This blog is meant to be a home for sharing about my life and spreading information and ideas to help others do everything better in their everyday lives and to glorify God in the process.
I will live with integrity and strive to lead and encourage my family, coworkers, friends, and neighbors to follow my Savior Jesus Christ above all else. I will work in a way that surpasses the expectations of my employers and reflects my faith. I will love and lead my family spiritually and financially and raise my children to value education and work. I will run my finances God’s way and live and give with an open hand. In everything I do I will live with the knowledge that my life is for God’s glory and should reflect to others the hope that I have found in Him.
So I’m up late. Really late actually. Should I be up this late? No.
You see, I’ve had a lot of caffeine today and it seems to have taken hold of me somehow. Anyway, I kind of got into catching up on a bunch of random things that I needed to update on my computer and the other day I had installed Windows Live Writer but hadn’t finished setting it up yet. I guess it is supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread (What was the best thing before sliced bread?) for blogging so I’m giving it a try. I don’t know about you other bloggers but I always have MAJOR issues with my text size when I save/edit my blog posts with Blogger! I’m a little bit OCD about having things uniform sometimes so this bothers me. I’m hoping that Writer will help me make the posting process a little more streamlined. Hey! That’s a good excuse for not posting frequently! I have problems with text size! :P
Today was crazy. I got home from work past midnight. Working for my dad can be very unpredictable. I don’t mind it much though. It’s pretty exciting!
So, here goes post #1 with Windows Live Writer!
P.S. The beta for Internet Explorer 9 is pretty sweet! It is much cleaner and has Chrome-like speed. Awesome.
P.P.S It is cold outside…
So here it is; today I officially have SP with Naomi Sue Nelson! I’ve wanted to tell the world about this for a long time now but without the permission of having SP nothing was truly official until now. I really can't believe this day actually came! It was a long hard road to traverse but we made it!
Okay so some of you are like "What in the world is SP?" and I'd like to explain. SP is something that Operation Mobilization has crafted in order to help keep interaction between people of the opposite gender restrained so that you can stay focused on serving God and be efficient in your work. The rule restricts all relationships for the first year of serving with OM and then after a year you can apply for something called SP or Special Permission.
So the problem is this; I joined OM and the Logos Hope in January. I've been informed that a typical year has 12 months (I tried to convince them that my culture believes in 1 month years but they didn't buy it...) and therefore I would have never been allowed to get SP while on board. That is the basic explanation of the ship policy on relationships.
I met Naomi about 10 days after I walked up the gangway in Aruba as a STEPper during the sail to Jamaica. It was my first sail and one evening while up on the upper decks of the ship I started talking with her and we hit it off! It turns out she has a big family too! The things we had in common were crazy and within two weeks we both knew that there was something different between us. We knew that it wasn't allowed during my first year (Her first year was already up.) and so we had to go talk with Personnel. They gave us good guidelines with how to act and where and how we could see each other. No time was allowed to be spent "one on one" at all.
Since then we've had ups and downs working with the frustrations of hiding all of the emotion and things we wished we could do for the other. We kept in contact mostly via email, chat, and phone (As if it was already a long distance relationship while literally in the same boat!) which worked but was frustrating knowing that the person was only a few steps away from being able to talk in person but it wasn't allowed. You can see how this would be trying at times.
After talking with Personnel multiple times they have decided to grant us “Leaving SP” for two weeks before I leave because we can never get SP because I can’t stay for an entire year. Even if I was able to stay for a year she would leave right before my year was up! The grace that they are showing us is one of the most amazing things that has happened while on the ship. The very best thing about all this is that God has been at the center from day 1. God has provided me with strength and perseverance to endure and excel in my work on the ship.
A little about Naomi:She was born in Indiana and when she was 1 her parents moved to Hong Kong as missionaries and moved to China when she was a junior in high school. She is the oldest of 9 kids and they were homeschooled. After high school she became interested in the ship after the Doulos (Now retired) visited Hong Kong and after some prayer decided to apply to work on the ship. On the ship she has worked in two departments. For the first 7 months she worked in Accommodation. Her passion wasn’t for vacuuming and cleaning though and really wanted to work in Deck with Marine Operations and would spend her free time learning all about sailing and all sorts of things I would never care to know! She knew more about the department than most of the people serving in Deck knew! She finally was able to move to Deck which was a miracle because they don’t normally take many girls into the department because of the nature of the work. She is hard working though and probably gets more done than others that are much stronger than her. Everything went well for her until I showed up and turned everything upside crazy! :P
She has a blog that she maintains if you’re interested in checking it out.
So we now have 14 days before I leave. 14 days of SP. 14 days where we can sit and talk and not worry about being in a group or the people around us. 14 days before we embark on a long distance relationship that will be trying and rewarding. I believe that God has made it work thus far and I believe He will continue to guide us as we move forward.
“Now all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.”
Ephesians 3:20
“And that’s all I have to say about that.”
:)
Like I said before the community has time to really relax and do some enjoyable things together. The other evening we were blessed by our galley and pantry team with a cookout with real hamburgers and all of the side items you would expect. It is so cool to go up to the top decks and look around at the horizon and see absolutely nothing. Only water and an occasional flying fish.
Every Thursday is prayer night. Last Thursday they put on something very different than normal that was supposed to give us a picture of what it is like to be truly poor. We reenacted what one family in Africa does for a living. They make paper bags all day every day and struggle to even pay for what they need to stay alive let alone think about sending the children to school or affording other such "luxuries" that we take for granted every day. We got into groups and we had to make paper bags and sell them. We had limited time and had to do our best to meet the minimum payments for food, water, housing, and trying to send a child to school. You could also choose to work for one of the shopkeepers and make money outside of the home and one of the options was to send our sisters into prostitution just to make enough money to live.
I wish I could say that it was just a simulation, a game, but unfortunately it is a very real representation of how people struggle for survival. We can provide some help to these people during our visit to Africa in the form of supplies but we want to supply them with the truth of Jesus. Give them water that will make them never thirst again. Please pray that as the Logos Hope every day comes nearer and nearer to Africa that the Holy Spirit will go before us and prepare a way in the hearts of the people that we will come into contact with. As you know the Caribbean is very poor in some areas but Africa even more so.
This is a concrete platform strictly for the purpose of ships being able to anchor their mooring lines to the bollards. There are also shock absorbers for ships to come up against and not be damaged because of the giving materials that the absorber is made of.
People usually bring out their flags and act all patriotic. It's pretty sweet.
Here is the line up team that had been in Antigua for about two months getting things ready for the ship to come. Things like events, sponsors, coordination of an internet connection and other required things for everything to run smoothly.
On the other side of the quayside there was a research ship that had many specially designed devices for searching the ocean floor. Very cool.
Yes, I'll admit it. I'm very American. I love my ice cream. I love my food. I miss the freedom of driving. I don't even care what I drive I just want to drive something! I haven't driven anything since I left Minnesota back in January! I'm starting to forget what it was like!
