Happy to be home

The last week has flown by. It is so nice to be back home. I've spent every minute possible with Naomi and my family, hanging out, playing games, going places and doing things... The weather is great, and it's really nice to be able to be outside without three layers of clothing on. I finally got to hear Naeem, Naomi's pastor at Mosaic Church, preach. I've been to Mosaic twice before, but both times they had guest speakers (coincidentally, both times the guest speakers were pastors from my church in Charleston, Seacoast). Naeem is a great preacher, and I look forward to hearing him again a few times before I have to head up to Raleigh. Speaking of church, if any of you think about it, I'd really appreciate prayer that I'd be able to find a good church family in Raleigh when I move up there. Seacoast has a campus in Greensboro, which is just over an hour away, but I'd like to find something a little closer.

God is so incredibly faithful and wonderful. I have no idea how people can go through their whole lives without the comfort and strength that comes from leaning on and trusting fully in Him. What a mighty God we serve!

Back Home

I arrived back in Waxhaw on Saturday evening around 6:30. It's so nice to be home! Seeing Naomi, Mom's wonderful home-made pizza, hanging out with the family, warm weather, motorcycle rides... there was so much stuff I've missed from here. I'll be around here for about three weeks, and then I'll report to the NROTC unit at NC State.

School and such

So I finally registered for my summer semester. Back to school... it was a weird feeling registering for college classes. It's been a while since I've been in school. I was hoping to be able to get all my classes done in the first summer session, and have the second one more or less free (with the exception of whatever NROTC has me doing). Unfortunately, with the new, revised schedule that my academic advisor gave me (he said that the one I had written and had approved by the ROTC commander wasn't good enough), taking all my classes in one session would put me over the limit of credit hours for a summer session. So now I have two classes in the first session (Calculus and an introductory Engineering class), and three in the second session (Chemistry I plus a lab, and some macro-economics class that I have to take). So that was kind of a bummer, but it will make each of the sessions that much easier.

NSI is almost over. We graduate on Friday morning. Then it's down to NJ to spend the night with Memom, and then on Saturday back to Waxhaw. I can't wait! This week has been dragging by so slowly, pretty much like I expected the last week to be like. So close, and still four more long days to get through! It's been a difficult two months in a lot of ways, but rewarding nevertheless.

A few sunset pics

Just a few pictures I took this evening after dinner over the harbor...

We're done with midterms now... the last one was this morning. I ended up doing better than I thought, so I'm happy about that, but even happier that this means we're officially over half way done :)

Tomorrow we don't have any classes scheduled, so it should be a nice easy day, and then this weekend we get off base liberty.

Halfway done!

NSI is now officially half way done with! Only 31 more days until I get to see Naomi and my family again!... but it's still a long time. Our last midterm is tomorrow, and then two weeks of classes and a week of finals and then grad week, and then I can go back somewhere warm.

This weekend we get off-base liberty in civilian clothes, and my plans right now are to go to Groton, CT with some other guys in my division to try to get a tour of one of the fast-attack boats there. I'll put up some pictures if we go. The weather has been typical for New England in the winter... which is to say, rainy, cold, windy, and generally miserable. It doesn't help that Naomi keeps telling me how warm and nice it is in Waxhaw :)

Some pictures of OTCN

I don't have time to really write, but here's a few pictures of where I'm at right now. In the first one, you can sort of see the two carriers tied up to the pier across the bay. CV 59 and CV 60, both are decomissioned and are being prepped to be sunk as artificial reefs somewhere off the coast. The next two pictures are of King Hall, the barracks that I live in. Sorry about the poor quality of the three of them... all I had with me was my phone to take pictures with.

Things are going pretty well. I'm two weeks into NSI right now, and so far it hasn't been too bad. It's definitely a lot of academic work... 18 credit hours that are normally taught over the course of three years at a NROTC program, crammed into 8 weeks. We've only had one week of actual classes so far, and our midterms are scheduled to start on the 10th... so it's pretty intensive. During the week I don't have time for anything but school, eating, PT, and sleeping. I get up at 4:00 every morning, so I try to get to bed as early as possible, but usually it's not until well after 9:00, and sometimes past 10:00. The classes I'm taking are Naval Engineering, Weapons, Navigation, Naval Operations/Seamanship, Seapower, and Intro to Naval Sciences. They're all fairly interesting, and I have somewhat of an advantage over some of the others here in that the Engineering class is basically the stuff I've been teaching to others over the last two years at NPTU. We PT three mornings a week before class, and our class officer, LT Brewer is really 'enthusiastic' about his PT sessions. I was more sore than I've ever been for the first week, and that was with me being in pretty good shape to begin with. I'm doing a lot better now, though, and I feel great.

So, all in all, it's been good so far, except for the major fact that all the demands on my time leave me with hardly any time at all to talk with Naomi. It's been a tough transition from talking for over an hour each and every night to the fifteen or twenty minutes a night that we get now. God had been faithful, though, and is teaching us both a lot through this time apart. But if you think about it, we'd both appreciate prayer for the next seven weeks... :) The other thing I'm praying for for myself right now is for opportunities to be able to be a servant to the people in my class and division here. I feel like a lot of times I don't really know how to share my faith in Christ with others, and He's been showing me over the last couple of weeks that a good place to start is by being humble and willing to be a servant to others... So I keep looking for opportunities in day-to-day life to do that here.

Well, this ended up being a decent length post, after all. But despite my best intentions of getting lots of sleep in over this weekend, it's now Sunday night and I haven't really done that yet. So I'm going to go and see if I can get to bed relatively early tonight and start the week off right.