Sunday at Sea

It's a beautiful, clear, cool day today. Breakfast at the buffet was the same as always for me: A little scrambled egg, bacon or piece of link sausage, OJ, grapefruit, and today I tried a piece of breakfast bread.

After breakfast we attended a culinary demonstration with a humorous twist, and heard music selections from the head waiters. We sat on the front row and cheered for Hector our head waiter. Next was the tour of the galley where all the meals are prepared. There is an elevator inside the galley to maneuver to the other floors dining rooms. I am pleased to see teaching going on. There were photos of the different menus so those preparing each item on the menu could build the presentation as intended by the chef. Serving and preparations are done by people from many countries. There is a sign that tells staff that 'English only' is to be spoken in passenger areas. Nice concept.

All the staff we spoke to spoke English well. They all said that they learned English on board ship. There are classes, but they are during the free time, which isn't often. They help each other. The one cute girl we had one night gave us the menu selections she could say, remember or liked. I was hoping for something other than what she let me choose. But, all was good.

We had a little Sacrament meeting in Cooks room for our church today.
Mel blessed the bread, Joe blessed the water - each couple had a glass to share - Ron gave a talk, wae sang 'High on a Mountain Top' for opening and I sang the closing song: 'I Believe in Christ', a difficult task while touched and tearing up. Diana gave the opening prayer and Connie gave the closing prayer.
Ron's message was good. He talked about Farewell talks from the prophets and read a small account from Joseph Smith, which was written 3 years after his death, but revealed to Brigham Young. Joseph Smith was permitted to share his parting words to 'always keep the spirit of the Lord'.
Joe Buresh talked about complaciency - and how living as we should is an example to those around us, for good. He used himself as an example, when he joined the church his buddies at his work would say, 'Oh, Joe doesn't drink, and things like that at dinners, very aware that Joe was living a higher law now.

While we were resting before the next eating, I checked the noise outside to see a boat from the nearby town of 'Valdez' Alaska, drop off a 'pilot' to get our ship through this channel.

We saw otters sitting and playing on little chunks of ice (little chunks of glacier are called: growlers), looked at College Fjord, and beautiful surroundings.

We changed our dinner time to 8:30pm so we could see the College Fjord. It's interesting how things turn out. As we finished our dinner time and were among the last diners, we visited our waiter Krisztian B... We thanked him, gave him our tip envelope... He asked if we were, 'Mormons' or something in his hesitant and broken English. Mel happened to have a Book of Mormon' which he brought because he couldn't find his. (We talked about that a little later, You know how many church books, especially scriptures that we have, and he couldn't find his. So, he brought one of the generic ones that we use to give away.) Hummm. We all wrote a little note in the front and the men brought it back to the dining room for Krisztian. He was still there waiting for them. I don't know if we will ever know the ending of how this turns out, but certainly he hand of the Lord was at work. A good thing for a Sunday! A good day!

Our bags are packed and as soon as we put them on the hall, they were picked up and loaded on trucks to go to our next destination which for us is - Denali.