The Two-Week Synopsis

Wow. Thanks everyone for the little notes of encouragement. I wouldn't quite say I am homesick, but it feels really good to have some sort of communication with all of you guys. I miss all of you.

With that gushy stuff aside, I will try to fill you in on the past few months. Well, it feels like months, I guess it has only been two weeks. Today has been my first day off and I took the community car from the glacier and headed up to the big town of Palmer. (The two Kiwi's -people from New Zealand, not the fruit- I work with call it "Pama". Lots of times I need a translator for my Texan ears to understand. Apparently I talk to slow. And it is not a "gla-sure". It is a "gla-ci-er". Three syllables, not two. ) Palmer is about an hour drive, and not a big town. About like Gunter or something. The drive is on the Glenn Highway and with the Chugach Mountains on the north and the Talkeetna Mountains to the south. The Matanuska River feeds off the Matanuska Glacier (that I work on) and flows in between the mountains. I say all that to tell you it is a beautiful drive. I have all of today off and I plan on shaving (you know how fast I grow facial hair), grocery shopping, and spending lots of time with Jesus.

**A short disclaimer: This post is probably going to be long, so I apologize. A lot has happened. Read until you are tired of reading, don’t feel obligated. The future will have much shorter posts.**

First, a funny little story. The owners of MICA Guides/Exposure Alaska live about 45 mins from our command post at the glacier. They life right off a little river and built their home from scratch. Very modest, but very cool. The grow lots of food and live pretty sustainably on their own. They have this wooden hot tub that is heated by a fire pit inside of a metal box that is attached. The first night I arrived and meet everyone we had a BBQ at their house. (Most of the guides here are vegetarians, so the only meat we had was salmon. Different style BBQ than in Texas.) After dinner everyone was sitting around the fire and a few people talked about getting in the hot tub. I wasn't feeling it, so I stayed at the fire. Then out of nowhere, the Kiwi guide takes off all her clothes and got in the hot tub! So I said to myself, "Man, those New Zealander's must not know that in America we wear our bathing suits when we get in the hot tub. Crazy Kiwi's." So I kinda laughed it off, kinda impressed that she was that bold. Then all the sudden I saw both of my bosses butt naked! They hopped into the hot tub and then Mike (another guide from Colorado) went in as well with nothin’ but a smile.

So everyone here has gotten pretty close pretty quick. (If you couldn’t guess from the story above.) We all work pretty hard and don’t take many showers, and it is amazing how living is such close quarters and smells can unite a group. I wonder how long it will be until we have a big argument. It is bound to happen. But as of now, everyone is really laid back and cool to everyone, even if they completely disagree with you. We have had tons of great conversation about anything you can imagine. Spirituality, politics, climbing, cooking, and how to get good tips. Telling people about Jesus has to be done different in this context, and it is. And it is going great. The Holy Spirit has done some amazing things already, and I am getting pretty excited. It is so relieving to realize that He is in charge and sovereign over salvation. And since I have submitted to that and quite striving so hard on my own power He has done more than I could have imagined. Again, prayer is huge, and do it all you can. This is at least as big of an opportunity as I had in China. People are hungry for something real. I am hungry for something real.

The port-o-potties are amazing here. (Good transition, huh) That is our facilities for the summer, and they are not your normal port-o-potties that you find at construction sites. These are really clean a well kept. And they even smell good! I don’t know how it happens, but they do. I look forward to using them. They are much warmer and feel good on chilly mornings. OK, maybe that was too far.

I have more stories, but I will get them to you soon. I am tired of typing now. But before I leave you, I thought I would let you know that moose kill more people in Alaska than bears do. They are really protective of their young and will stomp you to death if you come up on one. But they only have a two second memory, so if you can run behind a tree and hide for two seconds, they will forget what they were chasing and leave you alone.

We have a few moose that hang around our campsites and two nights ago, at about 2:00 I heard a massive one (it must have been 20 feet tall by the sounds of it in the night) right out side my tent. It was walking circles around my tent, and eating for about 10 mins. I am pretty sure I didn’t breath or move the whole time.

-colby

Bear count: 0
Moose count: 3