Venture on a surface ship

This week....mmm...yes, the USS Carl Vinson came into port for a few days on its way back to San Diego. I made it a point to try to get aboard and get a tour of some sorts. I accomplished my goal pretty well actually. Carriers are much larger than that of  submarine and guess what, it has a whole lot more space as well. I didn't take that many pictures :(, so next one I might be able to get some more pictures. 

CVN 70s F-18 on the flight deck. The USS Carl Vinson was also taking Tigers back to San Diego, so they had to make some more room for all the extra passengers.

I got the electrician that was giving me a tour to take a picture of me on the flight deck with the control tower in the background.

Carriers always need some planes that have expanded radar capability. It was also cool to learn that pretty much all the aircraft can fold their wings. I didn't know that the F-18s could do that, but it is possible to help save room. 

Onto other things, I had some extended family come in this weekend from the Bay Area in California. It was great seeing them and hanging out with them on Sunday. I also got to meet some more extended family that is on the island. Second cousins and more extended.....family trees can get so complicated if you think too much on them. I'm going to see if I can meet them at the USS Arizona memorial when they go before they leave later this week. 

Work related, we finally got cleared to go back into testing Saturday night! So exciting, that means things will start to pick up again. I had the chance to go back to classes, but I would rather stay on the project and learn/see things. It's alright in the end, I'm still "behind" in classes according to our training coordinator (which in my opinion does a horrible job), so one more class isn't going to kill me too much. Besides, I won't be alone in this one, there will be five others that will be behind as well. 

Hawaii also celebrated King Kamehameha day this past Friday and Saturday. The birth of the king that united the islands. There was a big lei ceremony on Friday at the statue downtown. Most of the state employees had the day off as well. So the traffic was actually pretty nice for once. On Saturday, I as going to go watch the parade, but started watching it on TV. Following the parade, there were activities that were down at Kapiolani park, which I was going try to go to before work. Well plans changed because the traffic was just absolutely horrible. Also, the parade lasted for like 3 hours. A ridiculously long, longer than the ever present Golden parades during the summer. 

lots of lightning

So last week, I got a two day weekend which was very nice since I hadn't had a real "weekend" in about a month. I got a second weekend this past weekend which was pretty sweet. I went and saw X-Men: First Class with some friends. I would have to say that it wasn't the best that it could have been...actually quite poor on the wowness of the movie. Other than work though, I haven't been doing very much. I did end up meeting Keano on Saturday because the first two attempts were a bust (Thursday, Keano slept in, Friday it was storming like mad). Saturday, well interesting thing. We wanted to eat at Eggs N Things, but it was crowded (I guess it's pretty popular) so we ended up going to the Crepe House down in Waikiki. The other interesting thing that happened this weekend down in Waikiki was the Honolulu Pride Parade. Interesting indeed.

Thunderstorms. They are one things that I really enjoy for one thing. The thing though is, I don't necessarily like being woken up at 0500 by the thunder. In Colorado, we normally don't get thunderstorms till the evening or afternoon which is really nice. Here though in Hawaii, it can be all over the place. The last weekend, we had them in the morning, in the afternoon, and also in the evening. I believe on Friday, the thunder that I know of started at 0500 and lasted till about 1100. Yeah, six hours of thunder and rain. The thunder actually shook the walls and the windows of my place, it was pretty sweet actually when you think about it. Since, I'm at work I cannot actually post any pictures or a movie, so when I get back to my place and remember, I will post a movie and hopefully some pictures.

I might expand on this later (as in tomorrow) if I get around to it....

Memorial Day

Memorial Day!!!!

Lets remember the soldiers that have sacrificed their lives for our freedom. It is also a day of bbqs, pools opening and "summer time" kickoff parties.

This is going to be a short post if you haven't noticed. Hangover Part II, funny, but also vulgar. Work is slow right now, we are at an all stop for problems. Umm yeah lack of sleep the last few days from staying up watching the Hangover Part II and then last night for talking with a friend after church.

Also, some of my friends have very poor planning skills. For a pretty "famous" restaurant, they didn't think for a large party (6) that we would need a reservation. Yeah.....such naive people. If you want to know more of what has gone on, feel free to give me a call. Enjoy Memorial Day!

Merging and part of the whole picture

So I have definitely have concluded that people in Hawaii DO NOT know how to merge, and that one single deficiency in that driving skill creates unnecessary traffic on the roads here. When living on an island you wouldn't think that there is much traffic. Dead wrong, the traffic here is pretty horrible during rush hours. With no mass transit system and a strong dislike for even funding and building one, there seems to be no relief anytime soon for the traffic woes. Now, you wonder why I say that Hawaiians cannot merge. Simple answer. When ever there are onramps, the whole "yielding" thing doesn't really apply. They either 1) treat it like stop sign and just let every other car in or 2) just think they own the road and just continue driving and push their way in. Also, at pretty much every major merging or interchange the traffic is backed up for at least 1/2 mile. I decided it was enough when I came across on the freeway, they were doing construction on the 3 most right lanes. There were 2 other lanes open and then merging into one lane about a mile of two lanes. The two lanes merged into one because the onramp needed its own lane, don't ask me why they did that. Anyways, when the two lanes merged, it was pretty much stop and go traffic, on a Sunday with no reason to have stop and go traffic. After the merge spot, you could easily speed back up to the speed limit of 55. As in immediately after the merge spot you could do that. Also, the speed limit was 15....yes it was weird. Normally you would see the speed limit to be 25 at least in a contruction zone. I have come to realize that on average, the speed limit is 10 miles per hour lower than that of the mainland.

The other thing that I wanted to bring up was that, there is this family at church that seems to be having family issues. Now it's not a one time thing, it seems to be an ongoing occurance since it comes up about every week. From what one sees every week it would look like that the sons (3 sons) just drag down, demoralize their mom every week. I guess after talking to them a bit last night, that it seems that way because I "don't know the whole story". Granted that is true, I don't know the whole story and in some ways, I don't know if I want to know the whole story. I can only comment on what I see and what is shown, not really what is not told to me. Sure extrapolation I could probably do with bits and pieces that I pick up, but I don't want to do that. Anyways, if you could, can you pray for the family. They seem to be having a lot of problems overall. They have recently become believes (< 1 year). In short, the sons don't believe that their mom is "saved". The mom feels like she is getting dragged into alway religious conversations at home because pretty much that is what her husband and sons always talk about. The mom also feels like the husband isn't pulling his weight (i.e. proving income to the family, being a figure head of the family, helping with the family, etc). Granted I guess he hurt his back and has had surgery recently to fix it, and he should be better in about 2 weeks I believe. The mother also feels like all that the rest of her family does is just read the Bible (not saying that is bad) and talks about prophecy (also not bad). In my opinion though, if those are the only things that you ever do, it can be bad.

My reasons are 1) you aren't really fulfilling the great comission. You aren't going out and sharing the good news and making disciples of all nations. 2) you aren't shapening others with the Word of God. Granted if you talk to each other, you are sharpening each other, but different ideas are sometimes good and for growth. Different ways of thinking and disagreements and talking through the disagreements are beneficial. 3) you have no friends. If you just stay inside all the time and all you know how to talk about is prophecy, you will most likely have little to zero friends. In this case, it does seem that the two older brothers have very little to zero friends, wel besides me that is. 4) getting a narrow minded view of what is going on in the world. If you just read certain articles or from certain websited (just mainly prophecy websites) you don't know what else is going on in the world. I personally think you can get a lot out reading "secular" papers if you know how to filter things correctly. Putting together what you get out of the papers and what you know about scripture, then I feel like you can put together a better picture when sharing the gospel and talking about prophecy to someone. 5) you tend to piss off people if that is all you talk about. I have a high tolerance for things. But when talking to at least the eldest brother, all he ever talks about is prophecy. Did you hear about this ______? Did you know about this ______? Granted I do know about most of the things and if I may be so bold, more than he does about what is going on in the world because I read the news. I don't get it from my dad after he reads things in the news. Anyways, I've been trying to get him to talk about other things, get involved with other Christians on the UH campus. 6) you tend to be a lone wolf when it comes to doing things. Going back to #3 of having no friends and #2.

I could probably go on and on. I might have to expand on this if things tend to get worse or if I get the whole picture of things. But enough with that. In other news, Pirates of the Caribbean: Stranger Tides I thought was much better than the last rendition. Obviously the viewers thought so as well since it made like $90 million here in the US and like $218 million worldwide. I also got to hang out with friends for the first time in like 4 weeks. It was pretty amazing. I've had 2 days off in the last 30 days I think now. Yeah....about that. Till next time.

It's that time of year again, people graduating, spring time, and summer. Along with summer, I guess a lot of "relaxation" and just having fun. So what to do this summer? Well, it's the first "summer" that I have had after graduating and have a "real" job. In a sense I guess it is a lot different because instead of going home, and getting a job for 3 months and not doing any homework, on in the case of last summer, research all summer, I instead just continue what I do all the time work.

Now work is going pretty well. I worked both days this weekend and will probably come up on the 13 consecutive rule again. But that's fine with me, having a day off. One day off and in what we are doing is better than a few days because you just kinda forget what day it is and don't have a huge break in and lose track of what we are doing. Down side is, you can just get burned out really fast.

There has been this theme that I have been running into throughout the last weeks when doing devotions and that is one of discipleship. I think it's on of those things that just gets put on the back burner with most Christians these days, in that we are worried about ourselves and not actually share what we have learned with others. I some how became a part of a group on Facebook (click here) that was started with some high schoolers guys at my church. I don't know how I came to, but I guess this is the opportunity that God wants me to run with for right now. You should join it and add your input and all.

Last thing, there are things that God brings into our lives or we pray for things. I would have to say that we as Christians in America are spoiled. That's right, I said it, we are spoiled. We get pretty much everything we want and we live in luxury. We don't experience persecution on a daily basis, and sure our Christian "rights" in the country are disappearing each year. But do we do anything about it? No, we just sit around and take it how it comes. Things that God sometimes brings into our lives that we ask for, we need to fight for it. Things are not always just given to us because then how could we grow and do things to glorify His name? The things that God brings into our lives or brings us opportunities, we need to fight for all of it, just like the Israelites had to fight for the Promised Land.

Mother's Day Challenge

Mother's Day. Everyone has a mother, despite if they know her or not. Mothers have tremendous influence on their kids. Like my pastor pointed out this weekend, you always see the big football players or basketball players or famous people in general always thanking their moms or saying hi to their moms on television. I would like to thank my mom for always being there and being supportive in everything that I do as well as with my sister. Mom I would say are very important to the development of children. I know I wouldn't be the person I am now without the influence from my mom.

Besides from it being Mothers day yesterday, the past week has been pretty good overall. I mean I'm getting used to working swing shift and I only  had to work one day this weekend instead of both days. I'm not allowed to work more than 13 consecutive days without the shipyard commander's permission and at this time, I don't need it. Maybe later on in the key event will I get the permission, but for now, it's alright not working more than the 13 days in a row. Working on the weekends can be boring sometimes, depends what is going on. This past weekend, not much is going on so I got to leave after working 7.5 hours. Not bad if really. I get paid time and a half for working on the weekends, so it's a pretty good deal, especially since it has been raining a lot.

On that note, the rain, it's just been raining for the last week pretty much every day. Yes, you might say, it's Hawaii, it always rains, but this is not the sprinkle here or there, it's a pretty good rain fall. The rainy season should be coming to a close, and from what I've heard, it's unusual to get this much rain so late into the season. I guess it's also good since they say we have been in a "drought", although I think every state says that. I think they said it has rained so much because the storm that passed the islands earlier in the week, double backed and hit the islands again. Two for one punch I guess. As it stands right now, we have a chance of rain for the rest of the week.

The killing of Osama Bin Laden, some think that he was killed months ago, some think that he wasn't killed and taken prisoner by US forces, and some think that he has evaded capture/killing again. Who knows what the actual story is, but it has been the headline news story over the past week. It also seems to have been a political move (Obama's ratings went up 6% in one poll after the announcement of Bin Laden's death). Despite all the different theories, it has been overlooked on a rather large scale that we invaded a friendly country without permission, fired shots in that country again without permission, and also blew up a helicopter of our own in that country. Sure, we wanted the surprise attack and no warning, but really, why do we want to piss of more countries at us, especially friendly ones? This I feel is why a lot of the countries hate America because we can do what ever we want. We have the military force, which we spend billions of dollars on fighting other countries wars and being the police of the world. Should we be policing the world when we have larger problems in our backyard? That is something that the media and the government tends to turn a blind eye to. Also, just for thought, why is the United States changing stance with Israel? Didn't God say that He would bless those who bless Israel and curse those that curse Israel? I guess it isn't too surprising since our countries morality and religious roots are being undermined continually.

The last thing on my mind recently has been discipleship. Now how many can say they have experienced discipleship and have discipled someone. I honestly don't know how many can say that, but it is something that I feel that we are called to do. Disciples, Jesus had 12 disciples that He poured himself into for three years, and in turn they went out and preached the good news after his death (minus one of course). We are called to be disciples in the Great commission seen in Matthew 28: 18-20. I've been praying about discipling some guys at my church. I would encourage you guys to pray about discipling someone at your church or school. It doesn't just have to be the "next leader" you see that will replace you or want to replace you, but everyone in the fellowship should be discipled. Don't pick the ones that you know will be a success at discipleship, but go after the guys and gals that are on the edge and really challenge them in their faith.

Destroying Enemies

The US has accomplished a goal that it set out about 10 years ago. I guess later than never is the saying for our country. Osama Bin Laden was killed Sunday night if you are in the dark. The Navy Seals went in along with the CIA into Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden. Now there could be some repercussions from this since we did not ask permission to enter and well all of Bin Laden followers will want revenge. We have an increased terror alert now thanks to the raid and also I have to point out, we no longer know who is in charge of Al Queda. There will be a vacuum to fill and now we will spend billions of more dollars trying to find the new leader. It will be interesting to see what the next few months bring for us. 

I've been working in shift work all this past week sometimes to midnight. So all my friends on the east coast, I might be going to bed when you are getting up. Scary right? I also worked this entire weekend in which I was at work when they announced that Bin Laden had been killed. The only good thing (and bad I guess) is that I won't be able to work more than 13 days consecutively. It's a rule at the shipyard/government which I guess can be good and bad. 

Coming off of the Easter weekend, do we still remember what the cross is. What other things do we need to give God permission to invade and wipe out in our lives? That has been an interesting thing over the last week to think about. I have thought of many things and just meditating in the Word, I have found that it just brings things to light that we overlook everyday. More so I think as the National Day of Prayer comes upon us this week. Granted most of my friends at Mines are looking more towards Thursday for being the last day of class this year, or maybe if they are lucky (as in Seniors) in the college career. But we should also look forward to this thursday as a day of Prayer. Prayer is the least thought of and done in worship to God, well I believe. It's something that we all, myself included, never seem to find time to do. Just think though, it is our way to have a conversation to God. More and more I have found myself just praying when I'm at work, especially when I have not much to do but to sit around waiting for a test procedure to start or a walkthrough to start. I just find this refreshing and relaxing to some degree. So, I would encourage you this thursday to join millions of others in the National Day of Prayer, even if you are busy with school, or work.