So this is the first blog that has not been edited by another party, so forgive all the lovely mistakes. Also, the shuttle Endeavor did not end up taking off on Friday, there were some problems during the pre flight and it was postponed. Anyway, here goes...
So Daniel and Joel arrived late Friday night, or more accurately, early Saturday morningJ It was so awesome having them here, words just don’t quite do the emotions justice. Their visit flew by, almost literally. I had a great time letting them meet the friends that I made down here, going to church with me, having Easter with the Saints, working with the guys at I-TEC and taking taking them to Rainbow springs and to play Volley Ball at the YMCA.
Saturday we slept in then headed to Steve Saint’s house to help him work on the playhouse for his grandkids. We pretty much spent the morning there and then the afternoon we just kind of hung out. It was great to just spend time with them.
Sunday after church I brought them to Rainbow Springs then headed over to Jesse’s house. All the Saints where there as well as several other relatives, there was also a missionary from Kenya there. Joel Daniel and I hung out for a while then played on the tire swings, well we actually spent the whole time trying to make whoever was in the swing regurgitate their lunch buy spinning them as fast as we could, and also trying to slam the tire swing and it’s unfortunate passenger into the tree. Fortunately for the passenger, Jesse must have strategically placed the chain, because try as we might, we could not hit the tree.
Upon arriving back at the house the grandkids deduced where we had been and I was elected to push everyone. This would have been simple enough had there not been two tire swings. I was constantly running from one to the other. Luckily it started to rain and we all had to go inside, and when the rain passed, Joel and Steve’s Nephew Jonathan were elected to go out and pushJ
Monday and Tuesday they helped me work on Life University, and that was SSSOOO awesome. There were windows that were installed several days before they got here and needed to be caulked, a couple of doors that needed to be painted, a big brush pile that had to be cut up and brought to Jesse’s burn pile and the paneling on the back wall had to be replaced. I was dreading having to do all that on my own, it would have taken 4 or 5 times longer If I had to do it on my own. Not to mention that I am a terrible painter and even worse at caulking windows.
It was almost like old times, all of us teasing and insulting each other, and telling inside jokes that only as life long friends could have. It was so awesome, I haven’t had so much fun in a long time. But as I said, it was “almost” like old times, We made a catastrophic mistake, after all morning on the first day of no caffeine we knew that there was a problem. During our lunch break we went into town to rectify the problem, and the following morning I made my Lowe’s run early and stopped at a Starbucks to buy us all drinks and prevent us from repeating our failure of the previous morning.
There were a few weeks before I moved here that Daniel and I worked together at a job that was pretty close to home. So us being so brilliant minded decided to get some over time. We would arrive on the job at 5am and not leave till 5 or 6pm, no breaks, not even lunch. We would stop at a gas station or some wonderful place where there was an abundance of caffeine and buy a lovely stash of it to get us through the day. It was during this time that we formed the motto, “Late to bed, early to rise, work like heck with blood-shot eyes”. And believe me, that was us. All of us kind of made caffeine a necessity, if we were going to work, we may as well get a lot done quickly. We were at a restaurant one day and saw a small bard on the wall that read “Drink Coffee, do stupid things faster and with more energy” I think we embodied that one tooJ and since I am on the quoting track, I saw a coffee cup at a coffee shop that said, “With Enough Coffee I can do anything!”
They lift I-TEC on Tuesday night and to spend a few days with Daniel’s brother David. Troy gave me today off so I could meet them at Daytona Beach. I took the opportunity to get here early enough for the sunrise, but my luck is plain out bad, this is the second time I have shown up for the sunrise and it was overcast. I left home at 4am to make it here, and I didn’t get to see it!
I am typing this at a Starbucks that I came to with my family while they were here during New Year. If you step outside you can see the beach. Just before coming in here, I had a pretty neat encounter.
I passed a guy near this Starbucks at about 6 this morning and saw him again sitting on a bench not far from were I was sitting on a brick wall drinking my coffee. I went running up the beach about ¾ of a mile and then turned around and headed back, by this time it was pretty light outside and as I looked left, I saw him again this time standing with his head down almost like he was praying. One of my pet peeves is that I have to stop my runs on a mile, I hate stopping it at half or quarter miles, it has to be at a mile. Well, I had to get over that, I felt like God wanted me to meet this guy, and I was only at 1.41 miles. I kept trying to talk myself out of it, I wasn’t afraid to meet him, I love talking to people, but I didn’t want to stop at 1.41 miles. I knew he had been there for about 2 hours already and was sure that he would leave before I could finish half a mile and then I would have a terrible day knowing that I missed God.
So I ran back to those steps and luckily I got to 1.5 miles before I got there, at least it is an even stopping point J I ended up walking over there and talking to him for about 15minutes. Turns out that his health is not doing so well, he doesn’t have much time left to be alive, he has had several heart attacks and he heart is causing some other problems as well. I am no stranger to heart issues so I told him my story of all the heart issues that I had and what I am doing today, he seemed really encouraged, and he even brightened a little, I don’t think he really has any friends. He said that he usually comes out to the beach at 5am every morning and sits out there till the sun comes up. He was in West VA for a while but he couldn’t take not seeing the beach so he moved back here, this morning was his first since being back. I don’t really know why all that happened, we never even exchanged names, we just talked for a while, but I do know that God wanted me to talk to that man and I am glad that I did.
I love you and am very grateful for your financial support and more importantly, your prayer support. Really looking forward to spending time with Joel, Daniel and David. It has been a while since we last hung out together, I am sure we are going to have a blastJ We are going to see the shuttle “Endeavor” take off today as well. Pretty excited, I haven’t seen it take off since I was a little kid.
Your brother in Christ,
Austin
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