Greetings From Rabaul PNG

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Well Welcome to the second port of out PNG time. It has been amazing time. Rabaul is so great. The area is so nice with nature and what not. There was an active volcano about 1 hour walk from the ship. There was also a nice mountain right in front of the ship. I did a bunch of early morning hikes in the past few weeks. Its great, get up early before it get to hot and go out hiking ! I hope you enjoy the pics !
God Bless
BEN

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Photos

Welcome to Rabaul
This is a pic of our arrivel to Rabaul. They did a re-actment of when the first missionarys arrived to the area. The tribe people never have seen white man before and so they we amazed with our capitan and director. Of course it was all an act. But still cool

Crowds in Rabaul
This is a pic of all the people that came to visit the ship. The port was so busy in the bookshop. I think that 50,000 people came to visit in 12 days. The most that came in one day was 10100. It was crazy.

Crowds
This is another pic of all the crowds that came to visit the ship. Its nice because you can also see the volcano in the back ground.

Early morning hike
This is a pic of one of the early morning hike that went on. We left the ship at 4:30 am and hiked all the way to the top for sun rise. I almost died going up.... well not really but the guys we went with had no regard for a path, and just wanted to go the shortest way up which of course was the steepest. They trailblazed all the way up to the top. I was proud that i actually made it.

From the top
This is the group of people that went on the early morning hike. It was so cool up at the top of the mountain.

Volcano
This is the Volcano that was near the ship. It was really active. Shooting big huge rocks and lightning in the ash clouds. Very cool. We also went on an early morning hike. We left the ship really early again. It is so nice because it is not so hot and make for a nice hikeing day

Night shot
This is a night shot of the volcano. We went to see the volcano at night and got some really cool pics. Man so cool.

Morning hike
This is the early morning hiking crew again. As we get closer to the Volcano, the sun starts to come up. Very nice.

Sitting in awe
This is just a pic of the group just sitting and watching. The area that we are in use to be a small town. The city was coverd in 4m of ash when it last exploded. So needless to say that there was little vegiation there.

Big Boom
This is a pic of one massive explosion that we saw. It was big, we saw huge rocks get thowen in the ocean. Actually you can see the splashes they made if you look close. It was good that we were further away at this point....

Sailing away
HA this is a funny picture because, we left the ship in the early morning that day becacuse the ship was suppose to go out to anchor in the afternoon. It was suppose to leave at 1pm, but we came down out of the mountains and saw the ship leaving.... we ( the ship ) were asked to leave early. So needless to say we missed out ride. But it was ok they arranged a small boat for us to get back to the ship.

Prison Ministry
This is a pic of our welcome to the prision we went to visit. The prison was very intersting. We drove into the mountains on a dirt road for about 1 hour and came the prison. The Meeting hall was out side the "walls " of the prison. We heard a bell ring and all the prisoners came out in a line and went to the hall. we did a program for them and then hadd some fellowship and they the went back in.... I also heard that these prisoners came to visit the ship one day also...

Inmate line up
This is the pic of the in mates going back into the prison... Nice and orderly and ya...