Southern South Korea vacation

Hey everyone,

This is in response to Wes' challenge about postiing something memorable that has happened in the past week to the family blog. Here are four of my favorite memories of this past week. As you all know, your Momma and I went for a short vacation to the south-western area of South Korea from Sunday through to Friday. Here are a few of my favorite recollections:

1. Camping on a sandy beach in Geoji-do (Geoji Island). We had a fantastic spot right near the shoreline - the morning after a restful sleep, we woke up to find the sun warming the earth and a nice, cool refreshing breeze that was gently stirring the sea-water in the bay and rusting the poplar tree leaves - it was great making bacon and eggs on the beach and anticipating a wonderful day, which it was!

2. Camping on a rocky beach on Namhai-do. We found an area off a harbour that had huge trees and a good washroom - there was all kinds of motor-vehicles coming from the nearby village to the harbour for various purposes but that mostly died out about 8:00 p.m. Little did we know that at precisely 5:00 a.m. the next morning, the loudspeaker would start blaring something in Korean - whatever it was that was said, all kinds of engines and people were roving around the area shortly afterwards - it felt like we were right near the Indianapolis 500 speedway - haven't these Islanders ever heard of sleeping in?!? Needless to say, Mom and I were also up well before 6:00 after having listened to that racket for awhile - not restful by any means, but certainly interesting!

3. By day three, after 2 days of camping, Mom and I agreed we would stay at a place that had indoor showers - by that time we had driven to the city of Yeosu, which is at the end of a long peninsula - Yeosu will host the next world expo in 2012 (this year's expo is being held in Shanghai, China). Anyways, Mom had her heard on getting a pension (a cross between an apartment and a cottage) so we drove just north of the city to a beach - to get there, we had to drive through a narrow tunnel that was about 1/2 km long - it felt really weird but was interesting - southbound traffic had the right of way so, if we met someone, there were areas every 100 meters or so where we could pull off to the right to let them pass. Anyways, we found this amazing pension for only 60,000 won - two full bathrooms, a kitchen/dining room area, a full bedroom and a balcony overlooking the ocean about 20 meters directly below - absolutely gorgeous!!! Needless to say, we made the best of this opportunity while there!

4. On day 4, we decided to head out to Jirisan (Jiri Mountain) National Park, which contains the second highest mountain in South Korea - not much by European standards, Wes, but impressive to us "Prairie folk" flatlanders nonetheless! We decided to take a backroad in after visiting the city of Namwon - I had visited the city with some friends two years ago when Mom was in Canada with you kids and wanted to show her the area - anyways, after visiting, we took this road that was full of switchbacks up and down a mountain pass - there were times when I couldn't even get up some of the 20% + grades in second gear and had to downshift to 1st - a real challenge of my driving skills but so rewarding when we finally got to the top and had a view of both where we'd been and where we'd be going, both far below us!

We wished we'd remembered to pack the camera - shortly after we'd left Handong, Mom asked "Did we remember to pack the camera?" My response was "we?" Anyways, we had to be at the hospital by 10:00 (the surgeon was late so we would have had enough time to pick it up had we known that but that's the way things so sometimes. It was really too bad, since we'd seen some mighty beautiful areas, but there was no sense in whining about something it!

That's it for my favorite recollections of this past week - I'm looking forward to hearing from Mom and you girls, since Wes has already posted!

Love always and forever!!!

-Dad-
XOXOXOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXOXOXXXOXOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXOXXO

I am sorry that I have not posted for a while but I am back

Hi all

I know has been a while since I have posted anything and I intend to change that.  To be honest I was trying to think of a new challenge for everyone however I am lacking ideas, I am not sure about everyone else but I am not really in a position to make elaborate meals at the moment as I am preparing to leave Slovenia and I am still camera-less at the moment so I can not challenge people to submit photos.  So I will offer another challenge, post something that has happened to you over the past few weeks that sticks in your mind.

For example for myself I would say that this last Monday night will stand out in my mind for a while.  It was a normal night with nothing really that special but a number of friends got together for drinks and just to talk and as we talked we all realized that we will all miss each other next year as we are all off to different places for our studies.  It was an unexpected realization and I think that realization really helped to make the night (what was by any other standard a completely ordinary night and not something that we had not done many times before) something that I will remember for a while.

So there you have it post a special moment that you had the past little bit.

Love

Wes

1 John Tests

Hey Family!

I was listening to a preacher online and he was talking about assurance of salvation. He talked about 1 John and how this book has a bunch of tests on how a person knows if they are saved. We know that we are children of God:

1. If we acknowledge Jesus as Christ, who came in flesh as the Son of God? (2:22-23; 4:15; 5:1)

2. If we living in the light: hating the things of the world, living in righteousness, loving our brothers and obeying God's commands? (1:5-7) (2:10; 3:14) (2: 3-6; 3:24) (2:29) (2:15-17)

3. If we confessing our sins and have we stopped living or continuing in sin? (1:8-10) (3:6-10)

4. If we have His Spirit? (4:13)

We are saved by grace 100%. But the evidence that we are saved is by a changing in our lives because of the Spirit that lives in us. Not by a prayer that we said at one time in our lives.

I was thinking about this and I believe that when I was saved was not when I was 6 as I had thought. I think that it was later in high school because that is when changes started happening in my life. That is when I wanted to conform my life to Jesus. That was when the Holy Spirit really convicted my heart for the first time about my need to change in my relationship with dad and where He began a work in me. That is where I began to love more and began to see the things of the world not so desirable.

How about you guys? When would you say that you've gone from death to life?

Love you all lots!

Lynne

Life Lesson 159: No matter how much your hair is bothering you . . .

DONT CUT IT YOURSELF!!!!

Monday was a crazy, frizz, almost an afro hair day. I mean it was out of control - I was sporting a very "nice" finger-in-the-light-socket 'do'. Annoyed and frustrated by this fly-away mop, I decided to do something about it - cheap style like. I cut it myself. Thats right, I, the girl who can't cut a straight line even if my life depended on it, stooped to the lowest of low in cheapness. Instead of coughing up a bit of cash a month before my next hair cut was due, I cut it myself. Now, here I will try to place the blame of my loss of sanity on my roommate and mother. You see, I figured to myself, that 1. Shelley and Rachel (and I think Kerry, and even Santana), often have taken a set of shears to their golden (or maybe ebony) locks, and they have survived (with nicely coffied tops), and 2. Mom has often taken the bull by the horns and chopped her own waves (and Dads - though I'm not sure that that counts), and still is as beautiful as ever. So I figured that I, a bright, relatively energetic individual could master this hair cutting thing - Hey I won a gold medal for microbiology so how hard can it be. Well, cutting your own hair is much more difficult than you would think. A LOT MORE! Here are some lessons that I learned: 1. if its your first time cutting your hair don't just start hacking - THINK ABOUT IT FIRST, 2. wet curls are longer than dry curls, and 3. sometimes you just have to STOP, but down the scissors and WALK AWAY!!!!

Actually, the hair cut isn't too bad, a little short, for sure, but I can live with it until it grows out in, lets say, a week. As you will probably notice, the hair cut didn't relieve the frizziness - curses upon humidity and thunderstorms and all that horrid rain!!!