Winter hike

I went to the Village Chapel church in McDonald this morning for the second time since I've been here. I went once last year. Tim's parents are visiting from their AFM posting in Palawan, Philippines and his dad did the sermon. The whole church was packed to overflowing, mostly with college kids, probably all of them friends of Tim or his sister Stephanie. It was a really great sermon, at least I thought so. I found it interesting that it went along so nicely with Paul Howe's testimony that I listened to last night. They were both about missions and very inspirational. (Stay tuned for more on that in another post.)

After church I changed and then Jonathan and I went over to some people's house that are related to people he knows in Maine. One of his Maine friends, a nephew of the people whose home we were at, was there visiting so it was nice meeting him. Quite a few other college kids were there, too, all of whom I knew, so we had a nice afternoon. I also tried to coax the cat, Maestro, to come sit on my lap and let me pet him, but he wouldn't agree, so I just had to try to pet him whenever he walked by. Later on we all met up with some other college students and went on a hike on the Biology Trail. It was cold, super cold, and it even was snowing nice fat flakes for part of the hike, but I had some layers and nice long sleeves to hide my hands in, so it survived. Actually once we started hiking only my hands were really all that cold. I never thought I'd say this, but it kind of felt nice to hike again. Except for the steep uphill, but I made it through that ordeal without too much terrible hardship and the rest of the hike was fun. We did manage to accidentally leave Jonathan and Daniel behind when they stopped to take pictures of the sunset, but they found their own way back and came to pick us up at the other end of the trail. All in all, my verdict of the day: great because it was very different than many Sabbath's I've spent here at school. I like it when my Sabbath's aren't all exactly the same.