Chawaii Part III: Jellyfishing and Divine Intervention

Why yes, yes that is me crabe-ing in the middle of the Beautiful Pacific Ocean :) (in my tacky tourist shirt nonetheless :D)

Friday was again, empty. Hahaha. We spent the day reading scriptures, sleeping, tanning, crabbing, swimming, (hey it’s vacation. We don’t have to do anything@) and then headed to the same place where the fruit ice creams were J we walked around, shopped a bit, and then decided to go home again.

On Saturday we walked to the bus station so we could get our tickets for our bus ride the next day. We stuck to street food for breakfast and hit the Muslim place for lunch! J We were having a pleasant morning on the beach. There were darling children all around, the water was nice, beach was mostly empty... I mean. We were happy. I'd even venture to say... we were all three ecstatic.

 A man came and set his things nearby, and spoiler alert. But he was singing and I kind of felt like, hey. We love him. He swam out to this rock in the ocean and kept waving to us. So we're in the waves having a real nice chat about the men when all the sudden I casually say, "Oh, hey, a jelly fish." And they were like, "Oh, cool." Then there was that split second where you actually think about what was just said. AND WE FLIPPED OUT AND RAN LIKE THE WATER WAS FULL OF CRABE-ISTS. And not the safe kind of crabe-ists DANGER. But we actually were really curious, and Marissa and Shelby being Spongebob fans, we thought. Now is the ideal time to try jelly-fishing. Well, the singing man - who we never named, came and thought he'd be a dear and help us out. Which was fine. Things were all kind of glorious.

 

Until he insisted on pictures with each of us. Holding our hands in a familiar fashion. Making a face to the camera like, "Yeah. I'm working this situation to my advantage." We couldn't get him to stop watching us. So we started taking pictures that looked like victorious jelly-fish hunter poses...haha. We started attracting children and attempting to get rid of the slippery ocean friend. And also the jelly-fish.

At this point, we just decided to flee to the stuff and lay out. We went to put the camera away and realized... somewhere in the jelly-fish excitement, the case was gone (it also has our room key that costs 50yuan-almost $10- to replace, which we’ve already done once this trip because Marissa accidentally snapped it in half). But where would it even GO?! We said a prayer and looked everywhere. Combed that beach, if you will. We dug all through the sand, seriously looked for like a mile up and down in the shallows, all through my bag - nothing. Finally, we dig up the fifty yuan and do the walk of shame back to Joe's to buy yet another new key. We're almost there, and Marissa turns in exasperation and is like, "What am I not learning?" And we all laugh - but more like the I-wanna-die kind of laughing, because we're all wondering the same thing about ourselves. We walk into Joe's, and his cute wife is being weeeird. Vibes are not ideal (she’s not so fluent in English). She keeps talking about taking pictures and we're like, the last thing we want is to take pictures right now. But then, she pulls out the camera case. In the drawer. Someone found it on the beach and brought it back. Joe's wife was still way worried, until we explained that WE had the camera. But everything else was intact. Her money, the room key, and this random scrap of paper from our first hostel where we wrote down the address to Joe's in Chinese. It couldn't have been more perfect. Joe stopped us on the stairs and he just kept emphasizing how crazy it was that a man took the case and brought it here, because apparently this area is crrrrawling with thieves. The Lord is always looking out for us, even when we can only see a tiny piece of the puzzle.

 So we went back to our room and said a kind of emotional (we’re girls, and yes, it was approaching that time of month) prayer of thanks.  It was a really good testimony builder for all of us. And we KNOW, we know. That God has everything in hand, and that if we can let go of the control and trust in Him, even when things go really, really wrong. They are going right. And we loved it. J

At about midnight we decided to go to bed, so Shelby was skyping one of the guys that had left, Marissa was lounging on a bed, and I was drifting in and out of sleep when Shelby says, “Blythe, did you hear that?” I rolled over and sleepily responded now, when Shelby repeated, “In a move to expand the opportunities for young members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to serve full-time missions, Church President Thomas S. Monson announced today that, effective immediately, men may now begin serving at age 18 and women at age 19.”

Marissa burst in to audible, happy tears, and I stared in shock for a full minute. Then my world flipped upside down, yahda yahda, read my post, Two Callings: One Decision for the reaction J

Sunday we hopped on a 4 hour bus (MUCH better than our first one. We actually got seats this time J ) went to the airport, hopped on a plane, hopped in a taxi, and headed for home J And so goes our wonderful Chawaii adventure J