Day 12

I've gone back and added pictures to some of the earlier days. Go check em out!

Today was our second free day. We rented two seadoos and headed out to the Jordanelle Reservoir. The reservoir is a man made lake created back in the early 90's. The hard part of the day was getting up at 6. This was so that we could get to the rental place by 7 am. To maximize our day, I put us on a early schedule so that we could get to the lake early. We picked up the girls, who were all tired. Mallisa had bumped her leg on some furniture and was a little mad. In my infinite guy wisdom I said "Coach used to say walk it off, walk it off." She didn't like that. So, combine tired, wounded and cranky and you get what I got. A very short and spirited answer. :)

We had also invited Bethany (the daughter of the family we stayed with our first week) to come with us. She met us there, we hitched up the seadoos and headed out. Google maps told us that the trip would take about an hour.

About half way into the trip, our Tom Tom decided to go psycho on us. According to the GPS we were actually 100 yards east of the highway, which would put us in the river running alongside the highway. It took 3 u-turns to find out that Tom Tom must have been really tired too.

We got to the lake by 9:30. After traversing the labyrinth of winding roads we finally found the seadoo launching slip and got both of them in the way. Me, Ben, Haley, and Billy were on the boats and got to ride first as the RV headed around to the beach camp site.

The first hitch in the day hit. One of the seadoos wasn't running properly. We called the rental shop and they told us that we had probably got a rock of something in the intake shaft. When we picked up the seadoos earlier in the morning, they gave us a long speech about how not to break the seadoos. One of the topics was avoiding getting stuff into the intake. Apparently, when rocks get in there they can damage the propeller.

So, we had to get the RV back to the slip and pull the one seadoo out of the water to check. What we found was not a rock or debris, but a broken seal. I dint know what all that means, but Ben assured me that if that was broke, the seadoo was out of commission. My next fear was the rental shop thinking we did it and trying to keep the 2000 dollar security deposit. But, there want much I could do about it at that point, so i drove back to our picnic area.

The group didn't seem to mind that we had only one seadoo. It was a three seater so that made trips more efficient. I learned about the, how do I say, adventurous side of Allison on one of the first trips. She took Cord, Ben's brother, and Billy out. No more than 30 seconds outside of the no wake area, she dumped Cord off the back of the seadoo. We were watching this from the shore and proceeded to watch her drive off without him. She didn't notice that she had dropped him!! And then twice on her run, she flipped the seadoo. This is not the Allison I know from the office! But she and her passengers had fun. Ben and I took other groups out; some were beginners having never been on a seadoo, others but veterans. Haley in particular loved the full speed of the seadoos.

But then the enemy struck again. Ben was towing Billy on one of those floaty inner tube thingies. He also had two passengers with him. While on their trip, a boat crossed in front of them causing some significant wake. Billy's tube hit the wake the wrong way and threw him. He had had a dislocated shoulder a few months back and he re injured it flying off the tube. By the time we got him back to shore his shoulder had popped back into socket. We called mom, and put him in a shoulder wrap and sling. I got hand it to that kid. He didn't show any pain or discomfort the whole time. He is a trooper and didn't let it ruin his day.

As the last trip came in, which was me, kirk and garrison, we heard a girl about 50 yards to our right cry out to the shore. She was calling out to her mom who didn't seem to notice. When I say calling, I mean crying in panic that she was drowning. She had swim out too far trying to recover a raft, and started to panic because of the depth.

Mike quickly swam out to her and helped her swim back to shore. Her mom was grateful and Mike was winded. Praise the Lord that we were there to help that girl.

At 3:30 we loaded up the seadoos, and headed back to the rental place to drop them off. We were a little nervous that they might try to say we damaged the seadoo. So we prayed for favor and justice. Sure enough, they said it wasn't our fault, refunded the money for the one seadoo that didn't work, and refunded the cost of life jacket rental as a "were sorry for the inconvenience" gesture. Obviously we were grateful. Mike then go to share with them the gospel and leave some tracks.

Kevin Kennington, Assistant Pastor of Lord's Word Church had invited us to come over Monday night for a barbecue. We obliged and got there about 6. The food and fellowship was awesome. They had these two little puppies there that all the girls melted over. As you'll see in a picture below, I did a little as well.

Now I'm back at our sleeping quarters, lights are out, everybody is asleep and I type today's blog to update all of you, especially the Spicer family. Gracie told me earlier that her parents said "tell Nathan to update the blog. We are waiting with baited breath to read about what has happened." So, Spicer family and all our family at Hosanna, this blog is for you.

- nathan