In life I have found that true friends are a gift from God! I just had the chance to spend a few days with my buddy from Alaska, Mike Becker. He came down to Palm Springs for an Audi Specialist event. From attending an incredible concert in LA, to hanging out with a few of his friends, to relaxing at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort in sunny Palm Springs, we had a great time! In the year that I’ve known him, Mike has shown himself to be a loyal friend and has helped me in many ways!
Every night, tens of thousands of children in Northern Uganda walk to nearby cities and sleep outside in order to protect themselves from abduction. For over twenty years, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been terrorizing Northern Uganda. Part of their strategy is to abduct children, force them to kill others or else be killed, and thereby desensitize them and turn them into brutal soldiers. An estimated 20,000-50,000 children have suffered this fate. Quite possibly the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, this war has caused 1.7 million people to be forcibly displaced and 130 people continue to die per day in Northern Uganda, due to violence.
Desiring to identify with these children and to stop the war in Northern Uganda, I joined 6,000 people in Balboa Park for the Global Night Commute. This event was organized by Invisible Children, a non-profit organization that is working to communicate the desperate plight of these people to the world. The event was challenging, thought provoking and inspiring. Every one present was given paper to write a letter to the President and our state senators. We also made artwork express our thoughts and feelings about this issue. After writing the letters, we gathered for pictures and then spent the night hanging out and sleeping in the park. It was a night that I won’t soon forget and soon I hope that it will be a night that the world won’t forget!
To learn more about Invisible Children, visit www.invisiblechildren.com. Or to see more images of the event, go to www.ajimaging.com and navigate to the galleries section of the site.
Alright, I’m finally getting settled into my new place in sunny San Diego, California! My blogging has nearly dropped off the map for these past two months as it seems that I have been going crazy with things to do! From finishing up teaching at ABI to handling several large web design jobs at once, and to finally moving to San Diego, life has kept my hands full.
Now that I am finished making excuses for myself, San Diego has been great so far! God has blessed me with a great place to stay here. I am renting from an “empty nest” couple who recently built a new house and had several extra rooms to rent out. They go do the Church that I am attending here and are wonderful people! There is so much to write! I will try to add much more soon. God is good!
My bed shook violently, waking me up at 7:30 am this morning. I was too tired to know what was going on but later learned that an earthquake measuring 5.3 on the richter scale, had originated some 15 miles from Homer, shaking up the whole area. Everybody on campus experienced the quake! Meanwhile, the volcano has continued to erupt over the past several weeks but has not yet caused any damage here in Homer. Life in Alaska is always interesting! I love it here!
Life in Alaska is never dull. Just as things were getting back to normal after the Christmas break, a local volcano decided to erupt on us. The good news is that Augustine is on an uninhabited island in the Cook Inlet. The only danger for Alaskans is the ash buildup that could affect people’s cars and homes, and keep everybody inside for awhile. We were all expecting a lot of ash to land on Homer yesterday but the dark clouds that rolled in brought snowfall with a little bit of Ash, but not enough to do any damage. We are fortunate!
Life throws many interesting twists and turns our way but what happened today is uniquely Alaskan. This morning I flew across Kachemak Bay to a remote native village called Port Graham. Several of the students from ABI were performing a Christmas program for the village church and I went along to take pictures.
Our group was too large to fit into the small 4 passenger plane, so I agreed to wait for the second plane ride back to Homer. When the plane returned, however, the weather had changed for the worst. We quickly loaded up the plane and took off but after circling several times, our pilot realized that it was not safe to proceed so we were forced to land and wait out the weather in the village.
The weather did not improve but rather to the contrary, it grew progressively worse. We spent the day with one of the Christian families in the village. As though our day had not been eventful enough, this evening we noticed a sulfur smell in the air. There is anctive volcano in the area, known as Augustine, that has erupted and covered this entire area in ash before. Lately, it has been more active than usual and the state has been monitoring it closely. Therefore, the smell of sulfur in the village could only mean one thing: Augustine was restless.
The people of the village were tense and calling each other to keep up on the latest news about the volcanic activity. Some were concerned that we would have to move to higher ground and we were told to be ready. The people of the village eventually concluded that tonight’s strong winds merely blew some of the volcanic emissions all the way to the village. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief but there is still a growing concern about the activities of Augustine.
So that was my day. Welcome to Alaska. Okay, so it is not like this every day but there are certainly one’s fair share of unique experiences to be had here in Alaska! I just hope that I am able to get back to Homer in time to fly home on Wednesday!
Most of you have probably heard, by now, that much to my own surprise, life’s often interesting path brought me to Alaska. For those of who wonder what in the world I am doing in a place like Alaska, let me explain…
It all started last summer when an old friend from college visited me in Minneapolis and told me of his plans to teach at Alaska Bible Institute in the fall. Knowing of my love for teaching, he invited me to come up in the winter and to teach a few of his classes for a couple of weeks. Although I thought it more desirable to visit Alaska in the summer, it seemed that the opportunity to teach the Bible was well worth the trip.
I tentatively planned to go up to Alaska sometime in February. By February, however, it seemed that the trip wouldn’t work out and I decided that I would have to try to go another time. My dear mother strongly encouraged me to go and everything seemed to be working out, so I changed my mind and decided to go after all.
I greatly enjoyed my first two weeks in Alaska. It was much warmer than I expected, (warmer than Ohio at the time that I left). Homer was a quaint little town that seemed like a great place to be. And I felt very much “at home†with teaching the Bible again.
A few days before I was supposed to fly back to Ohio, I sat in on the leadership meeting of a ministry called The Verge, also based here in Homer, Alaska. As I heard them talk about the kind of website they wanted to have, it occurred to me that maybe I should volunteer some time to help build such a website. On what should’ve been my last night in Alaska, I decided to offer to help with the website and to extend my flight two weeks if they wanted me to stay. They readily agreed and this is how the process began whereby I am now “stuck†in Alaska.
The site was not finished in two weeks so I delayed my flight again, for only one more week, at the end of which I assured everyone that I was going to go home this time. During that last week, however, I was offered a job as a graphic designer and asked to design an enormous website. Then my buddy Eric Rozeboom unexpectedly got a two-bedroom apartment with place for a roommate. Opportunity and circumstance, or God as I see it, opened the door for me to stay in Alaska for the summer.
The final delay in my return to “the rest of my life†came this summer when Alaska Bible Institute offered me an opportunity to teach Church History for the coming school year. This was an unexpected offer because the current Church History teacher was highly regarded as a great teacher so I did not think that this class would open up. When he agreed to teach another Bible course I had about two weeks to decide what to do. Although I had originally planned to go to seminary in the fall, this seemed like a great way to prepare for seminary, learning by teaching. I am enjoying the time of study and look forward to teaching in the fall.
My summer in Alaska has been full of opportunity and great experiences. It has all been so unexpected but that is how God seems to work in my life so I’m just going to enjoy the ride!