Ocean, Church, and Demolition

Wow, it always seems like it's been so long in between every post. I suppose that means I'm keeping busy, that sounds better than lazy. This last weekend was heaps of fun (yes, the slang rubs off on you). On sunday morning Graham and I went to church, our first time worshiping in a church building since we've been in Australia. We went with Matt Newman, one of the guys who we've been working with quite a bit here at the base. The church is about a 40 minute drive south from the base and it's a community church. It was nice to be involved in a regular worship service again, although I've really enjoyed our times of worship on monday and thursday mornings. Right after the morning service we went to Matt's dads' house in the city and picked up four kayaks, his friend josie, and headed off toward a river. The plan was to kayak a ways up the river and eventually make it into the ocean and have a little bit of fun in the waves. We made a pit stop before we got to the ocean because it was a windy day and Josie decided to call it quits. We portaged Josie and Grahams' kayaks up the hill to the car park and Matt and I continued, let the fun begin. The waves on sunday afternoon were incredible. They were breaking super far out and even some of the smaller ones were breaking up to my head in the kayak. Needless to say I was tired at the end of the day. That was it for sunday.

Today, being wednesday, Graham and I started the dreadful, yet highly anticpated task, of demolishing the old shed. Alright, so we were only assigned to demolish part of the roof. This building was originally built in 1930 something and one of the only changes was that the tin had been redone once or twice. Oh, and the fact that a giant tree caved in half the roof sometime last year. Our assignment was to strip the tin off the remaining half and remove the rafters, in a safe and orderly manner. Ok, so I'm not sure they specified on the safe and orderly manner part. We managed to strip off most of the tin by noon and figured we'd just laze around until lunch at 12:30, but we decided to get back to work anyway; this is where the fun begins. We were supposed to keep the conventional rafters somewhat in tact so that the lumber could be used for something else. 80 year old conventional rafters aren't typically in great shape to begin with. Alright, I'll just cut to the chase. As we were strategically knocking out supports to slowly let down the rafters Graham managed to step on an old, and cracked, 2x10. This was nearly at the peak of the roof, so his feet were about 16 feet off of the ground when he was dangling there. But, fear not. Graham is a strong young man and managed to pull himself back up to safety. Nonetheless he had quite the scare and was most definitely trembling for a few minutes after the incident. Needless to say this was most definitely our highlight of the work day and the afternoon was not nearly as exciting. Any mothers who may be reading this, be glad you aren't our mothers. Keep fit and have fun, what more can I say?


Prayers and Blessings

Zac