Scuba Diving: A Blessing… Who Knew?
Last year when we decided we were taking Amanda over to school at BYU Hawaii, Bill signed us up for a Scuba diving course. It felt a little extravagant to me, but we all enjoyed the basic course and soon signed up for the advanced diving course.
When we went to Hawaii we took another open water advanced diving course, and though it was sort of the end of the season, and we were heading into bad weather conditions so we missed out on one of the dives we were supposed to get go on when we visited Kauaii after we dropped Amanda off. We did have a wonderful time diving and I was a bit spoiled, and really didn’t want to come back to Alabama and go cold water Quary diving…
Shortly after our return home we linked up with someone Bill knew from work that goes diving as a volunteer at the Space and Rocket Center. We started diving there on a semi regular basis, so that we would be like fish in an aquarium for various tour groups and for some of the groups of kids attending Space Camp. It’s fun, and we get to keep fresh on our diving skills.
We’ve been able to take Flat Stanley with us for a dive at the Space and Rocket Center, and for Halloween they had a day where he volunteer divers came dressed in costumes to dive. That was really fun…
Bill was able to take the scouts there one night for an intro to Scuba class, and then over Christmas Break we took the girls up there for an intro to diving class as well.
Well, today it became a blessing to the local members of the Church. The Church bought some property southeast of Huntsville, AL a few years ago to be used as a Camp site for Young women’s summer Camp and for Church Scout troops. The first few years there were lots of work days out at the Camp to get it ready , land cleared, cabins built etc. to have it ready for Young Women’s camp that first year. We went out one time and stayed as a family the next year in the cabins to help clean it up and get it ready another year. The Priesthood men and young men have taken lots of trips to work and clean the camp area.
Bill has gone Camping there with the scouts on several occasions, and last fall Liam even got to go with him on an overnight special camp out with the scouts. The girls have all gone to Young Women’s Camp up there over the years. I’m sure you are wondering how all of this relates to Scuba Diving…
Well, somehow over the course of the past year, the dock at the little lake at the camp had become dislodged and there was a need for someone to dive down underneath and figure out what the problem was and reattach it so that the dock would stay put.
Bill was asked if he could dive and do this task today. So, off he went. Well, not quite that easy, he had to get a dive buddy to go with him, and had to ask to borrow oxygen tanks from the SpRocket. The water temp wasn’t too bad today, so that was good, but the visibility was horrible. They were able to figure out what the problem was, and then figure out how to fix the problem. I’m grateful that Bill was able to obtain the skills he needed to accomplish this task to help the Church out and make the camp better for all those who will be able to use it.
This is the first time he’s gone Scuba Diving since we moved into this new house. He is happy that he has plenty of room in his closet to hang his wet suit, and keep his dive bag. However when he came home today, he was saying he needed to build some sort of a drying rack to hang our scuba gear and his wet suit on to dry out after we go Scuba diving, but in the meantime… he’ll just use the back yard swing. J(until the birds stopped by... Oh well)
