Mountains and Caves

So much to say, so little time. Yesterday morning all the American
students left from the school on our trip to the Blue Mountains and
the Jenolen Caves. I really wasn't looking forward to the trip that
much. Because I've already seen the Blue Mountains with my
family and I've seen many caves before. But I was surprised with
the fun that it was.

The Blue Mountains were once again very beautiful. But as I said
I had been there before. It was still good to see them, mainly just
because it was with all my buds. But the caves was really
something. The first night we got there we took one of those
normal walking-on-a-paved-walkway cave tour. Actually a really
cool part of that was when we stopped in one of the rooms down
there and sang. We had all four choir parts, so we did a little
performance acappella (sp?). It was really cool. Cool to sing and
cool to get attention. :) We also sang songs as a whole group.
The caves made the singing special. A lot different than singing
in a normal room.

This morning we all got geared up in our coveralls, helmets,
lights, and harness. The first thing we did was repel down into this
hole to where we could enter the caves. That was pretty fun.
Then we split up into groups of about 6 where we started our tour.
There were no lights down there. We just had our lights on our
helmets. And there was no real path, it was much more rugged
then the previous tour. Much more climbing, ducking, sliding,
squeezing, jumping. It was such a blast. It's like one of those
things every guy wanted to do as a kid. Even though we stayed
as a group and followed a guide, it felt much more like we were
free and exploring.

I don't know why, but I wasn't really too worried about it. Dr.
Johnston kind of exaggerated how bad it was when he explained
it. But then later (before the tour) he explained it better and made
me feel a lot better about it.

There were definitely some tight places. Like where you had to
crawl flat on your stomach to made it through. But usually you
could see the other side where you could stand up again, so it
wasn't bad at all. There was also this really cool girl in my group.
So the experience was definitely brighter.

Man there's so much more to say but I'll try to wrap it up with one
more thought.

I spent a lot of time with the guys in our ASC group. At our
dinner Friday night we had many many laughs. But then the
conversation started going sour. A couple jokes and stories were
shared that were distasteful to say the least. I felt dirty after
hearing them. It of course made me sad. But then later that night
a group of us, many of the same guys got together and had this
great praise and worship time where we prayed for each other
and sang and praised God and read the scripture. I can tell those
guys take God's word seriously, but it's like they're blind to certain
parts. Like 'having no hint of evil amongst you' or whatever the
quote is. They just talk about things that aren't uplifting at all or
pure, or wholesome.

I know I probably have areas in my life that I'm blinded to, but it's
a lot easier to see them in others. It makes me wonder what evil
in my life I'm not seeing.