Painting is the Lord's work

Certain verses from Ecclesiastes describes my past week (July 6-10).  Eccl. 1:23 says "Utterly meaningless!  Everything is meaningless.  What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun."  I spent this past week "toiling" on work staff at camp.  A lot of my time was spent sweeping, mopping, and doing dishes.  My attempt was to clean but in all truth I think achieving "clean" out here is somewhat futile.  There are pine needles and sand that get tracked everywhere especially when it rains like it did this week.  There will always be dirty dishes to do and once something does get washed it will be back in the pile in a few hours after the next meal.  Actually I had a good time on work staff.  I love the adrenaline rush of trying to have another load of dishes ready for whenever the dishwasher finished or the joy of sweeping up mounds and mounds of dirt and knowing at least you removed some of it.  Our other task this week was painting.  We were priming and painting all the bunk beds in camp.  I enjoy painting but after trying to squeeze under the bottom bunks and attempting to paint with a roller it became slightly annoying or the paint fumes finally got to me.  I'm convinced that painting is truly the Lord's work.  No matter where I serve God painting is usually involved in one form or another.  God must really appreciate when anything in His kingdom gets a fresh coat of paint.

On Saturday afternoon I hiked out to the Point with 5 guys on staff.  The girls were getting hair cuts and watching a chick flick but I declined so I could hike instead- not a tough choice.  Most of my hiking experience in life has been done with guys.  My brothers have left me on the side of a mountain a couple of different times (once I was having an asthma attack so I was slowing them down- at least they left me with granola bars).  We started out by canoeing up the beach so we could canoe across the creek.  The plan was to canoe up the creek but they forgot to figure in the current of the creek plus at low tide all the water is being sucked out of the creek making it pretty hard to paddle-- especially if the water is only a few inches deep.  After struggling for several minutes paddling as hard as possible without making much progress we pulled to the bank and hiked from there.  This hike would probably take over an hour at the most but a few guys carried full packs just because they could.  I should also mention I was the only one who neglected to bring a pocket knife, hunting knife, or machete.  I brought the first aid pack instead (which was good since one guy about dropped his knife on another guy's hand).  It was determined early on that trails are for sissies so we headed off through another meadow.  Eventually we got to the beach and caught the trail.  Once we got to the Point we sat on the rocks and watched salmon, seals, sea  lions, and ducks.  The conversation then turned to what type of knife or gun they would like to have with them if hunting a certain animal.  Finally it was time to head back so of course in typical male fashion we had to time it to see how fast we could go.  When we reached the woods the group decided that we could either take the boring trail around the beach or use the machete to bushwhack through all the devil's club in the woods- the decision was unanimous- the woods.  We found the canoes again and raced the 10 minutes back to camp.  It was a fun hike with a great group of guys- I felt like I was almost right at home with my brothers.

Saturday evening we hung out at Wilderness camp.  We not only ate s'mores but experimented with deluxe s'mores including peanut butter and honey, marshmallows stuffed with snickers and then roasted, and much more.  We played some whiffle ball and tossed around the pigskin a bit but the real party was down at the creek where everyone was fly fishing.  The salmon are coming upstream so it's like fishing in an aquarium.  These guys catch 15 a piece most evenings.  They kept a few so I watched them filet and cook the salmon.  Nothing beats an evening around the fire eating salmon and s'mores-- very Alaskan.