Bouncing arounD: Jesus... Alive and well In New Zealand!

This day is a travel day. A day of travel by boat. The first boat trip is a 1 hour trip back down the river to the town I started in...Then a roughly 5 hour journey further down the Nam Ou river until it joins the Mekong, just before Luang Prabang, my destination.

There had been a group of New Zealanders at the hostel we were at, and they were all part of the same family. I happened to be sitting next to them on the hour long boat trip down the river. After just finishing an article discussing archeology in Israel I was ripe with ideas of historical inaccuracies in the bible.

I mentioned some of these to my seat mates and we kept talking. Then it came up that they were pretty hardcore Christians (my term...meaning biblical literalists)... I don't know how to handle such a situation. One wants to respect everyone for their beliefs, but it is hard when someone is believing that the earth is no more than 10 000 years old. As well as the belief that if they had not been indoctrinated (my term) at a young age they would surely have chosen to believe in a 2000 yr old reform rabbi as the son of God. It goes even deeper as since I do not choose to accept Jesus I will not be continuing on to the kingdom of heaven with the rest of them. This is no metaphor, it is real. I want to accept everyone but this seems to be based on not wanting to know truth and facts and just choosing to believe in things. Is it harmless? Or not? Choosing to disregard facts... Carbon dating for one... is deluding yourself... but as they are praying for me I should be happy with them... but the craziest thing is that they probably don't even believe in Yoda!

So the boat ride was interesting, we had a good discussion and I am as hard headed in my beliefs as they are in theirs... But the reason of if you accept Jesus you have nothing to lose and if you don't then you might be making a huge mistake doesn't seem to convince me!

The next part of the ride had some of the nicest scenery I have ever experienced. It was around 5 hours, but much more comfortable. The first boat was very squishy, everyone sitting on low benches on the floor, but this time there were individual seats, and even a place to stand up and take in the whole view!

I walked up to the front of the boat (luckily the boat had a roof on it) and there is a gap in the roof were you can stand and enjoy the view... This next pic looks to the front...