White Water Rafting - Penobscot River

While we were up in Maine, I (Tony) did get to go on one big "man-up" excursion. We went white water rafting down the Penobscot river! It was a blast. I had never been before and so I naturally assumed that what we had signed up for must be a class 3 or 4 river. (They go from 1 to 5) I was surprised the night before we left, when I decided to read about the river and find that there were class 5 rapids. Nice.

I went with Teressa's brother Jed, her father Jim, her cousins Jordyn, Tanner and Robert. There were some other Rush's because of how large the family reunion was this year, so we got to meet them on the bus ride.

This is Jed.
All business that day.
He was ready for some rapids. ha ha.

Tanner kept us laughing.

Jordyn and Jim

Jordyn was happy.
She didn't fall out of the raft all day!

We actually didn't have anyone completely fly out of our raft that day.
We rescued lots of others though from the water.

All of these rafting photos were shown afterwards from a projector on the wall.
These photos are just my failed attempt to take photos of them.
But hey, at least we can remember the day, right?

My favorite part is when we would go "surfing."
You would head into a large rapid backwards.
You would paddle as hard as you could in the calm water until you were very close to the bottom of the rapid. Then you would paddle right into the bottom of the rapid and the people in the front would all lean forward so that you could get the rapid to "take your raft." The water cascading down would eventually land on the front of your raft and take the front half of the raft underwater while the back of the raft shot straight up. It's pretty easy to flip doing this.

Another highlight of the day was tossing my father-in-law in when he wasn't looking.
Good times. ;-)

The first time we "surfed" a large rapid, that was my favorite moment. I had been waiting for that dangerous thrilling feeling all day and that is when it came. I was completely unprepared for what was going to happen. I was in the front. And when that rapid took us underwater, I thought we had flipped. I started swimming for a few seconds and next thing I know, the boat pops out of the water and somehow I'm still in it. Then you just stay in that rapid for a couple of minutes doing that again and again. Such good times. I felt so blessed to get to enjoy the water, crisp air, and beautiful scenery that afternoon. Thank you Teressa for watching the girls so that I could go!

Old School good times.

I think I'm crying in this one.

Here I think I was screaming "Hold on! Stop the raft! I have some water in my eye!!"
But no one even cared.
No one stopped the raft.
They just kept on going...

John 7:38 says "Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” As I look at these photos and remember how powerful a river of water truly is, it makes me think of this verse. Is powerful, surging, unrelenting rivers of living water flowing out of my heart and life into others and blessing them, loving them, and serving them? Jesus, please make it so. I believe in you.