Day 250

I did my first tour booking yesterday.  I've done the leg-work before, but never had anyone actually decide to book.  Of course, the couple came in 10 min. before my shift was to finish and since Ethan doesn't speak English that well he couldn't really take over for me.  Thankfully they did book so I didn't feel as if I stayed longer than necessary for no reason.  Louis had the day off, so once I was finished we went out for some lunch and then to a coffee shop by the pier and sat talking until it was time for me to go to church and him to go to choir practice.  I had planned on going to volleyball afterwards, but I was so tired from not sleeping very well the last few nights and getting up early that I decided to skip it.  We had a guest speaker, Graham Sercombe, at church and I really enjoyed his sermon.  He brought out some really interesting points about the passage in Luke 5 when Jesus tells Peter to cast his nets on the other side of the boat.  When you've grown up hearing the stories it's sometimes too easy to forget to put yourself in the story - how would you be feeling and what would you be thinking in such a situation?  They're real stories and the characters have the same natural, human responses we might have in a similar situation.  After being out all night fishing and catching absolutely nothing Jesus tells them to go back out.  There's no engine on the boat, they have to do everything manually and I'm sure even empty nets are heavy - they had to be tired!  There they were, professional fisherman, being given advice by a professional carpenter about how to fish!!  At that point it became a battle of logic vs. faith; going back out was completely illogical and yet they did and were blessed with the catch of a lifetime.  As if that wasn't amazing enough, Jesus then calls them to be fishers of men and they leave everything - their boats, nets, and the catch of a lifetime to follow Him.  It would be like winning the lottery and just throwing the ticket on the ground for someone else to claim...  Anyway, the speaker went over so by the time I joined Ruth and a few other people for the weekly dinner after church and had chatted for a bit it was 8:15pm.  Too late to go to volleyball anyway, so it worked out in the end.  Well, I hope you enjoyed my sermon notes from the message last night.  If you'd like to hear the sermon you can listen or download it here.

Happy Monday!