D's Day Off

This summer I made friends with a girl from Jamaica.  She, like many other people who come to work in Gardiner for the summer, is part of a college program that allows her to come to the United States to work during the summer.  D worked really hard this summer at four or five different jobs without a day off for about three months.

Being in this town for nine years, I've seen how foreign workers get burned out from working when they don't give any time to themselves.  I really encouraged D to take a day off and see Yellowstone Park before she left for Jamaica.  Many people come to Yellowstone for three or four days with their families on a vacation, and for those people, it is usually the only time during their lives that they actually see the world's first national park.  She was working here for an entire summer, and still hadn't seen it!

On September 1, D and I drove in Yellowstone Park and saw all the main places before she had to fly back to Jamaica on September 6.  It was her first real day off for the whole summer.  We saw Liberty Cap in Mammoth, Petrified Tree near Tower Junction, Dunraven Pass, Lower Falls, Mud Volcano (which recently had opened after recent fires), Yellowstone Lake, Old Faithful, and Midway Geyser Basin.  The day was very full, but we had a lot of fun together.

A really beautiful formation at Palette Springs in Mammoth

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, seen from the brink of Lower Falls

Three trumpeter swans float along the Yellowstone River.

Beautiful colors stream from Excelsior Geyser Crater.

D at Grand Prismatic Spring

I was impressed with a blog I recently read, which was written by a friend who went to Angola with me.  She wrote about singleness and relationships, and made this bold statement about committed Christian men: "I don’t just mean that he wears a 'true love waits' purity ring.. I mean that this guy FIGHTS for your purity."  I think that statement applies to both people in romantic relationships and those who are completely single like myself.

This summer, D and I hung out a bit and worked together.  In this small town of Gardiner, I could tell that there were people who questioned my integrity, but I felt obligated to protect D's purity.  She's engaged to a man back in Jamaica she loves with all her heart, and yet she still came to Montana, separated from the one she loves.  If I were in her position, I would want the same sort of respect for my relationship that I was committed to giving D.  During her adventure in the US, she knew I would fight for her purity, and for that of her fiancé's as well!

So many people get caught up in romantic relationships that they forget that friendship is important too!  So many people of the world say, "A guy and a girl can't be friends without having sex."  I say that if you love Jesus with all your heart, you better be able to answer, "Yes, they can!"  Regardless of whatever situation we are in, we ought to protect the purity of relationships that we are in, and relationships that other people are in.

I had a lot of fun with D this summer, and it was a real pleasure to get to know her.  I even got to chat a little with her fiancé!  Even better, they both got to see Jesus in me, and I sent her back with a couple Bibles—one for herself, and one for a friend of her's in Jamaica.  She's going to always have memories of a quirky Godly friend who made sure she saw Yellowstone before she went back home to the arms of the guy she dreams of.