Highlights from tak include:
-cliff diving
-fire making
-cake eating
-friend chatting
-scrabbling
-jet skiing
-life saving
-munchkin-ing
-light housing
-girlfriend cuddling
-neice playing
-weed whacking
-gutter cleaning
-mom's food eating
-adventure hiking
-sibling arguing (and winning)
-long family talking
-laughing
-potato gunning (well, attempting)
etc. etc. it was really awesome to get to hang out for a long time (about 2 weeks straight) with nelle- we were actually both staying in the same people's house for a while (thanks foxwells!). then the family came and nelle left, and i moved over to my cabin, and had good quality family time with mom, dad, doug, brent, and ro, as well as dougs wife candice and their 2 daughters, keira and kalista (haha, doug doesn't have boys!)
now i am back at work, and the family scattered the globe- ro to korea, dad manila, brent to canada, doug and mom back to america. so, the family is represented in 5 countries within 3 days of all being in the same one. go international family!
I have now posted photo's from my little takayama adventunre onto my electronic photograph collections website, or EPCW for short, where you can peruse to your pleasure. there are some pretty awesome ones in there, to be honest.
IN OTHER NEWS
There was an electrical storm here a few days ago that was about the coolest thing i've ever been through in my life! and i've been through a few things, let me tell you! at about 3am it started raining so hard that the sound of the rain woke me up. then the lightning started, and i immediately ran to my window, so as to facilitate seeing--and perhaps being hit by--the lightning as closely as possible. at no time in my life have i heard thunder from more than 1 lightning strike at a time- until tonight. there was an average- an average- of 1 flash of lightning every 3 seconds. all of the thunder was within 5 seconds of me, so the thunder was constant, just in varying intensities. and awesome. there were a lot of times, a LOT, that i swear lightning hit across the street somewhere.
All things considered, it was a lot like i would imagine the end times or something. i mean, it was straight out of some eco-disaster, end-of-the-world movie. wind blasting, rain coming down in sheets, lightning and thunder constantly, flash flooding...i was almost waiting for an earthquake or something. that would have been the icing on the cake, and i would have been praying to Jesus to take me home.
As far as work stuff goes, if you guys like to pray (to Jesus, that is) i'd sure appreciate prayers for the youth ministry here. i've been trying to collect/coerce high school leaders for the middle school group, but what with one thing and another, i'm looking at 3 (very qualified and awesome) leaders, where last year i had 5, and the year before that i had 10 (although, i think things went better with the 5 than with the 10). i'm not really that worried about this, as i've been praying all summer fairly faithfully and quite intentionally that God will do His thing with the group and He'll work it so the right kids are in...but, to be honest, 3 people are not capable of being 4 or 5, and with middle school, crowd control becomes an issue. so, if you think of it, feel free to ask God to help me out, or help me know who is waiting to be asked that i've been ignoring. etc.
well, all day i've been too lazy to really eat, and now that's starting to be a problem. off, to solutions!
