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I have seen so much beauty in the past 6 days. On July 4th, Dustin Downing, a fellow NET Alum and I flew to Honolulu. Dustin spent the past year serving as a missionary on Oahu with INHIM Ministries. So I had my own tour guide for the week.

Dustin’s friend Ryan picked us up from the airport and we went for a tour of the southeast part of the island. We ended up going to dinner at a Hawaii original called “L&L Drive-Thru.” Interestingly enough, there was no drive-thru. I learned a very valuable lesson at this fine establishment; don’t eat what you don’t recognize. I ordered something called Lau Lau which I have since determined is pork, fish and rice steamed in some sort of leaf. This tasty treat smells kind of like a hog farm and tastes slightly less appetizing. Afterward it felt like I was carrying around a rock in my mid-section.

We went to the beach in Hawaii-Kai for the 4th of July Fireworks display. It’s hard to look around this tropic island with it’s own culture and way of doing things and think “Lee Greenwood- Proud to be an American.” Yet that’s what was playing during the fireworks display. It was a little surreal to say the least. I was pretty wiped out so we headed back to Ryan’s house and tucked in for the night.

The next morning Dustin and I took a very long bus ride to the wrong rental car place in Waikiki. Luckily we caught a taxi and with moments to spare, we busted through the Enterprise Rental Car doors and rented the exact same car we rented in California, a dark blue Chevy Cobalt. I think Enterprise got a deal on them because I can’t see them being a very desirable color for the buying public.

That afternoon we dined on a DELICIOUS lunch of Jamba Juice and Teddy’s Cheeseburgers which, in one bite, surpassed Sonic as my favorite Cheeseburger. We headed out to the golf course to play a quick round which, the way we play, turned into a long 3/4’s complete round. Then we went back to Honolulu to a cigar shop that Dustin knew about. A couple cigars later we drove a very smokey car back to Ryan’s and crashed.

The next day we were set to go to Waikiki and surf the day away but I guess God had other plans.

I’ve been reading Pope Benedict’s book, “Jesus of Nazareth” and that morning during prayer, I was reading the section about Jesus’ Transfiguration. Pope Benedict started talking about the importance of the mountain throughout scripture, focusing mainly on the mountain’s in Christ’s journey. It felt like every other word was mountain. Then I realized I was literally sitting on a mountain and was surrounded by the Hawaii Loa Ridge, a mountain Dustin talked about wanting to climb.

Now some of you who know me realize I’m not what most people would call an “Outdoors person.” I like air conditioning, macbooks and Law & Order… in no particular order. All of these things stand directly in the way of going outside. The thought of surfing was intriguing, but as I started to realize in my prayer, I didn’t really want to surf, I just wanted to tell other people I could surf. I wanted to go out on a 10 foot board, get to my feet one time and then go to the beach, sip on a mai tai and call myself a surfer.

I was at a courageous moment. Do I do what I want or give God a chance to pound something into my skull? I decided it was time for a good pounding.

Next time, Up The Mountain.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 5:11 am and is filed under blog. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.