I couldn’t reach the person I needed to, and didn’t have any alternate numbers for them. After a while, I began to get worried that maybe they forgot and that no one was coming to pick me up. So I decided to call the only numbers that I knew by heart, my home which was on the other side of the country. I hoped that they would be able to help me find a number that I needed. No one answered, so I was out of luck there also. I tried several other numbers, all with no answer. I think I made 10 calls total.

Eventually I was picked up and made it back to the camp I am working at. However, after looking at my credit card statement I saw I had been charged an arm and leg for all the calls I made. Even from the same payphone, I had charged totaling $180 from two different companies. These companies were NCIC and Qwest. Each charge was no less than $15 even for a call that lasted less than 2 minutes. The highest charge was for $19.72 for a call that lasted less than 4 minutes. This is very different than the rates posted on the machine.

I called up the numbers on my credit card, 877-7937728 and 800-5959694 to ask for a refund. One of the companies, NCIC, actually refunded almost all of their charges. They gave me $50 back from their total of $55 charges. It only took one call and they were very nice about it. Qwest, however, was a different story.

I have called Qwest a total of 3 times and have not gotten any of the charges rescinded. The person I talked to told me that they would submit a ticket to another department and let me know within 30 days what their decision was. Now I guess I have to play a waiting game to see what they end up doing. I certainly hope that Qwest doesn’t rip me off of that much money. They have ridiculously high phone charges for pay phone usage.

Life Lessons:
Never put your credit card into a pay phone.
Get backup numbers for people you need to reach via phone.

Kikkert bought it for $10. I feel happy. I also beat Tanton in ping pong yesterday. Here comes the Boon.

The other day I had a record of records day for my other website, www.garrettsbridges.com. I had over 5100 unique visitors in one day. That is more than double my previous record. Over 13000 pageloads across the site. I was pretty stoked. I made more through Adsense that day than I had any other day, despite the CTR being low. I also saved $200 by paying for school now through the nice exchange rate. That paid for my ticket home. I am also way ahead on my homework, at least for now.

I had a sweet talk with Dustin last night. He introduced me to a “steamer,” which is basically heated and frothed flavored milk drink. It was pretty good. I would buy one again.

I don’t have to face
Danger
Danger because my faith
Is not popular

What is hard for me
Giving
Giving up my wants
To help another

I may have to face
Rejection
Rejection of friends
They don’t understand

What is hard for me
Loss
Loss of what could be
For a greater cause

I don’t want to face
Confusion
Confusion of ideals
I don’t understand

What is hard for me
Focus
Focus on the goal
To honor the Lord

Give me the strength to face
Life
Life brought by my death
Your death on a cross

The semester is already half over. It has really flown by. The weeks seem to come and go as quickly as the candy I get from the ARC. I just finished a major step in this semester, a 19 page paper for my Old Testament class. I had a 30 minutes presentation with a friend to do in class, as well as a group paper of 2500 words on open theism. Group papers are so difficult to write.

Coming to this year, I was excited for my classes, but not in the same way that I was excited for what we will get to do second semester. It has taken all this time for me to shift my attitude to greatly appreciate my classes for what they are, and try to take full advantage of them.

Team Sherpa, the name for the 2nd year Explore team, definitely has created opportunities to grow in many different ways. Most of us know each other really well from last year. However, two people, in particular one of the guys, did Explore two years ago. This means I do not know him very well. Because he is a 3rd year student, he is in completely different classes and has a completely different schedule than I do. So it was naturally harder to establish a friendship. This created some conflict within the group. Some people were feeling left out, almost rejected by the others, some really didn’t know where they even fit into the team. This is something we had to deal with (and are still dealing with) as a team.

Coming into Explore, I had to deal with a lot of uncertainty in my previous choice of career. At the end of last year, I had thought I wanted to become some sort of camp director. However, I began to question that after coming back this year. So then I had to wrestle with the question, “why am I even here at Prairie and in Explore?” If this has nothing to do with what I am going to do for a career, then it almost seems like a waste of time and money.

Part of why I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do with my life comes from my goal of someday being the head of a family. I had to resettle my convictions on starting this process. Now I have come to a place of peace, and am patiently (for now, at least) awaiting a day when it will be right. It is funny though, how God sometimes answers prayer. His knowledge is above mine, His thoughts higher. Still it is funny when God doesn’t answer prayer the way you think He would.

Throughout it all, I have felt a much deeper connection with the LORD God. At times I cried out to Him in desperation, and He was faithful to comfort and calm my weary soul. I praise God for He truly incredible greatness and goodness, that His lovingkindness endures forever. That He is a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness. His love endures forever.

Perhaps tonight, the first fruitset with the 1st years, is a good picture of what is happening in my life right now. A fruitset is where we go out to the train tracks and watch the sunset. We all have a piece of fruit which we eat in unison. These sessions are rated on four separate, 1-10 scales: the beauty of the sunset, the uniqueness, the group (attitude), and the fruit. This one was rated 8, 5, 8, 9 respectively. That brings an average of 7.5, which is decent. The group was Dustin, Beth F., Anna, Samantha, and I. Hopefully more of the first years will join in later.

The video and audio got a little off during the upload, but it actually looks kinda cool.

My first task was to learn how to receive people coming into the end of a zipline. As a guide, I must judge their speed and tell them when to break. As I watch them coming down the line, there are several factors I must consider: Weight, form, gender, and previous experience. Guys typically go faster than gals. Some people react faster than others when I give them the signal to apply the breaks. Some don’t react at all. Heavier people go faster but also slow down faster. To make matters more interesting, the four ziplines are all different. This is an art I was still perfecting at the end of the summer.

Then I got to learn how to send people off down the zipline. To do this, one must be skilled in dealing with extremely scared people. You have to talk them through hooking up the gear, and sometimes must hook their gear up for them. Getting people to jump off the very first platform is especially difficult. Most people are scared of heights and don’t have a lot of trust in the gear. It doesn’t make it easier that they must step out onto a little platform 60 feet up in the air with nothing much to hold on to.

I met some really neat people over the summer. I got to be on TV and had a radio interview through Banning Mills. I met people from Sweden and Germany. I met engineers who would study the design and construction of the course, pointing out the possible failure points. I also met “Big Nerd Ranch” folks who spent their days writing C++ code for Mac programs. I met people who had done a canopy tour or ziplines in Costa Rica, Belize, Mexico, Alaska, and other places. The youngest person I took was 11, and the oldest was 78. I had adrenaline junkies and scared-to-death middle aged ladies, all in the same tour. One day we had a group of debutantes. The very next tour was the Atlanta chapter of Women on Wheels.

It was very interesting to see how all these different people reacted to the challenges of the canopy tour. The basic tour consists of 3 ziplines and 6 cable and wooden bridges. Some people liked the ziplines and hated the bridges. Others loved the bridges. Some people left the platform screaming. Others stopped in the middle to take pictures. People would ask if the job ever got boring. No, there is no way it could. Every tour was completely different because of the people in it.

Today I ran my last tour, at least my last one for a while. I head back to school up in Canada in a couple days. It was a little hard to leave the place that had blessed me in so many ways over the summer. Not only did it provide me with a way to make some money over the summer, but it also helped me improve my people skills and gave me contacts for the future.