I Have Found Me A Home (by Jimmy Buffett)

Wow, I’ve been busy the past couple of days … and the busy season hasn’t even begun yet! Let me give you a little synopsis of what my time here has been like and then I’ll give you some bullet-point highlights of what this last weekend held for me.
To begin with, I’m living in a fairly decent sized city … pretty modern, especially by the standards over here. I’m living with my host family, part of whom I’ve known for pretty much my whole life. There’s a team of a few families and I’m getting to know them all really pretty well … what an awesome team! Most of them have known each other for all of their adult lives and get along so well with their team dynamics. They’re fun people to hang out with when we’re not working too. Anyways, I digress … as a team, they own a sort of tourist business where they have property on a beach (you’ve seen pictures if you’ve checked out my link) which is an hour and a half boat ride from where we’re living. In the week and a half that I’ve been here, I’ve been out to the resort three times already. Part of my job while at the resort is simply to hang out with the guests when they want company and give them space when they don’t want company. Other then that, just make sure they’re happy and have everything they need as well as taking care of some general work projects around the resort. When I’m not at the resort or out on the water, I’m in the office in town working on a couple little projects the team has handed over to me to help get me transitioned into my work here as well as catch the business up on some overdue organization, so-to-speak.
Anyways, I hope that gives you a general yet somewhat clear idea of what life here as been like so far. Now, let me catch you up with what I’ve experienced over the past several days. To save you from my tendency to give way more detail than is necessary, I’m just going to give you some highlights. If you want to know more details, just drop me an email and let me know what you want to know more about … it may take me a while to get back to you, but I will eventually!
The guys have an accountability group that I’ve gotten to be a part of. It’s awesome to see how they confide in each other and support one another.
There was a full-team worship time where we spent several hours in intentional prayer and singing. Granted, it did go a bit later than our bodies would have preferred, but it was such an incredible time together with each other and with God.
I spent the weekend with a Young Life group from Singapore. What a great group of people! One of the girls actually was a Wooddaler briefly! I was momentarily surprised to find this out, but that quickly passed because I’ve come to realize that there’s nowhere on this planet that you can go to escape the potential of running into a Wooddaler. Anyone know an 18-year-old named Whitney Taylor? If so, let me know and I’ll tell her you say HI.
I did a couple of dives finally! First logged dives since 1999 … talk about being WAY overdue! The guys I’m working with are in the process of getting certified. There were only three of us that went out, one of which is still in the certification process and hasn’t done many dives at all. At nearly 3 meters, it was the best visibility he’d ever had and my worst! There was some cool stuff to see though.
Of the dives we did, we attempted a night dive in which the visibility was less than half a meter … we tried going down twice and each time we lost each other as soon as we went below the surface. I gave up and let the other two have their dive. After the current pulled us away from the island we were diving off of and we had to hang on to the side of the boat and have it drag us for about 10 minutes, I was too tired to deal with not being able to even see my dive buddy, let alone any coral or fish. But they had a great time and I got to do another dive a day and a half later.
I’ve got the WORST farmer’s tan! I’m slowly working on getting my body just a little burned at a time so it’ll slowly turn into a decent tan. I’m almost up to my shoulders on my arms now, but not quite. My neck is the best … SUPER dark tan on my neck and a typical pasty-white Scandinavian back.

Okay, that gives a pretty good update and hopefully a decent mental picture for you to have an idea of what my life is like here so far. Now, I’ve got a few simple prayer requests I figure I’d throw your way. Please pray:
-That I’ll be able to get a solid base-tan so that my skin won’t be so sensitive to the sun that I’m in nearly all day, every day … and that I won’t get skin cancer in the process!
-That whatever I have that resembles poison ivy is NOT poison ivy and goes away quickly!
-That I will continue to acclimate quickly to my responsibilities and to the expectations that are upon me here.
-That I won’t struggle too much with learning the language.
-That I’ll be able to find the means to continue my travels at the end of my time here by doing some networking for this business.
-That I don’t lose my focus on God during the busyness of trying to adjust to my new job.

There, that should be good enough for now. There’ll be plenty more to come for sure! Oh, one more thing … if there’s anything specific you’d like me to talk about in my blogs, add a comment or send me an email and let me know what you want to hear about. I’ll do my best to oblige!