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Saturday, July 22, 2017

Travel Report: The Alps of Italy, France and Switzerland

Family and Friends

[The link to the pictures is at the end.  I’ve placed the "nature" pictures up front and the “people” pictures at the end.  No doubt many of you will be most interested in the nature pictures.]

I am way behind with my travel reports – 15 countries so far this year and more to come.  While that is not a complaint, it is hard to keep up with the recording of all that has happened.  One point clearly stands out:  We have a wonderful God of creation – of the natural world but also in the world of people.  The pictures that I am sharing will have to tell most of the story.  The “2017 Field Conference on Faith and Science” was designed especially for General Conference of Seventh-day Adventist church administrators.  There were 48 of us which included some division presidents, secretaries, treasurers and some from the home headquarters of the General Conference (presidential and secretariat).  Some were able to bring their wives.  Carrie, my wife is caring for her sister who has a serious form of Leukemia and, at this point has been gone for 6 weeks with many more to come.  I am so thankful to have a wife who cares that deeply and is willing to help others.  In the meantime, I’m learning an awful lot about what make domestic life possible.  

We were led in this exploration of the Alps of Italy, Switzerland and France by six scientists of the Geoscience Research Institute.  This was the second such field trip for me but the first outside the United States.  The beauty was just amazing.  The insights into the cataclysmic activity of long ago was humbling.  The power to move continents, mountains, glaciers, etc. is beyond comprehension.  The pictures only tell part of the story.  I for one, believe the Bible’s depiction yet each time I read the creation and flood account I learn new things and often I find myself challenging some things I thought I knew.  I have concluded that it is not wise to try to put God into a box or to hold him to the way we perceive things happening now. (Read carefully 2 Peter 3).

The field trip was educational to say the least!  Trying to absorb new terms, new concepts while still finding questions yearning for answers was exhausting but also exhilarating at times.  The comradery that developed among us leaders from around the world was so encouraging.  We each left with a strong belief in our Creator God who has never and will never abandon us. Spiritually I can resonate with a comment Jim Cymballa wrote in Fresh Faith, 

“Let us face the fact that God will never let us remain the way we are today.  That is the reason for this refining process in our lives.  We are all ‘under construction.’ . . . We only move ahead by losing some things.  God still adds by subtraction.  Communion with him is our greatest need—but there are a lot of hindrances to that, aren’t there?” (p.187)

My prayer for myself and for you is that whatever hindrance we face will be measured with the size of mountains and power that are represented in the Alps that I visited.  Surely, there is no obstacle that you and I face that is any bigger or more difficult to change than the mountains that were raised, moved and removed in that mountain range.  I keep thinking about what Cymbala said, “God still adds by subtraction” and that “we are all under construction.”  In the hands of the Creator we are safe.

You may view many (but not all) of the pictures I took while on this trip.  Be sure to click on the two little squares at the top to get the full screen effect.  You may advance at your own speed by hovering your mouse over the sides of the picture and clicking on the arrow.