Week the Seventh

This week was a pretty normal week, flooded with excitement for my Belize mission trip. Work was great all week. I spent the week finishing the basement of the garage which was really fun! So fun that we worked an extra day and I used my free time on Saturday to complete it.

Andy and I workin hard.

The joists are laid.

The floor is done!

This week we had a couple meditations and watched Malcolm X, which is a great movie. On Saturday we went over to the Kane's for Lord's day and had a blast! I met all the Kane's, had some good competition, and had really good food! Then Sunday we relaxed, messed around with the Kane boys, and went to the Cramer's for dinner.

So the week was tough and the weekend relaxing. A good combo to have. It was all very fun!

One of the things we do here is put some of clothes in common, which basically means we all share polos and socks. And we also happen to have doubles of the polos, as seen below!

God Bless!

6th Week

This week was incredible. We did a huge variety of stuff with all our free time, working, training, and chilling. The work this week was really fun. I spent the week in the basement of the Greenlawn Garage, which is actually a pool, with a garage built over it. Its really cool that the nuns just built the garage over it instead of filling it in! So the week was spent preparing to lay a floor to flatten the sloped pool. We cleared out the junk down there, including shelves that were falling over and some antique wheelbarrels. Then we tried drilling holes with a hammer drill, but after no success rented a core drill, a huge machine that drills out huge cylinders of concrete. So we used that to drill post holes and then set posts down to hold up the floor, 18 in all. This week we will be laying the beams, joists, and flooring down.

After work was done on Thursday, we were introduced to our new project: researching the Mississippi River Valley, i.e. the POP citybuilding target area. We made a list of what we might care about, and looked around for helpful websites this weekend. Another project we've started is visiting the Juvenile Detention Center. We went on Friday to get signed up and have a tour, then came back and brainstormed on what we could do with them there. It was incredibly interesting to see how they live and just to think about what we could do, because there was pretty much no regulations on us, any activity was game. I'm excited to finally hear what we decide to do!

Saturday was a Kingdom Drill, where the two Peters were in charge and led activities for the day instead of David and Jeremy. So we started out the day with chores (I had to clean the bunkhouse and bathroom), then gathered for our mission: to find our way back to Greenlawn from a random location. We got dropped off in the middle of suburbia about 7 miles due east of Greenlawn. Blindfolded the whole car ride, we had no clue where we were to start out, its kind of a cool feeling, one I haven't felt before I don't recall. But after spinning in a few circles and trying (and failing) to get our bearings from the sun, we just set out in the direction of what seemed to be a busy street. On our way over, we stopped and told a lady we were lost, and so she told us we were near Jefferson, the street we were walking towards. When we told here we were looking for Greenlawn, she pitifully said, "You're a long way off!" and began questioning us so we ended the conversation and went on our way. From Jefferson it was a straight, 7 mile hike back. We were the first group back, because the one of the other groups took the Railroad tracks and the other was placed in a corn field. It was a fun drill! After that we all went to church. I went to Granger Community Church, which was definitely a production. There were 5 huge screens, lights, and a whole rock band, such that it gave it a more concert like feel than a church service. But the pastor was great and gave an awesome sermon about Christ as the authority! Then came an amazing Lord's day, followed by "Live Free or Die Hard" before going to bed.

Sunday was the real fun day. We all went up to Lake Michigian to go sailing with the Colemans! It was incredible! When we first got there it was too windy (damage the ship windy) so we went on over to a real WWII sub called "Silversides" and took a tour of it. Mr. Coleman even paid for us all, so generous of him! The sub was really fun, I've got some pictures courtesy of Eric Blair, who was really fun to have on the sub because he's spent 2 and a half years on a sub and is currently on active duty for the Navy, so the tour guide knew how they did it then, and he knows how they do it now!

The sub from the outside, big one!

I'm looking throught the aimer of a very massive gun. It could shoot up to 8 miles!

The steering equipment and gadgets. I thought it was pretty cool!

Some sub beds I decided to take a nap on!

Here's all of us on the sub!

After the sub tour we came back for Lunch and then went sailing! It was still pretty windy so we only used one sail but still went the boats max speed! (6 knots) We went out onto Lake Michigan and hit some huge waves, rocking the boat a ton! It was great riding out front on the boat, getting splashed by the waves and barely holding on to the cables. Sailing was a definite highlight of the trip, and the whole purpose of it! Here we all are on the boat:

From left to right, back to front. Jon Xenaxis, Jeremy Osterhouse, Justin Lokke, Collin Anderson, Peter Putzier; David Salmon, Andy Bowar, David Zimmel, Peter Coleman, Nick Raway, Kevin Mcshane, Joe Bulger; Eric Blair, Micah Olson, Zack Loughran. Thats all of us except Ricky Thomas and Eric Yost, who weren't there.

After sailing we went to the beach and swam in the huge waves. They were bigger than than the ones I saw at the ocean so it was really fun to just get hit by them and try not to fall over. Plus we tried body surfing but that kinda failed, so we resorted to more taking on the waves! Then after being exhausted from that we all came back and built a huge sand castle! I couldn't find the picture but I'll try and get it up later... After the beach we went back for dinner watched an awesome sunset and left for home at 10, not arriving home till past midnight, but it was worth it! Check out that sunset!

Justin and I watching it disappear over Lake Muskegon, turning the clouds red.

Another glorious week around here! Praise God for all his blessing!

Independence Day (and the week of)

This week was probably the best so far. The Indy missionary men came and visited for the weekend, which was sweet. They arrived on Thursday evening and then on Friday we celebrated the 4th with a pool party at the Havard's! It was a great day of pool volleyball, diving and other such activities!

We made a wavepool!

Then we played this sweet game where you jump over a bar as high as you can. Nick won in every catagory. I mean, seriously, check this out!
Nick flipping over the bar.

Then on Saturday we had a good prayer seminar followed by some work on people's houses in a the branch. I sanded a deck all day, but it was fun with Rus, Mike Coney, David Zimmel and Ben all singing some awesome songs. Then we came back, got all dressed up and had an excellent Lord's day followed by an incredible prayer meeting! There was a lot of prayers for our missionaries and their work. It was really powerful. After that we ate some watermelon and proceeded to jam for the next few hours. There were 3 guitars and 4 "drums" at one point! You can see a video of it here, its kinda funny!

Sunday I went to a really big church that was kinda weird with my bro, and then came home and found out we all had the day to do whatever we wanted! So we went and got supplies for Special K bar. It was amazing! The peices were HUGE!

Then we all decided to drive up to lake Michigan! It was about an hour long drive, but it was totally worth it! We got there and saw the massive sand dunes so we climbed up and jumped off the tops for about 2 hours! We found a nice grass knoll for more air!

Woo! Huge air!

Peter being ridiculus.

From there we went swimming, made a sand hole, buried Chris and played some water football. But then we wanted to jump again and Joe told us about this way bigger dune down shore. So we hiked down the beach to it and discovered that it was, in fact, way bigger! Here's some more footage:Me jumping Peter. I cut it a bit close!

Ben jumping me. TONS OF AIR!

Then at the end we all decided to run down from the very top of this very large dune, at full speed. You would seriously go faster than your legs could carry you. Thats why Nick tumbled, he let himself. Oh and Joe is just being Joe.

It was an awesome day, ended with cigars with Peter Putz for his birthday. Happy 20th!

Oh and I can't forget my present I got from Andy in the mail. My newest addiction.

It took me about 6 hours to solve, with dinner and a talk in there too. And yes I've already broken it from overuse! That black one is missing the yellow tile for it.

Excellent week! More next weekend! I'm leaving for Belize in 2 weeks!