India 2008 - All systems go!

Tomorrow right after church the India 2008 mission trip begin.  We won't actually be "feet on the ground" until 5:30 am Tuesday morning (local time, that's 7pm Monday evening for those of you in the US Central Time Zone.  It still takes a while to get halfway around the world.) and, by that time we will have been on four different flights and, hopefully, had a chance to buy some Belgian chocolate (we connect through Brussels and Newark and Bombay/Mumbai.  But it's the Brussels connection that I'm most excited about.)  We'll also probably all be pretty beat.  But that's the price of modern air travel and we're planning on putting in a full day (prayers for good rest on the flights, endurance and quick a quick recovery from jet lag for all members of the team would be greatly appreciated).  Theoretically keeping busy on Tuesday should help to get us adjusted to the time.  That's worked for me in the past when I've had to completely upend my schedule.  We'll see how it works this time.  I'm confident that it won't hurt any.

In recent days, people have asked me if I'm ready to go.  My response has almost always been "not yet".  And, that was true.  It wasn't until tonight that I was fully packed (okay, I'm not completely packed yet.  I still need to let a few podcasts finish downloading, put the finishing touches on some playlists and then resync my iPod before adding that to my pack.).  And I definitely didn't have my life ready for me to be gone from it for two weeks until this evening.  Living alone means that you have to take care of your own bills, make sure that the cats are set-up for someone to come in and care for them, do some minor picking up around the house, mow the lawn, make sure the chores are pretty much done, etc all before you can leave.  Otherwise, you come home to a mess that you're in no shape to deal with.  Fortunately, I've had a lot of practice doing all of this and the house is still in pretty good shape from my pre-RYM cleanup.  So no worries in the physical preparations front.

The bigger thing is whether I'm mentally ready for India 2008.  I'm not certain.  It still hasn't really "hit me" that I'm going to India tomorrow.  Part of it probably is that I've been talking about and thinking about this trip for almost a year now (some people may know that, most of the time, the mission trips for each year are preliminarily decided on by Steve and I at an after dinner conversation late in the week during the current year.  For the rest of you, if you've got opinions about where we should go, get your ideas in early!).  I've been planning for the trip for the past six or so months.  And I've done so much travel that packing up and going somewhere isn't as big a deal for me as it is for many other people.  India is a bit farther than I usually go and I know the culture is going to be much different than most of my regular trips (Texas sometimes feels like a whole different country than the rest of the planet, but it's pretty similar to most other places in a lot of ways), but, really, in a lot of ways, it's another short term mission trip (number 17 for me), another plane ride, another time to spend some concentrated time serving God with a group of His people.  I say that I'm excited about this trip.  And in some ways I am.  But, in others, I've got a bit of a blasé attitude.  It's not quite "been there, done that", but it's kinda close.  And that doesn't mean that I'm not looking forward to it.  I'm just not feeling that it's going to "The BESTEST BEST THING EVER that will TOTALLY CHANGE MY LIFE FOREVER!!!".  Maybe it will.  God can do that and that would rock.  But, more likely, that won't happen.  And I'm good with that.  I'm ready to be flexible and try to be patient and be open to whatever God has to teach me and show me in the upcoming two weeks.  And hopefully my team and I will come back in one piece (well, 9 pieces, but you get the idea), having suffered no ill effects (food or water borne diseases, physical accidents, being chewed on by sacred cows, running out of M&Ms with four days left to go on the trip, etc).  But, if we don't, we'll deal.  God's still in control, no matter what happens.

Semper Gumby!*

I'll post more when I get home.

*Semper Gumby = Always Flexible.  It's a motto we brought back from a mission trip to Fairmont, West Virginia a number of years ago.  One of the team coordinators there is a former Marine.  It's very fitting and it has served us well.

 

For Lauren

Couple of issues left over from RYM.

1. You can't get sunburned while riding in a (non-convertible) car with the windows rolled up.  This is because the car windows block the UVB rays - the ones that cause sunburn (B for burning).  However, they don't block the UVA rays, which cause aging (A for aging) and can cause skin cancer.

2. Brendan Fraser was definitely not in Dead Poets Society.

RYM Recovery - India Prep - Day 1

Some people take a "gap year" between high school graduation and college to take a break from school, reflect on who they are and where they want to go with their lives and, well, for whatever reason.  Me, I'm taking a "gap week" between my two summer vacation adventures this year.  And today was the first day of that week.

Last Sunday, right after worship, I drove one of two 12 passenger vans out of the church parking lot, headed north west and, about 14 hours later arrived in Boulder, Colorado*.  We were graciously hosted by Lauren's family (our former youth intern who is now an RUF intern at Ole Miss).  Monday we spent the morning sleeping in to recover from the late arrival, learned that the Bates boys had been born, hung around in Boulder and then drove up to the YMCA of the Rockies camp outside of Estes Park.  This camp has become one of my favorite places on earth.  The camp is surrounded on a couple of sides by Rocky Mountain National Park (the camp has been there longer than the park).  It's an amazing facility with everything you'd need for a camp (comfy dorms, good food served in a well organized dining hall, an auditorium for large group worship, fields to play in, sports courts and free equipment loan, putt-putt, stables for horseback riding, a herd of mule deer that regularly wander through) and from camp you can walk into the national park.  I know that spending a week with 270 high school kids and their ATPs**, but for me, it's always one of the best weeks of my year.  And this year was no exception.  We had 14 kids and 4 ATPs this trip.  Throughout the week at camp we attended seminars taught by amazing men (and one woman), enjoyed large group worship each evening, won a volleyball tournament, did a lot of hiking, some people went mountain biking and/or rock climbing, killed various video game animals, enjoyed early morning runs/walks, met new friends, caught up with old friends and just generally enjoyed playing in the Big Green Room*** enjoying God's creation.  

It was a challenging week in a lot of ways.  It was a different group of kids this year and that presented some different situations.  I took the seminar for those involved in youth ministry, which was a lot of about ministry philosophy and other great things.  But I did miss the teaching from the other seminars.  My physical conditioning was very good, but I shouldn't have slacked off on the intervals as part of my cardio training.  I really dislike intervals (who doesn't), so I let myself slack off.  And, while I wasn't limited from doing anything, I did feel it during the uphill portions of all of the hikes (or even just walking to the dining hall the first few days).  But, we had very few altitude issues.  I managed to stay well hydrated the whole week.  We had no van issues or any major injuries.  And, as I've said more than once, it was an amazing week.

Friday I had a "Best Day Ever" as Mike would say.

I got up for my usual early morning walk (which provides exercise as well as some alone time during which I can talk with God and get myself ready for the day as well as experience the quiet beauty of the camp), enjoyed breakfast with many of our crew and attended the last session of the seminar for youth ministry that I had been going to all week.  After picking up my lunch, I headed over to where our group that was going rock climbing was going to be leaving from.  I had signed up to climb earlier in the week but due to cold weather and snow (yes, in the second week of June), the trip was cancelled.  I had hoped to go up with our kids and hang out, take pictures and just enjoy the time.  Due to some kids deciding not to go and those who did not being very comfortable belaying (taking someone else's life in their own hands quite literally), I ended up belaying while the kids climbed and rappelled.   I would have enjoyed the chance to get up close and personal with the rock, but I had no problem working the ropes.  Some college rappelling experience made me an "expert belayer" in the eyes of our guides and the kids seemed to feel very secure with me helping them out from the ground.  It was really neat to be able to encourage the kids and to help Mary (who was also one of my roommates for the week) be the only person to make it to the top of the rock all week.  Go Mary!  I also enjoyed talking with the guides, chatting with the kids, especially on the hike down the mountain and the view from the climbing site.

After returning from climbing, a few of the girls and I hiked up to Bible Point.  It was about a mile hike (and about another 3/4th of a mile from our cabin to the trail head) to the top of a hill (it would be a mountain in Texas) that overlooked the camp on one side and a beautiful valley on the other.  It was a bit more intense than we originally though it would be and, especially those who had been climbing earlier in the day were winded by the time we made it to the top, but it was so very much worth the effort.  The view was amazing and we still made it back to camp in time to shower before our dinner BBQ cookout.  Dinner was wonderful pork and chicken BBQ with most of the fixings (although ice cream instead of cobbler, which was almost as good) and, as per our tradition, the ATPs gave up walking places at camp at this point in the trip.  We ran into town to get gas for the vans and came back from large group worship which included a fun slideshow with pictures from the week, our senior pastor doing his "laugh routine" (which is hilarious.  Plus, it's amazing for the kids to see the guy who preaches the word every Sunday morning being silly and goofy and demonstrating various types of laughs.  Apparently he also used mostly Far Side cartoons for his illustrations while teaching the world and life view seminar.), a great message from our main speaker that wrapped up the teaching on the incarnation and encouraged us to go out and enjoy God's beautiful creation and wonderful singing.  Small group was a good time of sharing for our girls and everyone was all packed up before turning in for the night.  That last part was especially important as we pulled out just after 5am the next morning to start what would turn into a 15.5 hour van ride home.  The drive is always a bit brutal, but it is so very much worth the effort.  And, once again, it was one of the best weeks of my year.

Now I'm home and trying to get caught up on life and chores while also trying to take the time to process everything from the week.  It's so easy for me to slip into the routines and stuff of daily life back home and to not take the time to really meditate on the things that I've learned on trips like these.  That's going to be especially hard to do this year as one week from today I leave for my two week mission trip to India.  I've designated today as "recovery day".  While I won't get a nap in, I've got my bags unpacked, laundry done, mail dealt with, many chores finished up and I shouldn't have any problems being ready for the week.  About the only thing I won't get done today is wade through all of my backlogged emails (on my personal account, I don't want to think about dealing with my work emails.  That's what tomorrow morning is for.).  Tomorrow I'll start my final preparations for India as well as resume my normal work week schedule (and this is a long week, no off-Friday to look forward to.  That helps in terms of needing to use less vacation time, but doesn't make for fun work weeks.).  

Here's some pictures.

Some of the kids playing in the snow in Rocky Mountain National Park on Tuesday during our drive along Trail Ridge Road.

The yearly ATP picture at the highest spot above the visitor's center on Trail Ridge Road.  Left to right is Lauren, me, Brian and Travis.
Cub Lake, an intermediate destination during our seven mile hike on Thursday.  Those who remember stories from previous RYMs will be proud to hear that we finally found the official Cub Lake Trailhead this time.
Me on the hike Thursday, just above Cub Lake.
The girls who hiked to Bible Point with me.  Left to right is Mary, Lauren, Hulda and Whitney.  All but Lauren were my roommates for the week.  We had a lot of fun rooming together and I was most impressed with their efforts to keep the room clean and mostly organized during the week.

*Which we learned is correctly pronounced with a short "a", like in "rad".

**ATPs are Adult Type People.  We're old enough and responsible enough for parents to trust us with the care of their kids for week, but we're not so mature as to be above starting a marshmallow fight, incessantly teasing someone about an embarrassing mountain biking incident, getting overly excited about winning "the alphabet game" on an excessively long car ride or, well, a lot of other things that "real adults" just don't do.

***You know, the one with the sky blue colored ceiling that, in Colorado, has less air in the air.

In which I ramble about things that I've been meaning to blog about

So, it's been like 37/58ths of forever since I've updated this blog (actually, based on the fact that I just watched episode 4 of this season of BSG, or ep 7 if you count Razor as the first two episodes, and the last time I blogged was right after I watched the season opener, or episode 3 depending on which numbering system you're using, it's been about a month), I thought I would post something.  I should really be in bed right now, and I'm not entirely certain why I'm typing and not sleeping, but oh well.  If this rambles, you've been warned.

Right now, I'm about a quarter of an inch away from collapse.  It's been a long day at the end of a long week at the end of a busy couple of weeks.  Today was mission trip fundraiser garage sale day.  I was up at church from about 6:45am* until about 5.  After that, aside from doing laundry, showering and eating, I mowed the lawn and ran a couple of errands.  So, yeah, I'm beat.  But the sale went well, despite the chilly weather in the morning.  Don't know full numbers, but over $3500.  And, based on the stuff that we had and what sold and when and at what percentage of the price at which it was marked, is a pretty good number.  It's more than I was expecting.  I think we'll be down a bit from last year, but we made a good bit of money and it will significantly help a lot of us with our fundraising for the mission trips.  I worked 20 hours over the course of this week.  I don't know what that will translate into in terms of dollars, but it will be significant.  Going into the sale, about 40% of the cost of my trip had been raised.  After today, that number will be higher.  Whoo-hoo!  And I managed to spend only $12 and came home with significantly less stuff than I took, which is always the goal.

Other interesting stuff this week:  I went to see The Music Man up at Temple Christian school last night.  Ian, one of my kids, is in it playing a character who's name I can't remember right now but might be Marcellas (I think that's at least close.  He's the ex-con man who lives in River City before Prof. Hill shows up).  It was a good show and I always enjoy the chance to see my kids in stuff like that.

I got to have dinner with Mike, Bobby and Naomi and the Zinks; friends from school and church on Thursday evening.  The affiliations overlap in some weird ways, but it all works out and, as always, it was a very enjoyable evening.  Plus, it's hard to go wrong at Mellow Mushroom pizza.

Wednesday morning I got to fly a real airplane with wings and a propeller and everything.  This was a part of a class that I was taking at work.  The course if taught by the US Navy Test Pilot School out of Pax River, Maryland.  They've brought the instructors down to Fort Worth a number of times which has allowed more Lockheed engineers to go through it.  It's an introduction to aircraft handling qualities with an emphasis on how the different aircraft modes of motion (you know, things like the Dutch Roll and Phugoid modes**) are tested and evaluated during flight test.  The first week of the course was academics and a bit of time in the simulator.  The second week allowed each student to plan a flight, go through a brief, fly the flight with the instructor pilot, write a daily report and have that report critiqued.  The flight, of course, was the highlight of the whole experience.  It was about 90 minutes long and took place in a Bonanza 33C aircraft which is a four seat, propeller driven aircraft that is acrobatic rated.  We didn't fly any acrobatic maneuvers.  That just provided an extra margin of safety in case any of the students got a little aggressive on the controls.  With the exception of take-off and landing, each student flew the plan for a majority of the flight.  This was my first time to ever have the controls of an aircraft and I will say that it was pretty cool.  I still have no desire to obtain a private pilot's license (which makes my mom happy), but I can easily see why others do.  I also reinforced the fact that I just don't pull g's well.  Women are supposed to be able to, on average, pull more g's than men.  I don't quite understand why, probably due to having stronger lower body muscles overall.  But, that doesn't hold true for me.  We hit 2.25g on a pull-up and I decided I had enough.  I wanted to make sure my breakfast stayed where it was and that I was able to enjoy the rest of the flight.  I also had a bit of trouble with the landing.  It was a very windy day and between the natural tendencies of the aircraft, the extra movement due to the winds and the fact that it was pretty warm, I was very, very happy when we got on the ground.  I managed not to revisit my oatmeal, but it was touchy for a bit there.  And, overall, it was a very cool experience.

And, if I have any hope of staying awake through church tomorrow, let alone waking up from my Sunday afternoon nap in time for small group, I really need to go to bed.  'Night.

*An hour when very few people should even be awake on a weekend.

**No, I didn't make those up.  Look them up on Wikipedia.

Picking my chin up out of my lap

I just got done watching the Battlestar Galactica season 4 opener on Hulu and, yeah, wow!  I won't spoil it for anyone, cause I'm still not sure what I would say other than, yeah, wow!  I didn't realize how much I had missed this show.  And the fact that I can watch it less than 24 hours after it airs and for free makes me even more happy.*  About the only bad thing I can say** is that having to wait another week to see the next episode isn't going to be fun.  There is something to be said for waiting for the DVD release. 

*I watched the first about season and a half on DVD.  After that I got the episodes a few days after they aired thanks to a coworker with a DVR and a VCR.

**Okay, very minor spoiler alert, you've been warned.

The whole "no one believes Kara" thing and her continually complaining/whining about it is going to get old and fast.  I know it's realistic and all that.  But I get the point.  The amazing battle sequences and the acting from all of the principals more than made up for it.  Why does this show not have more awards and higher ratings?

Adventures in cooking for the masses - Postscript

My first shot at being in charge of cooking for a large group of people seemed to go well.  I'm neigh on exhausted, so no in-depth commentary this evening (What!?!  Rue's not going to write a thesis on her day/weekend/experience?  Who are you and what have you done with our Rue?).  I don't have a final count, but I think we had somewhere upwards of 200 people.  Thanks to both Steve and I padding the number a little bit as well as me just downright getting the amounts wrong in a couple of cases, we had more than enough food.  Everything went pretty smoothly.  The chicken was all adequately cooked.  A lot of people said they enjoyed it.  I had a great team helping me out on every front.  Couldn't have done it without them, especially the girls (and Jacob) who helped out with chopping more onions, peppers and olives than most of us had ever seen in one sitting before.  Now, I think, I'm going to go clean out my backpack, make sure that I'm ready for the morrow and collapse for about 8 hours before the work week starts anew.

This last week was Ff150*.   This upcoming week is church committee budget week.  Fortunately, it's an off-Friday.

*Which should probably be relabeled as Ff200ish.

Adventures in cooking for the masses

A while back, at a mission trip team meeting, we were talking about the upcoming fundraisers, primarily our big variety show, silent auction, dinner that is one of two big fundraisers the mission teams do each year.  Leadership positions were described, people volunteered and, near the end, I heard my voice say, "Steve, I'll cook dinner".  Normally I let others take the big leadership roles.  With these roles comes extra work but also extra financial incentives.  For this particular fundraisers, those in leadership roles get a double share of the profits made.  In past years raising funds hasn't been an issue for me due to either the generosity of my friends and family in responding to my support letters or the fact that my trip has been paid for by the missions committee because I was one of the trip leaders.  This year, due to my lack of trip leader status and the fact that my team is going to India for two weeks and that costs a substantial amount more than any other trip I've done in the past, I thought it might be a good idea to volunteer for a fundraiser leadership role.  No one else had volunteered to cook.  I've helped out in the kitchen a number of times in the past for these types of things.  I figured it shouldn't be that hard.

Some time and much planning later and we're finally into what I'm calling fajita week.  Much of my free time this week will be spent finalizing and implementing my master plan to lead a team that will cook a fajita dinner for roughly 150 people this coming Sunday.  My master plan might also be morphing into a plan to take over all of Metropolis...I'll keep you updated on that one.  The thing is, I'm really not that stressed about it.  Either I'm kidding myself that it really isn't going to be terribly difficult or I've got a really good master plan....or maybe some of both.  I'm even confident enough about the whole thing that I'm going camping with friends Friday night and all day Saturday.  I'm guessing that's not going to be the wisest decision that I've made of late.  But I don't get many chances for camping and the date was set by someone else and based on circumstances beyond my control.  So, I'm going camping.  Then I'm going to come home and lead a team to cook the largest meal I've ever been in charge of cooking the next day.  There is a reasonable chance that this will all become a massive fiasco that will become an interesting and slightly embarrassing story as well as a morality tale in the years to come.  Fortunately, this is a church event and we're big believers in grace (and getting people to pay ahead of time for the meal).  But, I guess that also means that there's a fairly reasonable chance that this will all be a roaring success...and it will take me four years and possibly some protesting on my part before I'm not in charge of big meals at church.  But, that's okay.  I like to help out.  And, if I'm good at something, I don't mind using my talents...especially if I can help train my replacements  (yes, I'm looking at you Elizabeth, Kathryn and Rachel).

If you happen to be the praying type, I would appreciate your prayers for me and the whole dinner situation between now and next Sunday evening.  I can do all the planning in the world, but without God enabling that plan to actually work, I'm toast...or burned rice, sticky tortillas and undercooked chicken in this case. Thanks.