Day 2 – July 1, 2005:Where am I again?

Last night I was reading the literature that was passed out in orientation, and I thought it was awesome that the leaders had decided to make Psalm 27:4 the theme verse for the summer. The awesome part is that just in the last week I came across this same verse and decided to make it my theme for the summer…coincidence? The verse is “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”

We woke up this morning and realized that today is our 10^th anniversary! We shared a cup of coffee at our duct taped together table with a nice view of the ocean. I think we will both remember this one. Then we went off to breakfast for some hardboiled eggs, toast, oatmeal and papaya (papaya comes in both regular and strawberry style, neither of which really has any flavor). We then had a sort of introductory meeting in which we praised God with singing (which was awesome) for a bit and then found out that there are 81 people in this DTS class from 20 different countries. So far I had met 4 different countries: Japan, US, Australia and Algeria. In the registration line the Ausie, Algerian and I had a friendly argument over who had the accent. The Algerian has an awesome English type accent. The kids also had an hour introduction to their class. Jess and Jonny are in the same class. Jonny afterward said, “I did not like my class”. Apparently he wanted to play and run and jump and they wanted to introduce and learn names (things which he has no time for).

The remainder of the day we were shown a bit of the campus, played at the Ark Park and walked around town a bit. We met a girl named Jessica who has been doing missions work in Las Vegas. She helps girls get off of the street and get their lives back together. Now she is here to get a little more training and see what God has planned next for her (sounds familiar). She found out it was our 10^th anniversary and offered to watch the kids tonight (what, would you say ‘no’?).

At night we had another praise session with great music and a bit of Samoan war dance (at least it looked war like). It was very cool. Then they introduced every country with a representative carrying their flag. I’ll name those I remember, US, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Algeria…a few more. After that, we bathed the kids and Jessica watched them while we walked to town. We had dessert at an Italian place overlooking the ocean it was nice. We both agreed we are definitely where God wants us.