This is our last morning in Hawaii...packing, strolling, maybe shopping for a few more things we saw and liked but didn't know if we had enough room to pack them (we do), and taking a tour of the University of the Nations. That's the group (Youth With A Mission) that we originally came to check out.

We went to the oldest church in Hawaii (1820) yesterday and had a wonderful time of worship with our Hawaiian brothers and sisters. Some of the music was in Hawaiian and stirred my worship even though I didn't understand the words. This is a church I could call home if I lived here.

We fly out at 6pm and arrive in Chicago at 6am on Tuesday. We are going home for a couple of hours of sleep before we take our motorhome to Indianapolis to trade it in on a new motorhome. We will drive it to Illinois on Wednesday morning then begin packing it so we can go south after church on Sunday. It's a typical Ken week but we are rested and ready to hit it when we get home. We have thoroughly enjoyed Hawaii but decided that 11 days would have been plenty. The dream of laying on the beach, reading and playing in the waves has a definite shelf life!

So goodbye for now, we'll be home real soon. Our next post will be after we pick up the rv which, by the way, has a name, the White Honu, which is Turtle in Hawaiian. We are getting a carved turtle to hang on the outside of the rv. No, I am not going to start collecting turtles. (We were wading in the ocean the other day and a LARGE green sea turtle swam right by us. Hmmm, I am really not into up close and personal! )

ALOHA HAWAII and MAHALO

Back again. If you are just looking at our blog you will need to look at the last post also since I ran out of room for pictures so I just started a new post.

I wish the picture would do this sunset justice. I love sunsets and this one brought tears to my eyes. When the sun dipped outside of our sight the sky lit up with a rainbow of color from red on the bottom to purple at the top. I have seen more brilliant sunsets but this was vast without anything to block it.

Again, some observatories, by the way, we were not allowed in the observatories. After traveling on some really rough rocky road we found paved highway for the last 3 miles up the mountain. Made no sense to me until the guide said it was paved to cut down on the dust. The lens cannot have any dust on them and are cleaned regularly.

This picture was funny to me. I call it reindeer games. The natives with four wheel drive vehicles will drive to the top of Mauna Kea and fill their pickups with as much snow as they can get, then take it down to tropical climate and have snowball fights. The original natives played a similar game. When they trekked the Chief or the Kahuna (priest) to the top of the mountain for worship the commoners would make the biggest snowball they could carry and the one whose snowball made it the farthest down the mountain without melting won. "The difference between men and boys..."

I am afraid this one is not going to show. I can see it on my picture but this copy is dark. About 1/3 from the left and about half way down is a speck of light, you may mistake it for a star but it is the planet Venus. We were able to see it with the naked eye. That night there was also a clear visual on the McNaught comet. My poor little camera is not good enough for good pictures of such things.

After watching the sunset we went back down to 9000' to watch the stars. We traveled that 5 miles of road in the dark because the observatories don't want any light to interfere with their machines. Ewwww, that was a fuzz intimidating! But the trip was worth it. Just that morning I had read "God, you set the stars in the sky, nothing is too hard for you." I have never seen anything like it. In northern Illinois I may go out at midnight and see 100 stars and think, "Wow, the stars are all out tonight." I have been in places with little light from towns and I have been amazed at the thousand of stars I have seen. But after this mountain top experience I am in awe of my God who set these BILLIONS of stars in place and knows each one of them by name. When we got out of the van (again, no light) and I looked at the sky I saw some swirls of clouds and said to our guide that I didn't think there would be any clouds between us and the stars. He laughed and said those aren't clouds, they are galaxies! Whoa! Just imagine the fullest sky of stars you have ever seen with your naked eye then fill in the empty spaces! The ones we normally can see become brilliant and the empty spaces become full of the sized stars we are used to seeing. I was in awe and humbled. There were quite a few people on this tour who were regular star gazers and I was interested in all they knew. I recognized that I was purely a bystander, not even a novice, but what I did know was who it was who created those stars! To God be the glory!

We had the most awesome experience Saturday night. We traveled 13,000 feet to the peak of Mauna Kea. It is a volcanic mountain that formed the island of Hawaii. Actually it is the highest mountain in the world if it is measured from it's base at the bottom of the ocean. At any rate 13000' is higher than I have ever been. We took our trek in a small diesel passenger van with about 15 co passengers and a guide. We stopped at a visitor center at 9000' to eat our dinner and become acclimated to the thin air. The picture of Ken is not so amazing except the clouds you see in the background. I have never eaten above the clouds before, except on an airplane.

Here we are at the top of Mauna Kea. Ken is standing in front of some of the observatories. These are amazing structures and are owned by various governments around the world. We were told that the Japanese telescope has an 8 meter lens that took 3 days to get up the mountain because it was on a specially made transport that would keep the lens perfectly level while it was being carried. Trust me when I tell you that I can't imagine anything being carried up that bumpy lava rock road in a level state! The next picture is of a cinder cone, a mini mountain that is formed by a small eruption in the side of a volcano. These look small in contrast to the mountain of Mauna Kea but they are much higher than anything we have in Illinois.

I am going to have to sign off and enter another blog since it doesn't want to let me put any more picture on this one.

Welcome to Hawai'i! Land of black sand beaches, orchids, waterfalls and volcanoes. Actually the black sand beach is more like crushed rock, certainly nothing to build sand castles with but interesting all the same.

We took a circle tour of the island yesterday and traveled through 11 of the world's 13 temperate zones. We started in semi desert and traveled through tropic, rainforest, savannah, and more. We went from desert to lush in a matter of minutes. We stood by the side of an active volcano...ugh, I was just a tad intimidated. Actually I was a lot intimidated. I stood next to a steam vent and felt the heat of the internal fury just waiting to spew. The barely contained power of creation was fearsome. As I looked over the bareness of past eruptions, with numerous vents steaming away I was deeply greatful that this was as close to hell as I was ever going to be. It made my scripture memory passage for today that much more precious. (My friend Carolyn gave me a great book for Christmas, "Praying God's Word" by Beth Moore and I have been encouraged to put more of God's word in my memory bank. When you see me, ask me what I am memorizing now, it will keep me accountable.) So let me see if I can do this from memory, Isaiah 43: 10-12, "You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and my servants whom I have chosen. So you may know and believe me and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no god formed nor will there be after Me. I, even I, am the Lord and apart from Me there is no savior. I have revealed and saved and proclaimed - not some foreign god among you. You are My witnesses, declared the Lord, that I am GOD!" There was much conversation about Pele' the fire goddess when we stood at the rim of the volcano but all I thought about was God.

Here is a lava tube that we walked through. Four hundred feet of a tunnel created by a liquid lava flow that crusted around the outside while the liquid continued flowing through. When it was all cooled there was a tube remaining. Amazing.


Today we are "resting". We had considered taking a whale watching tour but a fellow traveler told us about a beach not far from here where you can watch them from the beach. We will check it out.

12 MORE HOURS UNTIL THE HOUSE HAS TO BE READY TO SELL!

What a hoot! Just had to set down for a few minutes and do something other than spififying the house. Had to stop washing windows when the sun went down...Ken crashed at midnight but I am going to CONQUER the house! I just packed my clothes for vacation, church is at 9 am, pictures for listing the house at 1 pm then we are off.

Had a neat time having Shelli and the kids here for a couple of days. Caleb is beginning to repeat words and Abby is just babbling. She is so adorable. She is willing to set in her little chair for hours just to be in the same room with people. I pick her up a lot just out of guilt that she is content to share the same space. Just making eye contact with her yields the biggest smile. Ken found a golf ball in our bathroom after they left..."Look, the little guy didn't want us to forget he was here!" As if! Chris was here also today to put their stuff in storage so we could sell the house. You know the old saying, "Just when you get the house fixed up to sell you see that it is a pretty good house so you decide to stay?" It isn't happening but I haven't seen our house this clean or organized in years!

Here's a shot of our little guy. Shelli said, "Dad we already had this talk...NO NOSE RINGS!" Adios for now, we are taking the laptop with us to Hawaii so may send some pictures from there.

Had a really nice time with our kids and grandkids last weekend. Caleb enjoyed opening his own packages and wanted to help everyone else too.

We had fun putting together those "some assembly required" presents and then playing with Caleb. He received a farm with animals, magnetic animals for the frig and animals starting with A-Z. It was an animal Christmas...er, not really. It was a Thomas the train Christmas too. His Uncle Rick couldn't resist getting him a Thomas with a track he can ride on. Between his Thomas bed and Thomas train engine there isn't much room left in his bedroom.

Little Abby is getting her own personality and it is a delight. She spent the entire weekend cooing, sleeping or watching us all with great interest. As long as she could be in the same room with everyone else she was content. She even sat for a couple of hours at the kitchen table while all the big people played a very loud game.
Sunday morning we had the priviledge to hear big Caleb's first official sermon. I was holding Abby. She is normally very squirmy but when her daddy started to talk she just calmed down and went to sleep. Caleb says he does that to people when he preaches but I know she was just secure. I was encouraged by his teaching on King Josiah that to be totally sold out for God we need to tear down the "high places" of idolatry. Very appropriate as we head into the new year to search our hearts for those places where our worship goes to anything other than our Father.

As we left Shelbyville Ken said it gets harder and harder to leave the kids. His heart was sad. Fortunately we get to have the kids here tomorrow for a couple days since Mama has to go into the city to work a day this week.

We go to Hawaii for a couple weeks on Monday and after all the work we have done this week to get this house ready to sell I will be ready for a vacation. Before we go we have to get those pesky W-2's mailed so everyone can get their taxes filed. I think this is my last official duty.

I'm painting a ceiling tomorrow if you want to help? Didn't think so.

Still in Machesney Park, Melody