Luke's DTS Blog

Thailand News Letter #2

skywalker — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 09:46:54 +0000

And here’s the second news letter we prepared…

“In the last newsletter you may have seen pictures of our crazy adventure in getting to Thailand. It took over four days, 49 real time hours of travel, and a whole lot of jetlag as we passed through 5 countries to get to Agape House. This week we felt God calling us to focus on the orphanage grounds and the ones closest to us-the children. When we first received information about the Agape House, we were told it was likely that they would be outside playing soccer when we arrived. We soon realized they only had one tattered sports ball and their soccer net was rusted over with severe cracks in the main joints. It could not even stand up. We felt God wanted us to donate and build them some nice sports equipment. We are pleased to say that we put together about 135 US dollars, or 4,200 baht to build two soccer goals, a volleyball net, and a net for a local game called takraw (or solleyball in English). We bought 3 soccer balls, 4 badminton racquets, 2 volleyballs, a basketball and a pump. We have gotten to play with the children all week. :]]

In continuation with the newly focused goals of reaching out to the children we live with, our team held various programs in which the students could sign up for and learn, or build on a skill they had always wanted. The children could sign up for: Singing, Dance, Art, Music, Soccer and Volleyball. Also this week a Christian speaker famous in the eastern world, from India, came to Mae Sot and led a revival. The Pastor of the Agape House Orphanage was onstage and was a voluntary translator for the “Karen” language. Some members of our team were able to go and help set up and clean up before the event started as well as sit and watch the festivities.

The revival was strongly based on the element of using the name of Christ to bring healing to those in a hurt world. Although Thailand is 95% Buddhist, many people came to receive healing and also to learn more about our God. We helped serve and led some efforts of the hospitality for the event by cleaning up and wiping down the muddied chairs.

We visited our second hill village this week, of the Karen people, a very small village in which only ten families lived. The village was basically straight up a mountain and around some very interesting curves, even through a small river to get to. Since there was no electricity in the town we brought a generator and some giant tarps so we could hang up lights to make a stage. The people were very accepting of us coming to their village and treated us like family. We scheduled a program for them, and had about 25 visitors come to watch the show. We performed Christmas songs, led praise and worship music, played games such as pin the tail on the donkey and hot potato. We also did a skit demonstrating man’s fall to sin and then progressed to Christ’s birth in the Christmas story. We wanted to show God’s love in giving his Son so we can have eternal life. Mark then continued the topic by teaching a well prepared “God is love” sermon. It was obvious that many people were brought to joy and were encouraged by us coming. We prayed over some of the tribe the next morning with our catfish and scrambled egg breakfast. Kelly and Wendy shared with the new believers about how our journey with God can be up and down. There will be struggles and hard times, but he will always be there with us. Kelly gave a great picture of how far we had traveled as a team just to be in the company of their very small community.”

So that’s all I got for now, I’ll try and put up a more personal one when I get a little more time. I hope yall enjoy this and get a better idea of what’s been taking place on this awesome outreach that God has brought us to in Thailand!!! Thanks so much to every one for the support, the prayer, and for following me on my adventure; it means so much to me! May God give you peace and bless you. Until next time…

Thailand News Letter #1

skywalker — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 09:39:55 +0000

Here’s the first news letter we sent out…

“We began our journey in San Pedro, Belize where we took a two hour water taxi to Corozal, Belize then a 20 min taxi ride to the border. We checked out of Belize and checked into Mexico. From there we took another taxi to catch a chicken bus ride to one of Cancun’s bus stations. From there we took a 6 hour bus ride to Cancun International Airport and flew Alaska Air to L.A.X. Travelling on Korean Air we then flew to Seoul, South Korea where we spent the day. After our time in Seoul we flew directly into Bangkok and met up with the YWAM team there and our Thailand adventure began.

We had a huge layover after our 13 hour flight from L.A.X. to Seoul, South Korea, here are some pictures from our day there, with our new awesome friends.

We got to Bangkok finally, waited for Kelly then headed to the YWAM base in Thailand. After 3 days there we took an 8 hour bus ride up to Mae Sot, we waited a bit for Mai, who brought us to the orphanage. Mai and Noah run the orphanage and the kids are amazing. The next day we went to a local school where we played games, taught English and really got to hangout with the kids. We tried to go back to help clean up the school the day after but the kids wouldn’t let us work- we were their guests, so we played some more games and said our goodbyes. They were so sweet! We were also able to help clean up the orphanage by clearing their soccer field and cleaning up around the main buildings. These kids deserve everything we can give them!

We were given the opportunity to visit one of the many hill tribes near us. Our first night there we got to play games with the local children, share some testimonies, speak on what Christmas means to us, and put on a little skit showing Jesus’ birth and why we celebrate Christmas.
The next morning we were able to play some songs during their church service and Kip was given the opportunity to speak to the people of the hill tribe. All in all, it was an awesome experience.”

Thailand Journal #3

skywalker — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 09:35:12 +0000

“The orphanage is amazing, and has been so awesome to us. The first day we got here, we were shocked and blessed to see how well they treat us and how hospitable they are. They have blessed us so much and we only pray we can bless them just as much.
Our whole group felt that, though the orphanage was trying to help us find outside areas to minister to, we should have our main focus of ministry right here with the kids.
One of our first experiences here was joining in worship with the kids. It was inspiring to see just how on fire for God they all are!

We were able to bless the orphanage by cleaning up their overgrown sports field. It was a long day of clearing out brush with scary, foreign tools like scythes and ghetto lawn equipment. There was also the incident of the field fire that was definitely not planned, but luckily on scene YWAMers and orphans were able to quickly and efficiently stop the blaze!
A few days later we were able to again bless the children with new soccer goals and nets, a volley ball court, badminton net, and all the equipment to go with these!

Going to a local school was one of our first local ministry experiences. The morning after our arrival at the orphanage, Mae got us to jump in a car and head out.
When we got to the school we learned we were expected to teach English to one group of kids, while teaching another some fun games and English songs. We had 15 minutes to plan so we went for it!
The team that taught English miraculously managed to teach the older kids a range of emotions from tired to happy, and hungry to excited. It worked great and the kids really connected with our team. While this was going on the rest of our group was having a fun time teaching younger children games and songs.
The next day we headed back to help the kids clean, trim and wash their school. We helped them clean for a good 30 minutes, hacking away, pulling off palm branches and etc, until the kids stole our tools and rendered us useless.
We spent the rest of the day, playing fun games with them outside, such as link tag, soccer, duck duck goose, and badminton. Saying goodbye was sad, the kids had really connected with us, we received many many hugs and felt like we had really been able to bless these kids.

We had the opportunity to visit two local hill tribes, each rendering their own different experiences.
Our first hill tribe adventure began great with some games with the local kids, but then as we kept having to buy time, by entertaining the children while waiting for the go-ahead to start, our program lost all organization. In the end we were able to come through but the crowd was not as responsive as we would have hoped.
The next morning Kip was able to give an outstanding message, which was obviously from God because it directly related to what the local pastor was preaching about that morning.
In between our hill tribe visits we were able to travel to a local village, where we joined with the children of the orphanage and walked door to door singing Christmas carols for the locals. It was a great time and was well received by those we came across.
The second hill tribe we visited took us along a road which could be marked as the trail of terror! We scaled steep, rocky hills and the sides of mountains, ventured down treacherous valleys, and crossed raging rivers just to reach them.
The tribe people welcomed us with high spirits and open arms. Our program went extremely smooth and they willing joined in with our games and jokes. Mark brought an awesome message and all in all we were able to really connect with this tribe.
The morning after sleeping on a cold, hard floor we were able to again share some encouragement with the people. Here Kelly and Wendy shared some awesome stories with the newer Christians that hopefully strengthened their newly formed faith in God. And after a time of sharing a meal we left feeling like God had accomplished what He wanted to.

What is God doing? LOTS!
Fist getting here, we experienced quite a bit of spiritual battle. People were feeling down, lazy, tired, sick, unmotivated, and just not very into the whole ministry thing. We kept praying against it, and finally, the morning after caroling, God gave us a pep talk and got us back on track.
God pulled out a bunch of 1 John scriptures, pretty much all of chapters 3 and 4. We felt God wants to teach us how to love, loving the orphan kids by our actions, doing things without complaining, and in everything, glorifying God.
It is becoming very evident that God pushing people to step out, increasing our faith, teaching us His love, strengthening our gifting, and all in all, really holding our hands as we do this adventure with Him.

On December 10th, the first day of the three day healing seminar we are helping with, God was clearly teaching a lot of people about having faith.
Showing us that He is always with us, what do we have to fear. We have to take the leap of faith to see God work. Less of us and more of Him, it’s not about how stupid we might feel or look after saying or doing something, it’s about accomplishing what God wants to do through us. We are His hands and feet, it takes faith to do what our God asks. It was very exciting to have this encouragement, especially before we began the next ministry in our outreach.

These are the roles of our Ministry team!

Photography: Alberto, Chris
Journalism: Ally, Jeremy
Dance: Elissa
Ministry Coordinator: Tracy
Drama: Kip
Intercession: Anya
Worship: Noah, Luke
Clean up girl: Emma
Free time Coordinator: Esther
Finance: Kelly
Hospitality: Mark
Team Leader: Tyson”

And that’s it for the news letter so far. On to the parent’s news letter…

Thailand Journal #2

skywalker — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 09:29:58 +0000

“Can we just say, thank you to Korean Air, for being the most awesome airline ever! We each had touch screen entertainment at our fingertips. A plethora of new movies to watch, music to listen to, and games to play. This is where Luke and Jeremy duked it out, in the most epic chess game the world will ever see. Also, food and drinks were brought to us every half hour, we were fed like royalty.
We sadly departed from our lovely flight with Korean Air and took our first steps onto Korean soil. Here we met Chris Reel’s Korean friends Michal Kang, his wife Grace, and daughter Angela ( Chris’s future wife and Co-soccer coach), and her friends Esther, David, and Pricilla. These amazing people took us on a tour of beautiful downtown Seoul! We started out with McDonalds coffee and hot chocolate, and then headed to a traditional artsy Korean market district. We saw some interesting galleries, ethnic foods and tea, amazing crafts, and hand made clothing and jewelry.
After spending an awesome time being tourists we met up with some more friends of Michal Kang and his family. They then unexpectedly treated us to a traditional Korean meal for lunch; it was amazing and we got to try some new and interesting Korean foods.
Fallowing lunch our group, including all our new Korean friends, made the trek across part of Seoul to Mr. Kong’s family home church. It was a beautiful old stone building with amazing architecture.
Soon after, we headed back to the airport, for our final flight to Bangkok, which was approx. 5 hours long.

We touched down in Bangkok, with high spirits and tired bodies. We had to wait for Kelly to arrive off her flight. It was so good to see her again! We walked over to where Mon, our fantastic, hilarious, translator was waiting.
We piled into trucks and sat in the back for our first ever experience of Thailand driving. Thank God it was dark, or it would have been a lot more frightening. The Bangkok base for YWAM was very nice, welcoming and relaxing. We spent a lot of time in the local markets, trying bubbles tea, spicy seafood, and fried insects. Kodos to Luke, Karen, Jeremy and Kelly! What fearless leaders we have. Orientation was awesome, we learned about Thai culture, the do’s and don’ts of a squatty potty, what to drink and not drink, how to watch where your feet are pointing, limits of public affection, and if you are a woman, to stay away from the cute monk men!

The bus ride to Mae sop was memorable to say the very least. Yes, we had been told to be more quiet and not so loud, but for some reason this had completely slipped most of our minds as we took our 8 hour bus ride. Unfortunately, when ever someone would use the bathroom, the entire bus would reek, and through the final stretch of curvy mountains, sea sickness found it’s way into the stomachs of many of our YWAM travelers. Our final stop was at the bus stop, where we played hacky sack while waiting for Mais, to come and pick us up.
It ended up that we waited there a while as on the way here, Mais’ car had gotten into an accident. She eventually came in good health praise God! We headed for dinner and hit the orphanage as it was becoming dark.”

Thailand Journal

skywalker — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 09:27:37 +0000

Well, since being in Thailand our team has put together a journal and a news letter so to give yall an extensive update on all that has happened since being here in Thailand I figured I’d post those babies up here for ya. Here we go, I’ll start by posting the journal first:

“Our epic journey began at the Sun Divers Base in Belize where Karen and Wendy, our esteemed leaders, told us that we were leaving a day early for Thailand. This insinuated a mad dash to pack our stuff and clean our rooms!
The morning of Wednesday November 26 Team Thailand began the first stage of their travelling adventure.
We took the ‘THUNDERBOLT’ water taxi from San Pedro to Corozal. (2 hours) From there we walked, with our very heavy packs, to the local bus station to catch 3 taxi’s the Border where we checked out of Belize and checked into Mexico. (1.5 hours) We continued our journey by taking a ‘chicken bus’ to the Chetumal Mexico Bus Station. (30 min) This bus ride included discovering a ‘pee’ bottle, which Tyson insisted on smelling while Lady Gaga blasted over the speaker system. Unexpectedly the bus stopped short of our destination and we then had to pile into 3 more taxi’s for a 4 minute drive up the street to the bus station. Wendy’s fierce side showed when she battled the taxi drivers who were trying to over charge us.
We won the battle and celebrated with some huge, amazing Domino’s Pizza and strange Mexican dipping sauces.
Here is where Kip met Reverend Dion, whom we were able to bless by helping him and his family get to immigration so they could retrieve all their belongings without their knowing. Finally, at 12 a.m. we got on our bus, which could have passed for an ice box on wheels, and headed to Cancun. (6 hours)
From Cancun bus station we took a shuttle to Cancun’s International Airport. (1 hr) Our journey in the skies began with us, grounded for eleven hours, at Cancun airport in wonderful terminal 3. People tend to go a bit crazy when all one can do is drink starbucks, sit, walk, and sit some more. After checking in, we found 3 hours of entertainment, in trying on cologne and perfume samples, putting on makeup, and eat over priced airport food. Finally, it came time for us to board our flight on Alaskan Airlines, flying to L.A.X. (5.5 hrs)
We had around 3 hours in L.A.X. before taking our second flight, flying Korean Air to Seoul, South Korea.
Our flight going to Korea was nothing less than EPIC.”

Next part about our time in Korea will be posted on the next page

Last Post Before Thailand!

skywalker — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:38:12 +0000

So I believe the last time I left yall was after we had Chad Chomlack come and speak to us from Whistler, Canada. The week after we had him we began a week on faith with the Destination Paradise staff leading us. The first day of the week we were given several questions about faith that we split into groups with and to really think through them and answer them from our hearts. My group consisted of Lauren, Jeremy and Kelly. We were given the whole day to work on those questions. The day after we discussed the questions and the answers we put down with each other and with the staff for lectures. Then, Wednesday we did devo’s in the morning as usual and afterwards we were asked to do something strange. We were each given a letter that basically told us that we were going to have a chance to live out our faith in a new and challenging way and were asked either to check a box saying we were willing to participate or not. So… of course I chose to participate We were then given a list of things we could bring such as a backpack, hygiene stuff, a Bible & journal, shoes, a jacket and that was about it; no money, no extras, just the bare necessities. Then we were all taken to Belize City to the bus station. We had no idea what was going to happen next. When we exited the van to go into the bus station we were read the passage in Luke where Jesus sends out the disciples without anything extra and were told to get into our groups. Then we went into the bus station and my group was given an envelope with a paper inside and 40 dollars for our bus fare to get to Dangriga. Once the bus began moving we were allowed to open the envelope and inside we found a paper saying that our team was headed to Dangriga and would be staging there relying on God to provide for us until Friday morning! It was so awesome because I remembered reading the Gospels this past year when I began feeling God’s call in my life and thinking how much I wish I had a chance to go out with nothing but God and see Him provide for me. On the bus ride there we had an awesome conversation with a Mennonite man and his wife about faith for the first half of the trip, then they got off in Belmopan where we stopped first to go see their son who had just had a baby. When we got to Dangriga we walked around for a bit and found a backpackers hostel. Lauren thought it might be like some of the ones in Europe that offer free rooms but it was more like a hotel. They offered to let us stay on the roof though so at least we had a place to sleep. The next thing on our mind was food. So we walked down the main street for a bit then decided to go back the way we came and look for one of the orange groves we passed on the way in to just get an orange or two each. On our way back though we were stopped by a guy named Mike and his aunt Angela. Mike said he knew me but I didn’t recognize him from anywhere but he insisted he knew me. We learned they were waiting on Angela’s dad, Mr. Pratt who was getting cement to finish building a family house. We offered our help if they needed it and they said we could help if we wanted to but they wanted us to go see Mr. Pratt’s farm so we said we would love to help out and go see the farm. We learned they were believers and that just that morning they were having a conversation right before they decided to go get cement and met us. They asked where we were staying and we told them the roof of the hostel in town but they didn’t like that idea and wanted to help us out so they let us stay at their farm that night. That night Mike opened up to us and told us his lifes story. The Pratt’s said they had never heard him open up like that before and Mike said he felt like God had sent us for that very reason. We were able to give him encouragement and help build him up. It was a really cool night. The next day, they served us breakfast and me and Jeremy went and helped out a bit with the house some more while Lauren and Kelly went with Angela’s sister to help prepare lunch for us. Later that evening we decided it would be a good idea go back into town so that the owners of the hostel would know we were alright. So we slept on the roof of the hostel on some palm leaves we ripped off a tree that night. We woke up around 5 the next morning and went to the bus station because we had heard they sometimes let people on for free if they didn’t have money. We were able to catch a bus to Belmopan then from Belmopan we met another bus driver who took us back to where the boats were docked. There’s a lot more details to the story than that so you can email me if you want me to give them to you or you can ask my parents about the trip. It was an awesome adventure and it was really cool seeing God provide not only enough to get by on but supply us with much much more than we could have dreamed of.
The next week we had another speaker come from Axiom where Jeff Pratt was from. Her name was Brenda and she was there to talk about spiritual gifting and who God created us to be. The week after that we had Donna come from the YWAM Denver base to speak on the fear of the Lord, prayer and what it really means to have Jesus as the Lord of your life. Her week was very inspirational in many different ways. The next week we had a speaker who was new to DP and her name was Tiffany Thompson and she went through just 5 promises out of the 7,000 in the Bible that God makes to us. Those promises were what she called the P.I.N.K.Y. promises and they were Psalm 139:18-19, Ephesians 3:20, Hebrews 13:5, John 18:36, and Matthew 5:14. Her week was an awesome ending to the lecture phase of the DTS and summarized most everything we’ve learned in the best way I could have ever imagined which is funny cause she had no real idea of what our lectures had consisted of up until then. So it was just God’s way of finishing the lecture phase and getting us excited and pumped to dive into the outreach phase. She’s is definitely one of the top 3 speakers we had and I cant even being to describe what an impact she had on me and our team! This week we’ve just been getting prepared to take off for Thailand to do whatever it is God has for us to do there!!! We’re leaving Belize tomorrow at 1 pm, taking a boat to Corazal in the north of Belize at 3 pm, then taking a bus for 6 hours from there to Cancun. Then Thursday we’ll be taking a plane from Cancun to Houston to LAX. We’ll have a 12 hour layover there, then be heading to Seol, Korea then to Bangkok. We don’t have any plans that are set in stone for our outreach while we are there, were just going with open hands and seeing what God has in store. The leaders have several contacts there but we have no definitive plan for our time there yet. I’m not sure what the internet access will be like while we are in Thailand but I’ll be on if/whenever I get the chance to tell how things are going and what all God is doing.

About pictures

skywalker — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:38:44 +0000

Oh yea, sorry about not getting any pictures up on here. I tried to upload some but it wasnt working. I have I think 132 up on my facebook which is at http://www.facebook.com/LukeSkywalker121?ref=profile so if you go there and click on “view photos of me” and go to the Belize album they’ll be there. I’ll try another time to get some up here but no guarantees, wish I could though; it’d make the blog a lot more interesting haha.

Peace

P.S. I was at least able to get a picture up in the header so enjoy!

Overview of a typical week, random facts and outreach

skywalker — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:34:34 +0000

I think I’ll close with just a few interesting facts that yall might be wondering about. First off, I didn’t know this till later on in the school but Destination Paradise is one of the few YWAM DTS’ that has all live speakers. Apparently a lot of DTS’ just have video lectures and stuff like that so I’m so excited and glad that God sent me here because I think having the speakers in person makes a HUGE difference. Second of all, I found out that after we get done with the lecture phase it will be equal to having attended around 4 and ½ years worth of Sunday’s and Wednesday’s at church! That’s a pretty crazy little fact and cool too cause I always wished I could spend more time at church and now its like I never have to leave hahaha. Another thing yall might be wondering about is what a typical day looks like here on the boats. We have Saturday and Sunday free, on Monday’s through Friday’s we have worship from 8-9 AM then we have a break for about 10 minutes. After that we all gather for lectures from a little after 9 until about 1 PM with 2 or 3 short breaks in between. We have lunch at 1 PM till 2 PM then on Wednesday’s we have Navigation/Seamanship class for about an hour and on Thursday’s and Friday’s we have guys and girls small groups after lunch for about an hour. On Wednesday’s and Thursday’s we have intercessory prayer sessions after worship for an hour and have an hour less of lectures. We have free time in between lunch or small groups or nav/seamanship (depending on what day it is) until, if you’re on the cooking team that night about 5:30 PM, if you’re not on the cooking team you come back for dinner around 6:30 PM. On Tuesday nights after dinner we have leadership sessions. During these times we discuss the chapter of “Good to Great” by Jim Collins that we have read earlier in the week and talk about various aspects of being a Godly leader. Although the book “Good to Great” is written for businesses we relate a lot of the applications to our walk with Christ. We usually sail from the base to our location sometime Sunday morning or afternoon and sail back to the base Thursday afternoon. That’s what a typical week here at DP looks like. Another thing you might be wondering about is where I’ll be going for the outreach phase of the DTS. We had two options of where to go, southern Mexico and Thailand so we went off by ourselves to ask God where He wanted us to go and then chose depending on where we felt led. Well as you might know, Thailand was on my heart even before I left so of course I chose to go to Thailand!!! We’ll be going to Bangkok as well as the Chang Mai province and I think it’s still possible we could go somewhere in the southern region too. I’m super excited about getting to go back to Thailand and spend a whole two months there serving the people there !!! It costs a little extra to go on the international outreach but God has already provided that! God is so good, I cant wait to see what He brings out of the outreach. Well that ought to be enough information to get ya caught up on what’s been going on since I’ve been down here at my DTS and where we’re at as of now. Sorry again for not posting sooner, hope yall enjoy reading Until next time…
Peace

Week 6 of lectures

skywalker — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:28:14 +0000

This last week we had Chad Chomlack who came from Whistler Canada to come and speak to us. His topic was “creating a landscape for living”. One of the main themes of his teaching was how to not fall into the trap of thinking dualistically/judgmentally in our walk with Christ and also how to really integrate every aspect of our lives, from eating and drinking to wake boarding to reading God’s word, into our Christian life or I guess you could say, how to integrate our Christian walk into every aspect of our daily lives. It was a pretty good week and Chad was awesome! Got a bunch of great wake boarding in on some really smooth water and I finally got jumping off the wake down its pretty fun stuff. We were planning on staying at Caye Caulker till Saturday afternoon but the Belize coast guard came to our boats on Friday morning looking for some custom papers that were supposed to be with the boats. Dirk and Chris had some papers that the Belizean govt. told them would supersede the ones the coast guard was looking for but the C.G. wouldn’t recognize them. So they were supposed to kick us off the boats but dirk called Chris, who was at the base this week, and we stalled long enough for Chris to contact the C.G.’s boss so that we could get permission to sail to Cucumber Beach instead of going back to San Pedro and getting our boats impounded. So we sailed to Cucumber Beach with some of the customs agents on board and that’s where we are now. Thank God that they didn’t take the boats or even confiscate the keys to the boats when we got here cause then we would have no power on the boats because we have to have the keys so we can turn on the engines periodically to keep the batteries charged. Chris had a meeting with some of the govt. officials this morning to try and get the issue of the papers resolved so be praying that it’s resolved quickly and that God is able to have an impact on the govt. and the officials that Chris meets with today.

Week 5 of lectures

skywalker — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:27:16 +0000

The next week we had a speaker named Jon Peterson come and talk to us about God’s character, the Bible, and how to really dig into the meat of the Bible. Jon was another really awesome and authentic man of God. He really led and taught a lot just by how He lived his life out with us. He knew a lot but, like Paul, admitted that he still had a lot to learn and that he only saw through a glass dimly. We finally got to go to one of the most beautiful spots in Belize that we had been trying to go to for some time during Jon’s week, Half Moon Caye. Jon’s a big bird guy so Chris wanted to get him out to Half Moon because it’s a great birding site and is one of the places where red footed boobies land and we also wanted to get out there because there’s not supposed to be many more chances to get out there during our school due to the wind/weather conditions. It was about a 6-7 hour sail there if I remember correctly. Before we set sail, Anya prayed that we would see some dolphins and dolphins we saw… or at least the boat I was on saw them but the boat she was on didn’t get to see them muahaha. The seas were pretty rough at the beginning of the sail, about 4-6 feet which made for a rollercoaster like ride for the first half. Everyone on my boat got sick except for me, thankfully, and Dirk, the captain. While we were at Half Moon I got to do the best diving I’ve ever done in my life. We went to one side of the island where there was a 6,000-6,500 foot wall drop off and the first day we went diving the visibility was perfect, 200 feet. I went down to 140 feet which is the max depth you can go to in recreational diving because if you go any deeper you have to do decompression stops and its definitely the deepest I’ve ever been. My pressure gauge broke when I was down that deep. It was so incredibly awesome to be looking up at this giant wall that rose to about 60 feet from the surface and see thousands of fish all around and all the amazing coral and other creatures. We saw sever different kinds of grouper which was sweet and we even saw a male and female pair of black grouper I think it was. They were 3 & ½ – 4 feet long and probably well over 100 pounds and one of them came within a couple feet of me. We were able to dive for 50 minutes the first dive. It was a freakin sweet experience. The other dive we did the next day. The viz wasn’t as good but it was still an awesome dive. We swam through a couple of tunnels in the coral that were really cool and I saw another pretty large black grouper and an extremely large snapper of some sort. Half Moon Caye was definitely my favorite spot we’ve been to so far. We sailed to Cucumber Beach that weekend to drop off Jon and do get some repairs done on the generator on Imagine, and then we went back to Caye Caulker for last week’s lectures.