mostly via water. One interesting point was that the Mounties would not let miners into Canada unless they had at least a ton of supplies. That was supposed to be enough to keep them from freezing/starving. There were two routes from the Skagway area to Bennett Lake. One was very steep, many of us have seen old photos of the miners going up what looked like an incredibly long stairway. That route was to steep for pack horses. The miners had to carry their ton of goods, by making many trips. The other route was along the route where the railway was built. In just a couple of years over 3,000 horses died from being abused carrying goods up the trail. One of the areas along the railway is called Dead Horse Gulch because many dead horses were pushed off the trail at that point.

There was a very small "Mounties Museum" at the complex where we had lunch. One of the exhibits was the list of what each person had to carry with him to get into Canada.

The bus driver lined folks up, had them hand him their camera's and took their photos along at the sign at the entry into the Yukon Territory.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. May God bless you and yours.

September 14th - Decent Temperatures

Last nights low temperature was in the high 40's and both yesterday and todays high was in the high 70's. It was wonderful.

Yesterday I volunteered at the Habitat Re-Store again. It was the first time I've been there since spring. Kathy, Kelsey & Lydia went to Westphalia, MO to look at some pans for baking cakes. Westphalia is about 30 miles southeast of here. Kelsey got some good buys on some baking pans.

Today Andy and I did some more work on the missing siding and back stoop. We did work diligently from 9 to 3, with an hour off for lunch, but by the time we quit it didn't look like we had done much.

Kelsey backed cakes and muffins this morning. Andy told me that Lydia at a couple of them and then later grabbed one that Kelsey had on her plate. She went into her "Princess Tent" to eat it. He opened the flap and took this photo.

Later Kathy went to Lydia's swimming lesson with Kelsey and Lydia.

More on Alaskan trip. Our route

Sunday afternoon and Monday we "sailed" from Seattle to Ketchikan, Alaska. We arrived in Ketchikan early Tuesday morning and spent most of the day in Ketchikan. Tom, Mary Lou, Les & Connie went on a tour to learn about Alaskan totem poles. Kathy and I just walked around Ketchikan. The weather was great. Sunny with highs around 60.

 You see strange things in Alaska.

Seaplanes were constantly taking off and landing.

Tuesday night we sailed to Juneau, AK, the capitol of AK. (It is the only state capitol that is only accessible by air or sea. There are no roads to get to the Juneau area. On the way we sailed up the Tracy Fjord. Maybe what was most amazing was that they could take a ship up such a narrow passage.

I took this at 6:30 AM, just after we had entered the fjord.

 I was on the far side of the ship as we made a turn around this rock bluff. We were really close to the rock wall. Remember that this ship is 950 feet long and 118 feet wide.

 This was where we turned around, the end of the fjord. That is a glacier in front of us, and those are small icebergs floating in the water. It was lightly raining by the time we got here.

After making our way back out of the fjord we headed for Juneau. We arrived around 2 PM. It was raining and windy while we were docking. I watched the process and it took a long time to get the ship secured against the pier. Kathy and I were supposed to leave on our tour of the Mendenhall Glacier at 3:00 but we weren't able to get off the ship to make the tour. Fortunately they had another one leave at 3:30 and they put on it.

The Mendenhall Glacier.

Sadly we did not have near enough time to explore around it. It was still misting rain.

After leaving the glacier we were bused to the small bay where the whale watching boats were moored. Our whale watching jet boat cruised at around 40 mph, with 30 passengers. Soon after we left a pod of Orcas (killer whales) were spotted. I thought the young lady who was our "naturalist" might wet her pants, she was so excited. She said they only see Orcas about once a month. We had them on both sides of the boat as we idled along. Then it was a 20 minute ride to another location were we saw a humpback whale and her calf. Humpback calves gain 5-7 pounds an hour. We heard that at a seminar, the night before we landed in Juneau. I asked Ali, our naturalist, about it and she said that the upper range is 8# and hour. It rained almost the entire time we were on the whale watching boat. Since it was enclosed it wasn't a problem.

Wednesday night we sailed to Skagway. More on that another time.

I hope you all had a wonderful day. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 9th - Back Home

We are home from our cruise. When we realized how hot it is in central Missouri we thought about staying in Seattle a couple of more days. (Not seriously since the cost of flying home would have increased dramatically if we changed tickets.)

 We drove to Kansas City, Kansas on August 31^st and stayed there overnight. The hotel we stayed at allowed people to leave their cars in the hotel parking lot over up to two weeks, at no cost, if they stayed overnight at the hotel. They took us to the airport in the morning and we flew to Seattle. The flight was no more than two-thirds full. Once in Seattle we took a shuttle bus to the ship and boarded.

 

Standing in the lines to go through airport security was nothing compared to the lines at the port. After arriving at the port customs area we stood in a line to get checked into the facility, Then it was the lines in the photo below to get checked in to the ship.

 Then it was this line to get on the ship. There are inclined ramps between this deck and the ship. After getting off the deck we stood in line going up the ramps.

 

I'm whining, but is really wasn't all that bad. It was a sunny day and the temperature was probably in the 70's.

Below is a photo of their luggage handling system. Fork trucks brought “crate” after crate of luggage out onto the pier. Then fork trucks moved one crate at a time up to doors I the sides of the ship. Small overhead cranes cantilevered out through the doors, picked up one crate at a time and moved it into the ship. They would move several crates into the ship, empty them, move the empties back out onto the pier and repeat the process with new crates full of luggage. This was happening at least at two locations along the ship.

 

We sailed on the Golden Princess

 The high windows across the back are in a bar. It is called deck level 17. I don't know how high it is but it is way above the water. During the day it was a great place to go set on watch out the windows.

 

The Golden Princess started in service in 2001, she was “refitted” in 2009. She is 951 feet long and 118 feet wide. She has a cruising speed of 22 knots (25 mph). The typical cruising speed while we were aboard was 19.3 knots. She has a passenger capacity of 2,600 with a crew capacity of 1,100. (Our cruise was full. I’m not sure if the passenger/crew numbers were accurate for our cruise.) There are 9 restaurants, 4 or 5 pools and I think 6 whirlpools on board. She is powered by two 56,000 hp diesels.

A couple of things that shocked all of us. The first was that the workers on the ship are absolutely wonderful, hard working people. They ALL seem to go to great lengths to make sure that passengers enjoy their cruises. They almost always have a smile for passengers as they pass by. The other thing was that I don’t think one of them was an American. Simona was our waitress every evening. She and her husband are from Serbia. They have been working on cruise ships for 7 (I think, but maybe 10) years. The work 10 months out of the year, 7 days a week, 10-12 hours per day. You have never met a person who is more pleasant to be around. Hedy was the young lady who took care of our cabin. If she saw you in the hallway she would always call out a hello to you, with a big smile. Folks who work this hard, and who are this happy about it, make America’s future a little scary. I bet there isn’t one 20-40 year old American in a hundred who could cut it working on one of these ships.

We flew out of Kansas City early Sunday morning and by late afternoon we were headed out to sea, headed for Ketchikan, Alaska.

More tomorrow. I hope all of you had as good a week as Kathy and I did.  May God bless you and yours.