This past
week we have slowly been making our way south.
Sunday the 14th we
arrived in port to pick up our next speaker.
After a couple hours of waiting Theo finally remembered that the speaker
wasn’t coming until the next day.
However, his forgetfulness allowed us to have a free day on Monday, and
we just so happened to be about 30km from the Thermopylae, the site where the
battle of the 300 Spartans took place against the millions of Persian
soldiers. The guys and I (along with one
girl we brought along to take photos – I mean wanted to come) were super
excited to visit, even though we were told that the monument was rather
un-impressive. Regardless, we managed to
find a bus to the town, walk around in the rain for a bit and finally get
directions from some locals on where the monument was. The language barrier was pretty significant
but we kept saying “Leonidas” and making a spear throwing motion until we were
pointed down the road a ways. When we
finally saw the statue of Leonidas and the monument to the 300 in the distance,
we could hardly hide our excitement as we ran and screamed like giddy school
girls. Pretty soon after we had climbed
up onto the monument and removed our shirts to pose next to the fully naked
Leonidas (he did have a helmet, shield and spear… or two). After doing our best 300 impersonations (we
all had just done 1000 pushups) we went up to Kolonos hill where some of the
battle took place. There was also an awesome
hot spring that ran right along the hill. The
five of us were literally the only people around, so we had to walk to a gas
station and have them call a taxi for us to get back to the boat. The taxi was a little pricey, but it was a
Mercedes Benz, probably the nicest taxi I’ve ever been in (and they wonder why
the Greek economy sucks).
The speaker
this past week (and my cabin mate) has been an American guy named Mike Gunn,
who is currently church planting while coaching American football in Istanbul,
Turkey. The first day Mike was telling
me about how he planted a church in Seattle a while back with his friend
Mark. Turns out his friend is Mark
Driscoll, and the church is Mars Hill, easily in the top five of influential
evangelical churches in the world currently.
Through his involvement in Mars Hill, Mike got involved in Acts 29
international, which he directed for a while before more recently starting his
own church plant organization. It’s
kinda funny talking with Mike (who also was almost a professional football
player and has been to Everest base camp several times) cause he says things
about the conversations he has had with Bill Bright, or Matt Chandler, or the
conference he was at with Piper, all men who are rock stars in the Christian
world.
Mike is
also an incredible Bible teacher, as he has taken us through 1 and 2
Corinthians. All of his teaching is on
the Gospel and it’s implication. He also
does a great job of explaining Christianity and culture (he is working on a
book about the Gospel and culture) and the Biblical model of moving from the
Garden to the eventual city in the new Earth, and how Christians are to
cultivate culture along the way; not abstain from the world but be influential
in it, contextualizing the Gospel without changing it. He has also been incredibly wise from an
apologetics perspective, in both defending the Bible and attacking false
worldviews. It is always affirming when
I have thoughts or beliefs on a certain topic that are verbalized more
eloquently by smarter men.
Adventures
this week have included working out with Mike, de-heading and gutting a tuna
fish on deck that Theo caught, fishing off the pier, exploring an abandoned
fishing village, hiking through the bush up to some cliffs and climbing a bit,
and shark baiting. Shark baiting is when
Theo lets out a long mooring line from midship and drags people behind the boat
while motoring along. At first there
were a bunch of people on the line and Theo went kinda slow. Then the girls quit after a few tows and it
was just me and a few other guys left in the water. My hands were already tired from holding onto
the line and from working out earlier, but my pride wouldn’t allow me to
quit. Theo pretty much cranked the engine
all the way up as I struggled to hold on without drowning. I lasted a few minutes (probably more like 30
secs) at full speed before my hands cramped and I let go. Apparently my face and arm waving made it
appear that I was panicked as I was being dragged to my watery grave, but the
truth is that I was totally in control and simply let go of the rope first out
of humility so that the other guys on the rope wouldn’t have to.
Another awesome “is this real life” experience
happened the other night under the stars.
One of the students was brushing his teeth on deck when he noticed that
when he spit in the sea it seemed to light up.
After further investigation, and confirmation from Theo, we found that
we were in a particularly rich area of bio-luminescent micro-organisms, that
glowed milky white when disturb. Even
though it was past curfew and kinda cold out, pretty much everyone, including
myself, dove in and swam in the water.
Basically any movement resulted in a faint milky glow as seen from a
distance, pretty cool considering it was too dark to actually make out anyone
swimming. In the sea though, it
literally felt like you were swimming in outer space. The water was pitch black, but the slightest
move resulted in thousands of tiny little creatures glowing like stars all
around your body For sure one of the
coolest experiences of this trip so far.
The actual stars were also pretty legit, and I got to see a few shooting
stars go all the way across the horizon.
That’s all for now, I’d like to get
a post up sometime about ship life and what I’ve been learning, but we will see
what time allows.
God Bless
-BG
No comments:
Post a Comment