Only Believe

"These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in the praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." - 1 Peter 1:7

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance." - James 1:2

We will keep facing trials and circumstances until our faith is refined like gold - until we believe that no matter what is going on around us, the Father has a plan for good (Jeremiah 29:11) and He is working all things for our good (Romans 8:28). All we have to do is ONLY BELIEVE. When we do that, all else fades away. We are to seek after Him with all our mind, body, soul, spirit, and heart. We are to do this no matter what is going on around us. When we go through trials of any kind, He is always there whispering, "Will you believe? Will you believe your circumstances or will you believe the Word I have spoken over your life?"

"Now faith is the substance (realization) of things hoped for, the evidence (confidence) of things not seen," - Hebrews 11:1 NKJV

"We live by faith, not by sight." - 2 Corinthians 5:7

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." - Galatians 2:20

Which will you believe: your circumstances or the Word of God, which is living and active?

ONLY BELIEVE

"That's All Folks"

Christmas Tree Lighting

Well it is that time of year again...me blogging...well, no. I actually meant holiday season (but I guess it also means me blogging). And you know what that means???.....

Well for one, endless Hallmark movies (though that started in October. Geesh and Yay!) on not one, but TWO different Hallmark Channels. What?!?!? It also means Christmas music being played at work. UGH!!! Yeah, not really a fan of Christmas music, unless it is the Chipmunks or the Grinch. I have such great tastes. :) And my rule of thumb is no Christmas music until the week of, though if I really had my way it would only be allowed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

However, what I was really getting at is that it is time for Christmas lights, which also started going up on Jekyll in October (I felt really bad for the workers who had to spend weeks, and I mean weeks, hanging Christmas lights all over the island).  But that all led to the Christmas Tree lighting this past weekend. 🎄 I was all set to attend the lighting...with a plan...ready for it?...well, here it goes... 

Go to the festival. Buy some coffee. "Accidentally" spill it on a guy. He turns out to be age appropriate, cute, single, and Christian. And then fall in love watching the Christmas tree get lit with fireworks in the night sky and snow (fake, of course, since we are in the South) falling all around.We then ride off in a horse drawn carriage and get engaged in the glow of sparkling Christmas lights after only knowing each other for 2 hours💕💙💚💛💜...

Oh, wait. I think that is me mixing reality with multiple Hallmark plots. Oops.

Okay, lets get back to reality. Here is what actually happened: Christmas tree being lit. Check. Fireworks. Check. Horse drawn carriages happening. Check. Fake snow. Check. Finding a guy and falling in love. Un-check. *Sigh* It was worth a shot...There's always next year...Anyways, here are some photos from the night to get over the disappointment. 

It is a little small, right?

Just kidding, not the main tree. :)

"That's All Folks!"

Sharks, Turtles, Manatees...

Time to blog about another adventure, but shockingly this one is NOT a month old. It actually happened last weekend. Shocking, right? Maybe at some point I'll actually blog about something the day after or *gasp* the day of an adventure, but let's not hold our breath. :)

Anyways, back to the adventure. Last weekend I drove down to Cape Canaveral to help with some turtle research that University of Central Florida was doing. It was a connection through work but an opportunity that we had to do during our weekend. A couple times a year UCF does data collection on sea turtle in Trident Basin at Cape Canaveral and this time we had the opportunity to help out. Basically what we were doing was capturing as many green sea turtles as possible using dip nets on two boats.

One of the two boats, and those are dip nets.

The boats slowly travel the edge of the basin looking for turtles along the rocks. If you spot a turtle you put the net as far down as possible in front of the turtle to capture it. Or if you are super into the experience, you leap off the boat with the net to capture the turtle (surprisingly that actually works and was fun to watch). There were are also a couple large nets that were in the water that had to be checked about every 20 minutes to see if any turtles got captured. Once captured, the turtles were taken back to the dock where they got work up. The work up included taking blood, tagging, skin samples, biopsies sample, etc. At the end of the day, the turtles were marked with a number on their backs (using non-toxic chalk paint) and released.

I had to work Saturday, so I was only able to help out on Sunday. Saturday there were 15 turtles captured, but sadly only 3 were captured Sunday. Partially because we were not re-capturing any of the turtles from the day before, which we saw plenty of. I personally did not capture a turtle, but it was a super fun time being out on a boat and doing some turtle watching. 

Look ma...a sea turtle!!!!

 

This guy kept hanging out in shallow water by a wall, so he made an easy capture. :)

Got him (or her)!!!

Plus, I got to see a giant mantis shrimp, some nurse sharks, and a manatee!!!!!! That was actually my first time seeing a manatee so that was super AWESOME!!!

Nurse shark

There were a couple of the sharks hanging out in this area. They showed up a little early for Shark Week! :)

At first, the manatee was just a giant blob in the water...

But then it came up to say hi!

Or maybe to just breath. :)

And down we go again.

Time for another nap

After the nap, this manatee was CRUISING!

"That's All Folks!"

The End of The European Adventure

Well, the time has come...we are blogging about the last day of the European adventure. To be honest, it wasn't that exciting of the day. Got up. Caught a train. This time I caught the train by myself to the airport, while the rest of the gang was hopping one to Venice. But it was totally fine since I had a nutella croissant. :)

I ended up at the airport hours early since the gang had to make sure I was heading there before they left. That's what happens when you're the youngest child; you get extra concern and care. :) It was fine though. I wandered around (had to get my steps in, of course), WhatsApped some peeps, and read. Seemed fitting that I started and ended by journey in Italy doing the exact same thing...reading.

Then it was an 11hr flight back to Miami. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to sleep at all on that flight. But in good news, I got two cups of ice cream instead of just one on the flight. It's the little things. I landed in Miami 5ish in the evening, but didn't catch by next flight until 10:30pm. Ugh! I really just wanted to get home at this point. So I found a nice quiet placed and called the fam. This turned into me on Facetime with my sister listening to Gilmore Girls while resting on my backpack. Finally the time came for my next flight. I boarded the plane and promptly fell asleep until we landed in Jacksonville. Caught a bus to my car and then drove back home. By this time it was 1:30am and all I wanted to do was sleep. So that is what I did. Thus, ends the European adventure!

Since this was the most boring of the posts, here are some photos of flowers from the trip:

 I seriously can't go anywhere without taking a bunch of flower pictures. (Oh look, we are in Italy with a bunch of different architecture and scenery. Cool, but I'm gonna get close ups of flowers. lol.) Don't know why, but its true.

And here is a random photo of a door that I had to take because of the mini door that goes with it. That was not uncommon to see in Italy. We even got to go through a mini door at our AirBnB in Milan. :)

"That's All Folks!"

European Adventure - Day 6

From Nice the plan was to head back to Milan because I flew out of there the next morning and we hadn't actually saw any of the sights on arrival. The good news was that we got to sleep in some; the train didn't leave until 8:30 compared with the normal 6:30ish departures. Yay! But once again we made our way to the train station and elected to get pastries along the way (do you sense a pattern yet)? With pastries in hand we entered the train station to find out that the train line was closed between Nice and the Italian border. OH! GREAT! 

We were told to go to the customer service next door to get more information though the rumors we heard were either a line was down or workers decided to go on strike (apparently it is not uncommon for the train workers to strike after the Monaco Grand Prix because they feel overworked and are exhausted from the crowds. hmmm). So we got in a nice (pun not intended, but fitting) long line with everyone else trying to get into Italy so we could figure out was going on. We briefly talked about just hanging around Nice and exploring some more and catch a later train or a super early one in the morning. However, this was the one day that it decided to start raining on us. Every day before had been sunny and beautiful, but today it had to rain. Of course. Nix that plan.

There we were standing, and waiting, and standing, and waiting. Then it was our turn, time to figure out what was happening and what to do...oh wait, turns out there really wasn't any helpful information. The train was down for an unforeseen amount of time. Could be 12 when it was back up? Or 3? or maybe 5? Who knew? And then they were thinking/trying to organize buses to get people to Italy, but had nothing settled yet. To summarize, we were on our own. After some contemplating and debating we elected to get an Uber to take us to the first train station in Italy. It took MANY, MANY, MANY tries, but we finally caught an Uber. It turned out to be a niiiice Mercedes sedan

It turned out to be fun way to go to the train station. Got to see some different scenery and it was a smooth ride. Once in Italy, we exchanged our tickets for new ones to Milan. We ended up getting to Milan in mid-afternoon. After walking to the AirBnB and dropping of the bags, we decided to go explore Milan some. We found the closest metro station and hopped a train *gasp* to Duomo di Milano, which is one of the largest cathedrals in Italy (and Europe).

View from our Milan flat.

Duomo di Milano

 Right next to the Duomo di Milano is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the oldest active shopping mall in Italy. It is definitely NOT like any other mall that I have seen. The architecture was something else.  But once again, we found some delicious gelato.

 After we saw those famous sights, we wandered the streets some more.

Then we picked up some pizza and chocolate and headed back to the flat. Thus ends another day.

To be continued...

"That's All Folks!"