Processing *Please Wait*

The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. 

                                         -Proverbs 20:5

Here is a song that really has spoken to me. If you want to listen to it before, during or after you read I think it gives a good summery of how I've been feeling. God's stirring up my life, but I'm going to be obedient to what He has in store.

Last week and this week have been much different than the initial week here at Gateway Training. Week one my group did a lot of hands on, safety, easily to comprehend learning. We could see what we needed to learn, took the test and ended up with our Certification according to the United States Coast Guard.

The second week we talked about our Foundations of Faith and how important it is to have that base to start from and have something to work from when we get on the ship and steer the other long-term crew & short-term crew in the direction leading to the Lord. This week we have really begun to process who we are on a personal basis and better understand ourselves and others so that we can Glorify God in everything we say and do.We did a D.I.S.C. personality profile. It was eye opening to see how God created each of us differently. It's easy to say that we are all unique, but when you take a test and it tells you how you act, what makes you move, and where you come alive it'll make you think twice about the person you are.

Today we did Spiritual Gift Assessments. Seeing where we are made to serve God and how we are geared to serve him in those places. Now, this might not seem like a huge deal from your perspective, but as we started off our training here we were asked what out personal goals were as we were going through this training. For me it is to get a better glimpse of who God wants me to be so that I can better glorify HIM. So to look at those two profiles, see how God has created me, and see where I am now it give me a great platform to work from.Tonight I had a good conversation with a friend and I really began to think deeper about the things that I have learned in class.


Who I am
How God has created me to act
How God created the people I interact with
How they act
How we respond to our differences
How we use this to Glorify God and Serve Him together.

Read More

Safety First!

Here's a video that we watched in class yesterday. Thought I would share something that we all enjoyed.

Read More

BST-Fire

This week half of the group is doing Basic Safety Training while the other half is doing Foundations of Mercy Ships. I'm in the group doing BST and we're learning the basics of safety on the ship. Monday and today we covered fire.

 Different classes of fire, different types of fire extinguishers, how to prevent fires and other things before we went out in the field and actually wore fire protective gear and breathing apparatus to put out real fires.

We got to use different extinguishers, put out 3 different types of fire. and use our breathing masks a couple of time. 

The class started at 6:00 so we could beat the heat and we finished early enough to get a shower before lunch. This afternoon we went back and I got a fabulous 84% on the test.

Tomorrow we will be talking about first aid and other basic safety principles. Then Thursday and Friday we will be talking about water safety and ocean survival skills. Followed by practice at a local pool. 

 Hope you enjoy the pictures! That's me "Big Blue", I'll be posting more after Friday and maybe introducing some fellow Gateway people.

Read More

Travel to Texas

Well, I made to Texas today. The drive went really well. It didn’t take as long as I planned. It was nine and a half hours and now I’m in a temporary home. This is a short transition time between home and the ship. There will be around 30 people here all going through the same training. We will be having orientation tomorrow and start getting to know each other. The fire training will be pretty exciting. We’ll be in full out fire gear putting out real fires. It should provide great opportunity to get good pictures.

I was thinking on my way down here today. Being on the ship last year took all the emotion of saying goodbye. I thought that it had only affected saying goodbye to people when I was on the ship, but it has seemed to spill over on the rest of my life. I’m afraid that people might think it was impassive or cold. I hope you all know I will miss you a lot.

Sometimes when you go through the process of doing something it feels like its taking forever or just completely unnatural, but everything involved with going to the ship and now returning has seemed completely right. Even today, as I drove down here, the 5 hours it took to get to Texas seemed like it was just a few hours and by the time I made it her to the IOC it was hard to believe that it was already evening time.

I would imagine that the returning people have noticed by now that I have changed a bit of the design on the blog. Decided to have a little change, like when I came home in January. Let me know what you think. Also, for those of you that would like an automatic e-mail every time that I post something you can sign up at the top left of the page where it says follow by e-mail. Just put you address in there and it will send you the post when I update.

Here's a picture from last year to show you that it's not just about training, we have a lot of fun too!

Read More