Santa Rosa Beach, FL

Well, hello everyone. It has certainly been a considerable amount of time since I have last posted in this blog and it is about time I do so. This Spring semester has flown by and much has happened. There will be a post coming soon about my trip to Greece back in March. But for right now, I'm going to update you on the most recent happenings that have surrounded my everyday life.

Most recently I have just returned from Santa Rosa Beach, which is located just east of Destin, on the Florida pan handle. I went along with three others from my RD staff at Covenant College. It was a phenomenal time to get away, relax, enjoy the weather, the company and the awesome food we cooked up. It came at a much needed time as well...the end of our semester, at Covenant, ended in a scramble.


I'm sure many of you have heard of the events that occurred in the Southeast on Wednesday, April 27. Covenant College, on Lookout Mountain, was right in the midst of the gigantic tornado producing storms that swept through and killed hundreds throughout the region. Just in Chattanooga alone, 20 tornadoes touched down, and 8 came within 5 miles of our campus. By God's grace our campus had no damage whatsoever and it became more and more shocking to hear and see of the immense destruction that surrounded us. The links below show the destruction from areas not more than 20 minutes away from our campus:

http://www.timesfreepress.com/photos/galleries/2011/apr/28/cleanup-begins-after-record-storms/

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=619006534446&oid=100681630045&comments

Though we were not damaged physically, much of our county was. We lost power and water for several days and because of that we ended up running out of water on campus, which then caused us to close down the school for the rest of the year and evacuate campus in 24 hours. It was mass chaos on campus as people were packing, saying goodbye, trying to find places to stay or buy plane tickets. I was at the airport waiting for my flight to Chicago for a job interview when I got the call saying that we were shutting down campus. For me, this meant I was saying goodbye to everyone, to my job, for the rest of the year...about a week and a half earlier than I or anyone had anticipated (because I am not returning to Covenant next year).

Those three days: tornado Wednesday (where we were constantly running to the basement, living the day in the dark quite literally and on edge), evacuation Thursday (where the word went out to all students and we commenced our evacuation plan), and shut down Friday (where we closed down campus for good) were the craziest days I've ever had as an ARD at Covenant. The craziest end to the craziest semester I've ever seen...if you remember we started the semester with a week off due to "blizzards". We finished missing finals week due to tornadoes. Crazy.

But God was in control of it all. Here are some of my reflections in retrospect:

So, because of all this and much more going in in my world and the lives of those around me, it was very good to get away from all the madness and just relax and have fun. I was able to remove myself from the context of chaos and process through and really reflect on the past few weeks.

And we really had a blast. I compiled a video of some of the highlights of our trip....however, most of you will probably find this uninteresting.

In upcoming posts I will recount my experience in Athens, Greece, back in early March and will begin posting for my summer adventures, where I will be travelling to Seattle, parts of China, and Hong Kong. Until then...



God Bless.

-b garrison