Well I got back to Monmouth some time Monday afternoon.  I have been staying with my friend Zach, his wife Emily and their daughter Chloe.  My friend Zach says I have to do chores as my rent to stay there.  The first day I edged their lawn, yesterday I brought him lunch at the farm that he works on, and today I mowed the back yard.  I actually like this arrangement, but I am sure I will be moving on eventually.

Sammy, another friend from College, drove up here Tuesday cause he is going to be working at the State fair in Salem, which is about 20 minutes form here.  The two of us hung out yesterday, and it was a pretty productive day.  We went fishing in the morning with Zach’s friend Matt, then Sammy took me and another one of Zach’s friend’s, Kyle, off roading through some  back roads here in Monmouth.  After that the three of us rode bicycles over to Kyle’s house, I was on a tandum bike with Kyle which was pretty interesting.  We went over there to chop fire wood.  Chopping wood is actually pretty fun, but it does take some hand eye cordination, which is not exactly one of my strengths.  It was a fun day.

This afternoon I am going to head into Salem to see about working at the state fair with Sammy.  Sammy is going to be the photographer, and I might be the videoographer.  So I will be sure to post that up here as soon as I know what I will be doing for the next couple weeks.  As of now, I still don’t know when I am coming home, cause I haven’t known exactly how long I was going to be up here.  Maybe I will be able to put a schedule together tomorrow.

Friday I headed to Seaside OR.  My good buddy from college Zach, and his family rented a vacation house there, and so I came to crash the party.  I had a good time just hanging out on the beach with him, and his new exteneded family.  We had a bonfire, played at the arcade, and spent a lot of time playing with Zach and his wife Emily’s 5 month old daughter, Chloe.

(Here is a picture of me on my way to Seaside)

This morning I left Seaside and headed towards Seattle, or more specifically Issaquah.  On my way I stopped by Long Beach WA.

I am staying with Doug again who we stayed with about 3 weeks ago.  I came back up here cause I have an interviewed scheduled with Mike Howerton from Overlake Christian Church.  After the interview I will be heading back south again to Monmouth OR to hang out with Zach and his family some more, before I start slowly making my way down south.  I would like to get a temp job in Salem, and hang out here longer.  I really like the northwest, and the smaller towns.  Life is just a lot simpler, but there are also a lot of things that are not as easy to come by, so it is a trade off.

Well we got into Portland around 7pm last night.  Dave and Christy Lerwick picked us up from the airport, took us out to dinner, and let us stay the night at their house.  It is a wonderful blessing to have friends and family all over this country.

Today Ryan headed home.  School starts for him in just a matter of days, so he needed to start heading back.

I on the other hand, have no reason to get home, so I am slowly making my way home, and I am starting by going North instead of south.  I still have several interviews to do, and one of them is in the Seattle area.  I will be going back up there on Sunday, and then coming back down to Monmouth on Monday.  I do not have an exact schedule yet, but I do know everywhere I am going to stop on the way home, the problem is that I have not yet decided how long to stay in each place, especially how long to stay here in the Portland area.  I really like this area, and so I am not in a rush to leave it, especially since I have a lot of good friends up here.

Here is all the places I plan on stopping at on my way home:

• Medford, OR
• Monterey Bay, California
• Redwood National Park
• Redding, CA
• Brentwood, CA
• San Mateo, CA
• San Luis Obispo, CA
• Fresno, CA (Maybe)
• LONG BEACH, CA

As soon as I figure out how long I am staying everywhere, I will keep you all up to date on my schedule, but as of now it feels very freeing to not have to be anywhere.

Well when we first landed I told you how we were greeted by Roy and his friend Bill.  Well here is a picture of our new friend Roy.  He was a great help to us here on the island, and an all around fun guy.

Roy serves at New Hope Oahu, and helped us get an interview with Elwin Ahu, the Executive Pastor of New Hope Oahu.  It was a great interview, and make sure you stay tuned for the story he shares at the end.  It really is an amazing story of God’s forgiveness and how He can bring people together from all walks of life.

 

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We rented a car today.  It took them a long time to get our car, so we got an upgrade.  It wasnt as cool as you think, it was a convertible mini cooper.  It wasn’t a bad little car, its just that it did not help the unfortunate rumor associated with our trip.  If you don’t know what that is, then I am going to go ahead and keep it that way.

First we headed over to Pearl Harbor, here are some pics from the USS Arizona Memorial.

These are the names of the men who died on that ship December 7th, 1941.

This is what remains of one of the gun turrets, it was one of the few parts of the ship that are still above water.

The top of the ship lays just below sea level.  You can see part of it just below the surface of the water.

After Pearl Harbor we headed over to by buddy Larry Garrett’s Church.  He just moved out here about a week ago, and so we got to hang out and catch up a bit.  We also went searching for our mutual college buddy Caleb Fetui.  I played volleyball with Caleb in college, but when he went back to Hawaii in 2003, I did not have his phone number, and he does not have a myspace or facebook account so it was really hard to keep in touch with him.  Anyway, we found an address for him in the white pages, headed over to his place only to find 8 apartments with the same address.  We asked around and found someone who knew him, he gave us his number.  We called, and well we will see if he wants to call us back.  We definitely tried though.

After hunting for Caleb, we headed up to the North Shore.  We wanted to go their for a few reasons, the snorkeling, the turtles, the awesome beachs, but most importantly to see some of the places where they film LOST!  We did find the other’s village, check out this short video.

We also went to this little beach near Pohaku Loa Way, where turtles beach themselves all the time.  If you are ever in Hawaii go there if you want to see some turtles, we saw three on the beach, and 2 in the water while snorkeling.  Its just a small beach north of Haleiwa.  This turtle’s name is Brutus.

We ended the night with a bromantic look at the sunset.  It is an odd thing enjoying so many wonderful parts of creation not with a girlfriend or wife, but a dude that you spend entirely too much time with.

We went for a ride today around the Island.  I borrowed a bike from Terry, pictured below.

Ryan rented this BMW.

We went around the whole island in about 4 hours.  None of us wore helmets, which was strange at first, but we got used to it pretty quickly.  I was thankful for the bike from Terry, but it was a little small for me as you can see, so I ended up riding Roy’s Harley for most of the way, which was a lot bigger.

The rest are some cool pics from around the island.

This is near the Blow Hole.

This is at Chinaman’s hat

This is where they filmed Gilligan’s island

We rode with Kioko, Roy Graham, and Terry (who took this picture).  Roy Yamamoto met up with us later.

This is Laie Bay

Well we have pretty much just been being real lazy around here.  It is a beautiful place, and it is nice to just relax.

Last night we went to New Hope Church.  It is a very cool church, they have several campuses all over Hawaii, and all over the world.  The music very much has a Hawaiian style to it, and the hosts and speakers come out with leis on.  Last night they interviewed Brian Clay, the gold medal winner of the decatholon in the recent Beijing Olympics.  Then afterwards, one of their pastors came out to share a message.  He was a very dynamic and fun speaker.  Their head pastor Dr. Wayne Cordeiro, is away in Oregon right now helping Eugene Christian Univerisity.  While he is gone, the speakers like to point fun at him, and the crowds thought it was hilarious, as did I.  They like to have fun at New Hope, and so it was a pleasure to be there.

Today we are going to ride Motorcycles around the island.  Roy Graham, our contact person here, has found a motorcycle for me to borrow, and Ryan is renting one.  So we are going to go around the whole island today, and I am pretty excited about that.  It should be a lot of fun.  Hopefully we will report back with pictures from around the whole island.