Joseph's Grand Adventures

I hope everyone is doing well with the heat wave that is hitting down south.  It has been rough here too!  It made it to around 70 degrees here the last few days! 😛

 

Well as I complete my eighth month of residency in Alaska, I find myself settling into living here and making a living.  So, yes, I live in a tourist attractive area, but I don’t have the time to really be a tourist or at least a tourist on a full-time basis.  A lot of things have happened since my last post, just none big enough to warrant a post of their own.  One of the main events was almost being squished under a float house.  I’ll try to explain.  My pastor here in Juneau lives in a float house, and the time had come to replace the floats on the house since it had lost some buoyancy over the years.  I spent some time helping to replace the floats to be helpful and to have a new experience.  In order to replace the floats, the house had to be moved to “The Grid” (a place that lets you bring your boat to this location or dock at high tide.   After the boat is nicely tied and secured to the pillars/dock and resting on its bottom, the boat will be exposed at low tide unfortunately not inside the computer like Tron) and jacked up to replace the floats.  Well in the process of jacking up the house, while we were all under the house, one of the jacks let go and the house just about ended up in the ocean.  Talk about God’s provisioning though!  Earlier in the afternoon, another member of the congregation and I were teaching one of the other houseworkers how to tie some knots.  (He wants to go work on a fishing boat and knot tying skills may well come in handy.)  We noticed the ropes tying the house to The Grid weren’t bowlines, so we showed him how to tie a bowline on one of the ropes.  I retied the other rope 3 different times until I had a satisfactory bowline and after the jack broke, the bowlines were the only thing that kept the house from ending up in the ocean.   Another Boy Scout skill from years ago came in very useful!  Once we were all safe, we spent the next couple of hours (taking us well into the night) stabilizing the house and getting it back solidly on The Grid.   Quite the adventure!  By the way, the house is now back in its slip and resting on its new floats-mission accomplished!!  

 

My adventures have taken me gold panning with a coworker, which has proven to be fun and a great way to explore some of the lesser populated areas around Juneau. There is a good possibility that some gold was found, but I need to get it tested before I can confirm that!.  I have had the opportunity to see some bears in several different places.  I was hiking at the glacier over a past weekend, and spotted one —- as did several tourists who kept the rangers busy trying to keep space between them and the bears.  The group was after that AK bear photo to show when they get back home!  I have also spotted bears a couple of occasions on my commute.  They have all been Black Bears, so maybe I’ll see a Grizzly sometime soon!   I am still on my quest to see a Wolf!  

 

The only other major happening was a small storm complete with lightning and thunder (not a common occurrence).  It was really cool to watch it roll up the channel, and see the effects on the water and the mountains.  It didn’t last very long but was a rare, cool occurrence.

 

I hope everyone is doing well and I hope that the weather hasn’t been treating you too badly.  As always, I remember everyone in prayer and if you need specific prayer, please reach out.

 

P.S. I am beginning to put together plans for a visit in the fall, so please reach out to Mother if you would be interested in a visit.