Cherry Coke, Dr. Pepper, Almond Surfing, & Star Trek Voyager

What do these things have in common. They are things that totally rock, that I've been able to experience in the last couple of days. Let me disseminate my experiences with you now.

First off, my last host home just ruled. I stayed on an almond farm you guys. Yes almonds. I could walk outside not 20 meters (we are in the metric system now mind you) from the back door and have my belly full of almonds before you could say, "Fresh almonds taste better than your momma's coffee." But it gets even better. We had a "day off" this past Saturday. I say "day off" because it started at 9:00am. They (our contacts) were like, "yeah we'll give you all of saturday off after you come to a 6:30am community breakfast." Bugger (bug - ga). It was good though 'cause I had heaps time to call a heap of people (that would be an Aussie sentence perhaps). So among the activities on my saturday off was almond surfing/sledding. My host family had a giant mound of picked almonds in a shed. One of the things they like to do is sled down it. It works...sorta. It took awhile of going down it before we created a track of matted down almonds that would be conducive to fast sledding, but we did just that. Once it was matted down I was also able to board down it (like a snow-board). I wish I could post the video I took on my camera. Man I really need to take some time soon to transfer a bunch of those photos from my laptop to my iPod and then on to the internet. Then that night we watched the series premiere of Star Trek Voyager projected on the wall and blasted through some surround sound speakers. I have the first season on DVD. It was a beaut (beewt). It was so glorious. We watched the next two episodes the following night. If some of you didn't know I was a big star trek fan, know now. I went to a convention when I was like 12. Jeff, you remember that don't you?!

Okay, now to the Dr.Pepper/Cherry Coke part. So we played in this town tonight called Birdtown. We played a FNP (Family Night Program) for them. It was cool. Our teammate Deron has not been feeling well lately so if you could keep him in your prayers that would be great. But besides that, it was a normal program. So afterward, our contact said, "We have a special gift we'd like to give you. Now earlier during your tour I asked you, 'What do you miss most from the states?'...Well I got it for you" and she gave us two twenty-four packs of Cherry Coke and two twenty-four packs of Dr. Pepper. You guys should have seen our reaction. I had no idea how much I missed the states until I saw those 24 packs. I hugged them for a long while :). I think it very well might be impossible for those who haven't been in another culture for a long while to understand just how great it felt. The people in the audience were almost wierded out by our strong reaction to these two common american drinks. It was the fact that they were familiar things from home. You can't find them in australia anywhere despite what the locals may tell you :). These 24 packs were actually brought by someone from the states specifically for us!

So that's my short little update...here are some cities we've been in since my last list: Berri, Loxton, Brown's Well, Waikerie, Barmera.

In Christ,
jason