"Not all of my books are wet because God is good"

I don't have much time here because the internet is a pound per 20 minutes and I feel ridiculous having to pay to use my own computer (plus, I've got a lot of journaling to do), but I did want to quickly update. The Hebberman's dropped me off at a train station in Stirling and I caught a train to Glasgow where I had to switch to get to Oban (which means "little bay" in Gaelic), where I'll be staying at a hostel overnight with the women from SPU. At the Glasgow Queen Street Station, I met up with my fellow pilgrims from SPU! Their plane was delayed in Philly because of a huge storm and ALL of their packs where soaked clean through (so the room in our hostel has become one big drying rack). Oban is an incredibly beautiful Scottish-with-a-twist-of-Irish town on the west coast of Scotland; the first picture of Oban from a tower on a hill looking southwest, and the other is Oban from that same tower looking east.
The train ride from Stirling to Glasgow was 45 minutes, and the train ride from Glasgow to Oban was about 3 hours. Tomorrow, it will take about a day (two ferries, a bus ride and a mile walk) to get to Iona. It feels something like coming home to be with these people who I retreated with on Whidbey Island in April...probably because this is the journey that started this whole summer trip, and it is the trip that brings my summer adventures to a close. It is thrilling, nostalgic, exciting, painful, different and beautiful to be with these people. In some ways I feel very different around them - not only the "I'm always the different one feeling", but also the "I'm different than the last time I saw them because I am so much more....myself.
It breaks my heart with the goodness of God to think that I am actually going to Iona - the place, the trip, the pilgrimage that was a year ago, not yet heard of, 6 months ago, an application and, upon acceptance, a deeply-longed for dream. Words about God are so much more real to me now - words like "God loves you," and "God hears you" and "God will take you home." Words that we often throw around in Christian settings but...wow. As one of my good friends said, "Until you KNOW God is good, everything else is bullshit." I would add, "Until you know God is REAL, everything else is a lie." Thank you Lord Jesus for this wonderful water to my soul.
Ok, I'm not sure when the next time I'll have internet is...it may not be till I'm back in Seattle.