Since the blogmeister, aka Archie, is constantly looking for us to contribute to the EPIC blog I thought I'd make a contribution. I'm going to talk about a God Spot that came out of our vacation time in Hawaii back in late June and early July (hmmm...I may contribute many of them, what an awesome time we had).

As Sophia (the late Estelle Getty) from "the Golden Girls" would say, "Picture this...", it was a lovely Saturday morning, July 5th, on the island of Oahu and we (Barbara, Brianne, my mom, and me) decided to go to Honolulu's Chinatown for some shopping and sightseeing. It had been several years since we had been to Chinatown and we had begun to hear stories over the years of how there's lots of homeless people, hardly anywhere to park, and that it was dirty and just plain not nice. In addition, our dear friend Al, who lives in Honolulu, would always warn, "it gets a little rough in Chinatown". He says that, even though both he and Kathy go there often during their lunch hour from work.

As we approached Chinatown in our rental car I began to get impatient as we looked and looked for a parking space within a reasonable distance of the main shopping area. While driving around, parts of Chinatown began to not look so inviting. In true Jeff fashion I began to suggest that we forego Chinatown and move on to the next place on our tourist list. Thank goodness Barbara and Brianne responded strongly that they really wanted to do Chinatown. So we kept looking for a parking place. On the very next trip around, BINGO! We found an open space very close to the entrance of a special marketplace that we wanted to visit.

And as it turned out, our time in Chinatown was just awesome! We did lots of walking, bought plenty of souvenirs, leis, and trinkets, and we also bought some fruits and veggetables for our dinner back at our friends that evening. We even bought a Hawaiian muumuu (dress) for my mom (she treasures that muumuu by the way). We had a blast walking through the crowded and tight alleyways and noisy streets. And yes, there were some unsavory looking characters around (so I held on tight to my wallet, and kept a wary eye on my family's purses as well, just in case), and in a few parts things were indeed a bit run down or seedy. However, overall Chinatown was a fabulous place to tour - the people were super friendly, there were plenty of other tourist like us around, and we felt safe.

It was a God Spot moment for several reasons:
God showed us the beauty of many things there - the beauty of the multi-cultural world of Chinatown; the aesthetic beauty of the buildings with their Asian themed decorations.
I was able to relax, settle in, and really enjoy the experience. I didn't allow my impatience ruin an opportunity for what turned out to be one of the highlights of our vacation.
Sometimes I've been known to focus too hard on staying on schedule, hustling us from one venue to another. But this time God was in charge, slowing us (me) down and allowing us to take in all the splendor.

Thank you Lord for your blessings, and grace. And thank you for those God Spots!