Hannibal, Missouri Day Trip

 

A bunch of crazy things happened- including the announced closing of my college, Lincoln College. We got the day off on Friday a few weeks ago and I had Parker come early to do this fun day trip. We have been doing school and wedding stuff for so long that we desperately needed an adventure. 

Hannibal is less than 2 hours from my house and has a lot of very fun things to see and do. It is known for its most famous resident ever- Mark Twain (Sam Clemens). The first thing we went and saw was the Mark Twain cave. Our tour guide actually looked like Mark Twain and told puns the whole time. The tour was about an hour in the constant 52 degree cave which was more comfortable than outside at the time. My favorite part of the tour was 2 things: when he turned the lights out and we were in complete darkness and seeing big brown bats. 

After the cave tour we went to the Rustic Oak to eat and they had such a great selection of food and it was really good. I had the Montana wrap and Parker had a crawdad tail po boy. We were watching the time so close because we had to be at the river boat at 1 but we got done eating around 12:57. We scrambled to get to the boat but we got there with plenty of time because they don't leave the dock til 1:30. 

We had a fun little river tour and learned some about the history of the river in that area. After that we went to some of the little shops. We got huckleberry ice cream at Becky's, huckleberry jam at the museum, visited some antique stores and the Dutch store. We had a good drive home- tired from all of the activities from the day. 

I was thinking recently about the things that make us tired in life, even in the struggles that happen and why might bad things happen to good people. For one thing, Jesus told Christians it would be hard. If the people in the world had persecuted Jesus- a perfect man, a perfect God- then you can bet life will be hard for us. There is also a verse on the Bible app the day I was talking about this in 2 Corinthians 12:9 that says, "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest on me." This makes sense because if the world looks at us and sees some perfect person preforming God's work they may worship the person. But, when they see a person that is like them that has struggles and hardships, all the good they see and the works they do directly points to something better because there is no way this person could have power like that. We of course don't like struggles but I was reminded that we trust God in one area of our life, just trust him with everything. His power is way beyond anything we could do to try to help ourselves. 

💜Nichole