Biblical Worldview, Diving and The Book of John

Wow! I cant believe we are already getting ready to head into week four. It seems like life and time have just flew by. These last two weeks have been absolutely amazing. Thought I would give you a little run down.....Tomorrow we leave to go to the Belmophan base (capital city) through Friday.

Week before last: the base director came and did our lectures as well as our first dive instructions. Side note: the program is run with a sailing and diving school simutaneously and last school they had some issues with customs so about 2 weeks shy of the end the boats had to leave the country and they are still in Hondurus waiting for all the customs stuff to get figured out so the sailers are currently in Hondurus. The Lynn and Chris are the directors of the base but Chris has been living in Hondurus with the boats while Lynn has been here on the base with us. He flew in for our first week of lectures though and taught on Biblical Worldview and World Religions. We spent the week expanding our understanding of why we think the way we do, very much like a psych class but one specifically designed for you. Was really cool to just sit and think about why we think the way we do and understand what we think we know and what we really know especially when it comes to Dad. There are a lot of things that we think we really know when in reality if we really think about it it is just things we think. We also talked quite a bit about other religions and how they were started and what people who are in the belief actually believe. In addition to all that, we did our first dive certificates. There were 3 of us going for our advanced and advanced open water (they go together) which included some book work but mostly just diving. We did 5 dives including a deep dive, a night dive, a fish id dive, a bouyancy dive and a navagation dive. The deep one and the fish id were probably my favorite one. On the deep one we did this math problem above water and then did another one when we were at depth to see how much the nitrogen at depth effected our brain. It was pretty cool to see the difference in speed when you are at depth. Needless to say it definately took longer to think of the answer under the water...hahaha. The fish id was also really cool because the 3 advancded divers basically got to swim around part of the reef ourselves to id the fish while the basic guys fisnished up one of their dives. There were so many fish it was really unbelievable. Weve seen a bunch of rays as well. I actually almost kneeled on one the other day (they like to hide under the sand). During the night dive we did this thing where we all turned off our lights and got in a circle and moved our hands around and saw all the phosporesence from the organisms in the water. Was kinda exciting to see something in person that I learned about in school. :)

last week: our speaker was Jon Peterson from the Seattle area. I have to say I know we have only had 2 speakers so far but they have both been really cool and totally down to earth not to mention totally excited about what we are doing. They want to get to know us each and talk with us about our lives and P for us. This past week we talked about Bible study focusing on the book of John. It was so cool he had us read the entire book each day in a different way. We read quickly forwards, backwards, outloud, examining it for the I am statements and what Jesus claims and now this weekend we are praying through it. Its amazing how each time something new sticks out even when you have seen it a dozen times and you can anticipate what it going to happen next you still find something new. We also memorized the important pillars in each chapter for the book, yes all 21. It was pretty amazing to see how the story of life flows through each book just like a novel would. So often we just focus on one verse or one chapter in a book instead of the whole thing and thus miss out on a huge portion of the story. What really stood out the most to me is this simple conversation between Peter and Jesus in Chapter 21. At first glance it seems so simple and totally not that big of a deal and yet when you look into the heart of it in the greek it is something so amazing. Here is Jesus talking to Peter after the denial and after he has rose again and 3 times we asks Peter if he loves him. Just as 3 times Peter denied Jesus before he went to the cross. Jesus cries Peter do you agape me and Peter responds yea I philleo you, again he asks Peter do you agape me and Peter says yea I philleo me, then he asks Peter do you even philleo me and finally he responds you know my heart and yet he still says I philleo you and Jesus ends with then feed my sheep. It is such an amazing picture of the love that Dad has for us and all we respond with is yea I love you like my brother. Yet, at the heart of it he dosent want our brotherly love he wants the love that would sacrifice everything we held dear willingly laying it down to run to him like the father runs to the prodigal son, not caring how stupid we look or how much people will respond only bothering to be concerned with the deep passionate love we cary for our savior. So I ask in response do you agape Jesus?