Interview With Christian Astronaut Jeff Williams

Justin Peters

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Welcome to the program, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Justin Peters. I hope that you and your family are doing well today.

00:06

I want to thank you so very much for joining me for this program, and this is a really special program.

00:11

I've been looking forward to this for quite a while, and I have the special privilege of interviewing

00:16

Colonel Jeff Williams. Jeff is an astronaut. He has had three or four tours on the

00:26

International Space Station, and he's a dear brother in Christ. He has been a member at Grace Community Church, pastored by John MacArthur.

00:35

He's moved recently, but was there for many years, and Jeff and I spoke at the

00:42

Truth Matters conference back in 2019, and he did just a wonderful presentation there, and I've always had a bit of an interest in astronomy ever since I was a little kid, so I'm a bit like a kid in a candy store for this interview, so I'm really looking forward to it.

00:59

Jeff, brother, thank you so much for coming on the program. How are you today? I'm doing great,

01:05

Justin. Thank you. It's great to be with you today. Good, good. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

01:11

So Jeff, you have, was it three or four tours that you've spent on the International Space Station?

01:17

I had four flights to the Space Station. The first one was an early assembly flight before the expeditionary cruise began on the

01:25

Space Station. That was way back in 2000. It was a space shuttle flight. It was the third flight to the

01:32

Space Station, and then after that, I had six, I'm sorry, three six -month tours. Three six -month tours, and so you've spent, you told me just before we started recording, 500 and some odd days on the

01:46

International Space Station. Yes, that's right. And that's close to a record, correct? Well, at the time, it was a record among Americans, and then a year later, my astronaut classmate

01:58

Peggy Whitson surpassed. She got extended on orbit, and she surpassed that, so now they say

02:04

I still hold the record for American men. American men. All right, all right.

02:11

Well, Jeff, I'm looking forward to getting into some of the details about your time in space and the things you've experienced, but before we do that, can you give us just a little overview of your testimony, how you came to know the

02:25

Lord, and maybe just a little bit about your family? Yeah, you bet. My wife and I were, we met first when

02:31

I was a cadet at West Point back in the late 70s. We got married in 1980. She was raised

02:37

Catholic. I was raised, I guess, a cultural Christian without attending church or whatnot, but we were, our family was, we called ourselves

02:48

Lutherans, whatever that meant at the time. Again, no church participation, and life went well, but then about seven years into our marriage, we went into, we got to a point like happens often, a crisis in our marriage and life, and through God's provision and providence, my wife,

03:12

Anna Marie, came to faith out of that, in the middle of that, and for her, it was a sudden occurrence, a sudden regeneration, and for me,

03:24

I spent the next four or five months studying the scriptures, trying to understand what had happened to her, and after primarily studying the

03:34

Gospel of John and the Letter to the Romans, which is where tracts and other things took me primarily,

03:41

I committed my life to Christ, and that was in 2000, I'm sorry, 1987, so from that point, we began to rebuild our life, our marriage, how we parented our children, so we've been living devoted to Christ since,

03:58

I guess, 19 early, 1988, that's what I would say.

04:04

Okay, 1988, so you and your wife, Anna Marie, and you have how many children?

04:10

We have two sons, adult sons, they're in their mid -30s, mid or late 30s now, they're both married, the older one actually lives with us, with his wife here in Washington State, and they have our five grandchildren, our younger son and his wife, no children yet, but they live in Singapore.

04:32

Okay, Singapore, I've been there before, yeah, that's a busy place. Yeah, yeah, beautiful and hot.

04:39

Yes, beautiful and hot. Odd thing about Singapore, you know, it's so crowded there, but I saw so many of these souped up sports cars, like high dollar, high -end sports cars, and I'm not sure there's anywhere in Singapore you could get over 50 miles an hour, but anyway.

04:57

That's right. Yeah, okay, well, Jeff, tell us a little bit, how did you become an astronaut?

05:03

What set you on that path? How did you get on that path? Well, way back in the 70s, when

05:09

I was at West Point, I was inspired by, at first, by some mentors who had just come back from Vietnam, Army helicopter pilots, and they kind of, through their influence,

05:22

I quickly set a goal to get into flight school and fly helicopters in the Army.

05:28

In 1978, I also read the book, The Right Stuff, the first Army astronaut was selected, and all of that coalesced along with the influence of some friends to say, hey,

05:39

I want to do that. So, I set it as a goal then. I applied first in 1985, and a long process, through some disappointments and setbacks, but I just kept on persevering, and in 1996,

05:56

I was finally selected by NASA after, I think, six applications and three interviews.

06:02

That's a lot of rigorous training went into that, I'm sure. Yes, yeah, it took a couple years of training of primarily the space shuttle and all the operations for my first flight.

06:16

It took four years, nearly four years of training for my first six -month tour on the space station, and half of that time was in Russia.

06:25

So, Russia has been a huge part of my experience as well, and I know we're going to get into a little bit more of that later.

06:33

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, to be a candidate for going to the

06:40

International Space Station, you had to study, you had to learn Russian, correct? Because a lot of that thing is put together by Russians and manned by Russians.

06:48

Yeah, it's actually a great lesson in geopolitics, but after the Soviet Union fell, and after years of, after President Reagan had announced the space station freedom, but Congress would never approve the building of freedom through the 80s.

07:09

When the Soviet Union fell, and we entered into a partnership,

07:15

I think it was a brilliant proposal all around by some leadership in our space program as well as getting together with leadership in the

07:23

Russian space program and coming up with a proposal to integrate what was space station freedom with what would have been the

07:32

Mir -2 space station in Russia. Many of the components were built on the ground already, and that gained the support primarily because of non -proliferation policy issues with this new

07:47

Russia. We didn't want their brain trust and their weapon systems to go to places like Iran and North Korea, so we entered into partnership with them, and it's been a good partnership.

07:59

That means that half the space station, about 40 percent of it, is Russian -made in Russian systems and uses the

08:05

Russian language and controlled by Mission Control in Moscow, which is only in Russian, and then also we're rotating crews to the space station on the

08:15

Russian Soyuz, so it required about half my time in the 2000s in Russia training.

08:22

My commute was Houston to Moscow, Houston to Moscow, four to six weeks apart.

08:28

Wow, was that hard to learn the language? People asked me what's the hardest part of preparing to go to space, and I said by far, no doubt, the

08:39

Russian language. I was always a math and science and engineering guy, and I avoided those kinds of courses, but of course the requirements forced me into it, but I love it now.

08:49

I've been taking Russian formally for over 20 years now, and I continue to take weekly lessons just to continue refining it.

09:00

Yeah, I'm still working for NASA, although remotely right now. Okay, and in God's providence, correct me if I'm wrong, but the church that you are a member of now has many

09:10

Russian believers in it. Is that correct? This is a Russian immigrant church.

09:16

There were three waves of immigration after the Soviet Union fell, primarily in the 90s, but even since then, there's been a continuous trickle of immigrants that arrived here.

09:29

Several years ago, they recognized that now they're going into the third generation of the original immigrants and growing up in the

09:38

American culture with English being more and more the primary language. They're transitioning also into English, so there are lots of non -Russian speakers in the congregation, but it's an amazing story here.

09:52

They were primarily Russian Baptists, highly persecuted, imprisoned for their faith in the 60s, and I've heard of accounts even to the early 80s, merely for preaching the gospel.

10:10

So they came out of this underground Russian Baptist community, and when they had the opportunity to leave, many of them did, and this is one of the largest concentrations here in the

10:21

Vancouver, Washington, Portland, Oregon area. The only other larger concentration of Russian immigration that I know of among evangelicals is in the

10:31

Sacramento Valley area in California. Oh, okay, okay. Well, that's interesting.

10:37

Everything in God's providence. Studied Russian to be an astronaut, and now God's using that knowledge in his church.

10:46

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Well, Jeff, let's talk a little bit about your time in space.

10:52

So 2 ,800 orbits around the Earth. You've taken more photos of Earth from the space station than any other person in history.

11:05

Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct, and what you're referencing is after the 2006 flight, the first long flight, and that was all true then, and since then,

11:17

I've had another year in space and can continue to take photos at a rate beyond anybody else.

11:24

And my primary motivation for taking the photos was to be able to bring the experience back and share it vicariously with others.

11:33

So Jeff, let's talk a little bit about your time on the space station. So you were up there for six months at a time, up to six months at a time.

11:43

Were you able to take a shower in that time? Talk to us just about some of the logistics of daily life.

11:53

Yeah, obviously it's a very unique environment, and no, we don't have a shower up there. A shower would be very impractical in weightlessness.

12:00

You would waste the vast majority of the water, and then cleaning up the water would be really quite a challenge.

12:08

So we essentially take sponge baths, and it's a very clean environment and very easy to stay clean, but it is a challenge working in a weightless environment where everything, you know, from your pencil to your toothbrush to all the heavy equipment that you're working with, large equipment that you're working with, is weightless.

12:30

So you have to manage it in a unique way. Yeah, I bet. As far as washing clothes, like do you have different outfits?

12:40

Were you able to do anything with your clothes as far as washing them? How does that work? No, we don't wash the clothes either.

12:46

We just consume the clothes, and when they get dirty enough, we throw them away in the trash and pick up new ones.

12:55

So we got a stock that lasts us for the time we're going to be up there. Okay. Yeah, so it's actually, you don't have to do laundry up there.

13:03

No laundry. Just throw it away. Okay. Now, one thing you might not think about is one of the biggest challenges up there is managing the trash, because you can't throw it overboard.

13:13

There's no way to get it outside. So we manage all the trash, takes up a lot of space, and then periodically when we have a supply ship that's emptied and getting ready to leave, we'll load it up with the trash and it burns up in the atmosphere.

13:28

But you can imagine never being able to take out your kitchen trash. You know, if it's been there over a long weekend when you've been away, you come back and you smell it right away.

13:38

So you got to manage the smell. So we seal the stinky trash as we build it. Okay. And from time to time, you would have what the space shuttle would come and supply you with more supplies and that kind of food and whatnot.

13:56

Yeah, up through into 2011, we had the space shuttle, of course, flying regularly, both assembling the space station as well as resupplying it.

14:06

But we also over the years have had a variety of supply ships, unmanned supply ships.

14:12

The Russian so -called Progress supply ship has been a regular way to get supplies up there.

14:18

In recent years, we've had SpaceX flying cargo ships for us.

14:24

The Japanese had a cargo ship that has flown several times. The European Space Agency also had a cargo ship that flew for a few years.

14:32

So there's lots of different redundant ways to get cargo up there. Yeah. Okay. Well, talk to us a little bit about the interaction with your crewmates.

14:44

I mean, if you did you ever get on each other's nerves? And if you did, it's not like you could just go for a drive and, you know, get away from things.

14:52

What was the interaction like with your crewmates? Overall, the interaction was very positive.

14:58

I think if you add up all the my crewmates plus the visiting crews while I've been on the space station,

15:04

I think I've been in space with about 56 different individuals from maybe a dozen different countries or so.

15:12

And my interaction has been very positive all along. Now, obviously, we spent a lot of time thinking about those kinds of issues.

15:21

We want to be a team player. Most people are selected with that in mind that they have those kinds of qualities to be part of a team and to have the right levels of self -care to take care of yourself and then take care of each other.

15:36

We literally have our lives in each other's hands. And we train, as I said earlier, typically for years together so that we get to know each other.

15:48

My habit and during training was always to have the crew over to our house for dinner periodically.

15:55

And they would reciprocate in a like manner. So we invest a lot of time to get to know each other.

16:05

And then, you know, practical day to day, we interact in a normal way.

16:11

And then if somebody is having a bad day, you can kind of sense that and you know when to kind of give them some space and leave them alone and let them get some rest or whatever the case.

16:22

We also are up there so long you have personal things that occur on the ground with your family. And, you know, it might be a death of a loved one or a special event like a graduation or a marriage or whatever, a birth.

16:36

So they can be very positive events or negative events. And we help support each other through all those things too.

16:43

Yeah, yeah, indeed. So were you able to keep in contact with your wife? Were you able to talk to her from the space station?

16:51

Yeah, we knew right in the beginning of the program, it would be very important to maintain morale on the space station.

17:00

And with the isolation such as it is, it was important to build the systems for regular contact.

17:07

So we had easy access to each other. I would say I had easy access to anybody on the earth, it was hard to get ahold of me.

17:16

But my wife figured out how to if she needed to talk to me, she figured out how to do that. But we would

17:21

I would call her every day, typically twice a day, when I knew she was awake, because we work on Greenwich Mean Time up there.

17:29

So we were awake about five or six hours before she was. So when she got up,

17:34

I would give her a call when I when I could in between work tasks.

17:41

And then I would be sure to call her at least by the time I went to bed. So we would talk twice a day.

17:47

And then every Sunday afternoon, we would have a two way video conference as well.

17:52

So then we'd be able to see each other. And she would often involve other family members or friends or whatnot in those video calls.

18:05

Yeah. Okay. All right. Very neat. So it didn't matter on which side of the world you were in your orbit,

18:13

I guess with satellites, you could talk to her at any point. Yeah, we orbit the earth every 90 minutes.

18:19

In the early days, we about half that time, we would have coverage through the communication system to be able to make calls.

18:26

But in the later years, we virtually have 98 99 % of the time covered through relay satellites that orbit in different places over the year.

18:37

So we the space station communication system automatically just transitions from one satellite to another one.

18:43

And we have nowadays we have really good communication. We even have internet access up there, which is

18:50

I don't I'm not sure that's a good idea. But we we got that a few years ago, I get asked sometimes what was the first thing

18:56

I did on the internet, because we gained access while I was on board in 2010.

19:03

And my answer was, well, of course, I got on the internet and ordered my wife flowers. Oh, that's a good husband.

19:13

That's cool. That's cool. Well, um, so Jeff, when you're up on the space station, you're 200 and some odd miles off the ground, correct?

19:24

Yeah, it's about the average is 250 miles, 250 miles. Okay, so did the moon look granted the moon's 250 ,000 miles away.

19:34

So it's kind of negligible as far as how close you are to it. But did it look any different? Up there?

19:40

Did it was it that look bigger, crisper? The moon itself, you could say you could argue that it looked a little bit crisper because you wouldn't weren't looking through the atmosphere, but a clear night, especially places like where you live, you know, the moon's can be pretty crisp when you get away from city lights.

19:58

But it was it was definitely crisp. The obvious uniqueness of viewing the moon and other things is the setting in which you find the moon to find it to have the earth, the sphere of the earth below you to have the moon either appear or disappear over the horizon as you orbit around the earth.

20:19

And you see the the sphere of the moon kind of be distorted as it goes to the the upper parts of the atmosphere because of refraction of light rays.

20:30

All of that is is very, very unique. And of course, the moon is has attracted the attention of humanity since the beginning of time.

20:39

And it certainly attracts your attention up there. And it's it's no it's not lost on people that we've been to the moon, but we we we want to go back to the moon, too.

20:51

And I think that's just the curiosity put in us by by God at creation. Right.

20:56

Right. Yeah. We're supposed to go back next year. Is that correct? 2023 or 24?

21:03

We're trying to launch. We're working at this spring launch in the test flight of a new rocket and a new spacecraft unmanned.

21:13

And then about a year later or so, having a test flight with a crew on board and they won't land on the surface of the moon, but it'll go and orbit around the moon.

21:24

Both those test flights will orbit around the moon. So it's a it's a big program called the

21:30

Artemis Program. Yeah. To establish a semi -permanent presence in the lunar system that includes a space station that orbits the moon, as well as operations to go periodically to the surface.

21:45

OK, OK. But not we're not planning on landing landing a man on the moon for the next few years.

21:53

Yeah. The original target given to us by the Trump administration was 2024. I think it'll be no earlier than 2025.

22:03

No, we're still working toward that. Yeah. OK. All right. What were the what were the stars like,

22:10

Jeff? I know on a clear night here when you can look up and see the Milky Way, was it was it similar to that or was it exponentially better?

22:21

Well, I would have to say it's it's much better. And you do have very very vivid views of the stars in your area and areas like where you live.

22:34

But up there again, you're off the planet. Of course, just like here, you have to turn all the lights off inside to be able to see them.

22:43

But the Milky Way looks like a painted background behind the star field and you're orbiting the

22:50

Earth. And it's at an inclination to the equator of a little over 51 degrees.

22:56

So that means you see in an orbit or at least the night part of the orbit in the night shifts through phasing.

23:06

So you're looking in all directions over a period of time of weeks at nighttime.

23:12

So you see both the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere over that time. So I mean, we don't get to see the southern hemisphere stars unless you fly to South America or somewhere and then spend time looking.

23:24

You only see the northern hemisphere stars. So you can see all of that. They're very vivid.

23:30

They don't twinkle. Okay. Yeah. No, it's just an incredible, incredible sight.

23:40

Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. Talk to us a little bit about your spacewalks.

23:46

You did two spacewalks, if I remember correctly, from your book. And you didn't just wake up one morning and decide,

23:55

I want to go for a stroll out into space. I mean, this took a lot of planning, right?

24:01

Tell us a little bit about what the spacewalks were like and what they entailed. Yeah. The book chronicles in a very short way two spacewalks that we did in the 2006 flight.

24:13

In my career, I've done five total spacewalks. The first one was actually in 2000. And the most recent two were in 2016.

24:24

Spacewalks were very necessary for the building of the space station and currently continue to be necessary for the maintenance of the space station.

24:34

And we do periodic upgrades outside. We do repairs outside. We deploy experiments outside.

24:41

So there's a lot of outside activities. A spacewalk is the highlight,

24:46

I think, of the entire experience. It's the most demanding thing we do, both physically and mentally.

24:55

It's a long day. We start about six in the morning, getting ready to get suited up and get everything configured and checked out, and then get into the airlock and go through the protocol to depressurize and get the door open.

25:08

You're not out the door until afternoon. So you've already been working at it for a little over six hours.

25:14

And then you're outside for typically six and a half, seven hours. So it's a long day.

25:19

It's a very intense experience. I call it the ultimate skydive.

25:27

The whole time out there, it's very choreographed and planned. So there's every step of the way has been choreographed and rehearsed.

25:38

And for us, it's a mental rehearsal to prepare. But the Mission Control Center also has somebody talking to us continually, and we report to them our accomplishment of tasks, and they keep us on the plan.

25:52

So it's definitely a highlighted experience. Wow. I can only imagine what it must have felt like the very first spacewalk you did, and that hatch opened, and you...

26:04

Yes. Yes. It's one thing to be inside the space station, look out a window, and you still can't see the entire globe from at least the windows early on.

26:16

We added what we call a cupola in 2010,

26:22

I guess we added it. And from the cupola, you can see the essential, the globe of the

26:28

Earth. But to go outside and then to see this space station with the

26:34

Earth in the background, see the entire globe of the Earth, and you sense the motion going 17 ,500 miles an hour.

26:42

So you're skimming like we would cross North America in about 10 minutes. Wow. And, you know, as we, as children in school, we studied the globe, and we saw the shape of continents and other features on the

26:57

Earth's surface. Well, from up there, you can see those shapes and say, wow, it looks just like the globe in the study.

27:05

So it's an absolutely amazing experience. And then you go day, night, day, night, 90 minutes around the

27:12

Earth, typically, almost half of that is nighttime. And talking about going out the door, it's an amazing view to go out, especially the first time and see the globe.

27:25

But there was a couple of my spacewalks where I went out when we were nighttime. And it's like going out into a black hole.

27:31

And all you see is the lighting of the structure of the space station around you. And then it's just the black as black can be beyond that.

27:41

So that's a little bit eerie, if you if you will, as well. Oh, I bet.

27:47

I can I can only imagine. My goodness. All right. So Jeff, this is the question that I feel embarrassed to even ask you, but I'm going to because I see comments and people email me.

27:59

Believe it or not, I know you're aware of it. There is there is a movement. Thankfully, I think it's kind of reached its zenith and it's on the decline, mercifully.

28:10

But there are some folks out there that believe that the Earth is flat. She's around.

28:16

She's a firm. She's a fully packed. She's around the back of my head. She's flat like your head.

28:24

And embarrassingly, they many of them claim Scripture as their support for that, their foundation for their belief that the

28:33

Earth is flat. Is the Earth flat and is there any biblical what would you say to those who say that they use the

28:42

Bible as their support for it? I actually heard that for the first time in my last flight in 2016.

28:50

And I first became aware of some comments in the social media that I was posting about that.

28:57

And of course, I read it. I thought it was a joke. There's lots of lots of humor and comments.

29:02

Right. And it wasn't until I returned to to Earth and looked into it a little bit more that I realized that there are those out there that believe the

29:13

Earth is flat. And speaking of embarrassments, ironically, many of them are are believers.

29:21

Yeah. And they use, as you referenced, scriptures which are clearly clearly figurative language.

29:31

So I when I came back from the last flight, I in public speaking engagements and Q &A,

29:37

I would invariably get those kinds of questions. And at first, you know,

29:44

I tried to inject a bit of humor into it. Like, certainly this isn't real.

29:51

Realized it was realized for a short time, I tried to engage logically.

29:56

But I finally got to the point where my answer is simply boiled down to two words, utter foolishness.

30:04

And as you alluded to, I think that over the last year or two,

30:10

I see that to start to start to be going away anyway, at least maybe people are not willing to bring it up anymore.

30:20

But but yeah, it's it. I mean, that's all that's what I've finally come to is it's utter foolishness.

30:26

For some of the folks that have gotten caught up in this, which I think probably was energized by somebody in their basement on the

30:33

Internet. That, you know, you just have to pray for them.

30:38

And I think over time, they'll, they'll hopefully come out of it. It's nothing new.

30:44

I mean, you can go back hundreds of years in history and see the same kind of thing. And it was, it was actually the as far as I've read in history, that it was actually the church that that drew people out of that and said,

30:56

No, scripture is very clear. And, and the our practical observation is very clear that sustains everything, as we understand it, to include the spirit, the spirit of the earth.

31:10

Yeah, indeed. You referenced the book of Job several times in your book, the work of his hands,

31:18

Jeff, and Job 26, verse seven, God stretches out the north over the void, and hangs the earth on nothing.

31:29

You know, for those of us who have never left terra firma, we, you know, we understand that intellectually, but you've seen that you you you talk in your book about how, indeed, the

31:43

God has hung the earth on nothing. Right? That's absolutely right.

31:49

I mean, I, with a little bit of humor, tell people, when I'm given a presentation,

31:55

I referenced that verse, I said, you know, I forget the number, you said 2600 times around the earth or something that was in that one flight.

32:02

So multiply that by three, that many times around the earth, I can assure you, there are no strings attached.

32:09

It's, and what marvels me about that verse, and many verses in the book of Job is the, that it reveals, one, it reveals a perspective that we would not normally have on the planet surface.

32:28

It's, it relays a perspective from off the planet. And I had the privilege to spend time off the planet.

32:35

And I saw that perspective in the scripture. That certainly gives testimony to the author of scripture, being the creator.

32:45

Yeah. And that particular chapter, of course, is emphasizing the majesty of the creator, the majesty of God.

32:53

And the other interesting thing there is the first part of it is, of course, you referenced the hangs the earth on nothing but stretches out the north over the void.

33:05

I just recently read a comment on that. The I mean, what, what is in those days, and we think this is the oldest book of the

33:16

Bible, right? What the concept of north, and then stretching out above north, and there's something about north, even back then that was prominent.

33:30

And of course, it is the transcendence of God, I think is certainly implied there. But think about it, the the earth not only hangs on nothing in solid space, but it rotates, right, every 90 minutes and rotates on an axis.

33:44

And so we visualize the axis going out the north side going infinitely is how we conceptualize axes going to the

33:54

North Star, you know, that's what we call the North Star. So it's it alludes to what we practically understand in terms of the motion of the earth in the nothingness of space.

34:07

Yeah, indeed. And then just a few verses later, and this this goes to the discussion of the shape of the earth as well.

34:15

Job 2610, God has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness, the boundary between light and darkness, that is, that is known as the

34:29

Terminator, not Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator, but the, the, the boundary between light and darkness, day and night.

34:38

And Job 2610 actually supports gives, in my view, irrefutable proof that the

34:45

Bible teaches that the earth is a sphere, correct? Yeah, and again, it's, it's affirmed by just practical observation.

34:56

And like the earlier verse, it is one that gives a description that one would have from off the planet.

35:06

Yes, we call it the Terminator, and we cross the Terminator twice in orbit, obviously going from day to night, or night to day.

35:14

And it's very distinct on the ground. And yeah, I guess it just gives testimony to the to the author of scripture, again, inspired by the

35:24

Creator and perspective from off the planet. So just it's in those are, that's a powerful chapter, especially when you put it in the context of experience as an astronaut.

35:36

Yeah, indeed. In fact, the Terminator, as Joe describes it here, a circle on the face of the waters of the boundary between light and darkness, that's that would not even be possible if we were living on a giant manhole cover.

35:52

Right, right. If you take a sphere and you draw a line on the surface of the sphere, you you get a circle.

35:59

That's exactly right. Yeah, right. Right. Well, Jeff, let me give me bear with me here while I pick up I want to show everybody your book.

36:08

Many folks have seen it in my bookshelf behind me in various videos. But this is this is your book,

36:16

The Work of His Hands. And and this is it's not just I mean, there's many pictures in here, some of the some of the pictures you have taken of the earth, but it's a it's a fascinating story as well.

36:29

It's you give a basically kind of a synopsis or chronology of of your time in space, both before and preparation and all the way to what you experienced on space and even coming down after you got back to earth and what that was like.

36:45

So tell us a little bit more about your book and where people can get a copy of it.

36:51

Sure. Yeah, the book was not my idea. Actually, it was there were people that were watching my photography as I sent it down to the earth during that flight that that were inspired.

37:03

So apparently I, you know, took some pretty good photography or unique photography.

37:09

Amazing. And and so people were encouraged me, hey, got to do a book, got to do a book.

37:15

And it's a longer story than we have time for today. But I said, OK. And then

37:22

God's Providence, the door was open for me to do it, to include a publisher coming out of a crowd one day and saying, hey,

37:28

Jeff, we we want to do a book. So none of it was my activity seeking to do a book.

37:36

It was all external. And I agreed to do a book.

37:42

I said I don't want it to be just a boring technical book with pictures and a bunch of captions. I want to tell the story.

37:49

Yeah. And I want to not tell the story about Jeff Williams.

37:54

I didn't want it to be about me and my experience and all of that. I wanted it as a goal to vicariously take the reader through the experience as if the reader is going through the experience.

38:06

And the experience, of course, is it's framed in the mission of the 2006 flight from launch to landing and some of the major events that occurred during those six months on board.

38:18

But I also tried to be reflective in the providence of God and just being there and doing that and the awe and wonder of all that, but also reflective on the

38:30

God who we know, the triune God who we know as creator and who provides us everything that we need and who has uniquely provisioned the earth.

38:41

And of course, the climaxed history with the redemptive work of Christ.

38:47

So that was my overall arching motivation in the book.

38:54

And it continues to, I think, bless people or the Lord continues to use it to bless people.

39:03

I think it's in its eighth printing right now. And folks can get it either directly from the publisher or from Amazon or from any of the book distributors.

39:13

It's easily found and so it's easily available. Well, it's a fantastic book.

39:21

I really enjoyed it. I'm going to read through it again. But many, many of the photos that you took are in here.

39:29

You've taken thousands of pictures, I suppose. One of them, I think maybe one of your favorites or at least one you really highlighted was the

39:39

Cleveland volcano. And thankfully, it's not in Cleveland, Ohio. But tell us a little bit about that.

39:48

That was a unique opportunity. It was kind of a special providence, kind providence of God to take that. That's right.

39:54

My wife, Anna Marie, likes to call them the leftovers of God's grace when we have relatively seemingly little things happen in life that just are timed in a special way.

40:08

In that particular case, it was 2006 in May. I had been on board for six weeks at the time.

40:14

And in those days, because we had reduced the crew size to just two of us after the

40:20

Columbia accident, after we lost that crew, and the space shuttle was grounded, Pavel Vinogradov, my

40:28

Russian crewmate and I were the only ones on board. We've been there for six weeks. And like we all have bad days every now and then,

40:34

I was just having kind of a down day. Six weeks up there, isolated, away from the family, talking to Anna Marie every day, but knowing that she was enduring it as well.

40:46

And in a six month flight, the end is still over the horizon. So we had talked through that that morning.

40:52

And I went about my business and I was doing my work. And I tried to make it a habit of taking a break from my tasks every day.

41:02

And late morning and going down to the Russian part of the space station where Pavel was typically working and have a bag of tea through a straw with him.

41:12

And so we would chit chat during that time, during a break. And we did that that day.

41:19

And I started floating back to the front end of the space station where I was going to continue my work.

41:26

And I passed over a window and saw the Aleutian Islands pass. And I recognized them as the

41:31

Aleutian Islands. I had a camera right there staged next to the window. I picked it up as was my habit and started taking pictures of one island and frame the next one, then the next one.

41:44

Something in the back of my head said, hey, that last one didn't look right. And I went back and reframed it. And what I maybe thought was originally a cloud was no, it was an erupting volcano.

41:54

So I had time just to snap two or three more pictures of the volcano before it was out of view. And of course,

42:01

I was all excited because I could see the entire plume of the volcano, which meant that it had just started its eruption.

42:10

I quickly floated up and called Houston and said, hey, we just passed over the Aleutians. I had this newly erupting volcano, got some pictures.

42:18

I'll put them in the downlink so you can come get them. And I was all excited.

42:23

And the energy that they heard in my voice kind of excited mission control. And so we got done with that call.

42:31

And then I went to work and orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes. I set the alarm on my watch so that I could be back in the window to take more pictures of that volcano.

42:41

90 minutes later, I came back for that time frame, passed over again.

42:47

And the volcano was quiet, very quiet, had fresh lava that had flowed down. It's a classic volcano shape.

42:55

You could see the fresh lava, but the plume was completely gone. Nothing left of it.

43:00

I snapped a couple pictures. I found out that in the meantime, on mission control, they had gotten a hold of the

43:07

Alaska Volcano Observatory, found it on the internet.

43:13

They called them up. The Capcom was another astronaut by the name of Steve Bowen. He called up, got a lady on the phone, one of the scientists up there, and tried to explain who he was and that they'd gotten a report from the space station about one of their volcanoes.

43:29

They were unaware of it. And he could tell by the tone in her voice that she thought it was probably a prank call.

43:36

Certainly wasn't real. They finished their phone call anyway, and he got the information to me.

43:42

So I called her up from the space station and talked to her. And when you got a call from the space station, especially in those days, it sounded different.

43:50

There was a little bit of a delay. So it's unique in that respect, but I could still tell that she was a little bit speechless, a little bit, do

44:00

I believe this? Do I buy this? Is this a prank? Or whatnot. Well, eventually they found out it was all in the up and up and that really excited them.

44:08

And we had a nice conversation after the flight, reflecting on that. So that was a lot of fun.

44:16

I had a lot of fun with the interaction with them. A lot of fun, of course, with mission control.

44:23

And it brought me out of my slump, brought me out of my bad day. And I rode that way for a while.

44:33

What I didn't know until later was that Anna Marie had been specifically praying that the

44:39

Lord would bring something into my day that would lift me out of my slump. I never believed that it would be an erupting volcano.

44:49

So it was an amazing providence of God, just in the relative little thing, right?

44:55

Just bring us something into our day to encourage us. To this day,

45:02

I'm the only person either on or off the planet that I know of that saw that eruption.

45:08

It was very short. The observatory in Alaska eventually got data. They didn't have real time data, but they would get it.

45:16

And they actually ordered some pictures after my report and got some global pictures of the eruption.

45:27

And I've got it somewhere, but the plume had come out and then it stopped.

45:32

And then the plume detached from the mountain and was a couple hundred miles maybe downwind of the volcano when they took this picture.

45:41

So that little puff was the Lord gave just for me. That is very cool.

45:49

That is very, very cool. Yeah. Kind providence of God. That's a really neat story.

45:55

So I guess you didn't know it was at the time that you took the picture. You didn't know, oh, that's the

46:00

Cleveland volcano. I had no idea. No, I learned all those details after the fact.

46:05

It just happened to be a target in the window. It looked interesting to take a picture of it. And then it took me a second or two to recognize there was something unique going on there.

46:14

Right, right. Well, Jeff, you also talk about in your book how your time and space, it didn't necessarily confirm or strengthen your belief in God as in his existence because you're already a believer.

46:29

You had no need for any proof of that. But it did deepen your belief or at least your understanding.

46:37

I'll say it that way. Deepen your understanding of God as sustainer and provider.

46:44

That's a great way to put it. That's exactly what it did. It didn't change my understanding.

46:50

It didn't change my belief because we know by grace, faith comes through the work of the spirit and the word of God, the revelation of Jesus Christ.

47:03

And I already had that as you have. But the experience deepened in understanding in a very practical way.

47:12

The scriptures reveals God and his work, his work of redemption, but also which is largely underestimated, his work of creation in the scriptures as well.

47:28

The practical experience to then dovetail to that, to the word of God, just deepen my understanding.

47:35

And it actually motivated me in a renewed way to seek out the truth of scripture as it relates specifically to God's creative work and the provisioning that he put in his creation.

47:48

Right, indeed. And oh, by the way, then if we think about it, like lots of things in life, when we actually we are inspired with things like that, if we look in the mirror, it also motivates us to dig a little bit deeper to gain more understanding, the depth of richness of the truth of burying the image of God.

48:13

Because only humans care about such things. Only humans contemplate.

48:19

Only humans are motivated to seek out the truth, to seek out what exists.

48:27

And that brings a deeper understanding as well. Yeah, indeed.

48:33

As much as we might, as much as attached as we might get to our pets and as much as we love, you know, our dogs and our cats, and they're not fascinated.

48:43

They have no comprehension. There's nothing in them that makes them appreciate what we appreciate. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

48:52

One final question for you, Jeff. And this is something I've thought about too. What was, with your crewmates, the interaction that you had with your crewmates,

49:01

I'm sure they became aware that you are a believer. Did you have any fellow believers as your crewmates?

49:11

Did you have an opportunity to share the gospel with them? What was that like? Just like our experience on earth,

49:18

I had a variety of opportunities, a variety of depth of conversation with different individuals.

49:24

Some individuals, absolutely no conversation on the topic. Yeah. But I think everybody was aware of my faith.

49:32

And some I was able to have a deep interaction with. There were two or three over the years that we would reflect on the scriptures, like what we referenced earlier, as well as many others, in the context of being there and being able to be the earth.

49:58

And all of that. There were a couple of other believers that were with me over the years that we were able to share communion.

50:06

And we would have typically a Sunday morning devotion, and then share communion up there.

50:14

So that was a special provision as well. And of course, related to that,

50:20

I was tied to and connected with lots of people on the planet, both individuals, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, that I stayed in contact with one -on -one, as well as congregations.

50:34

The congregation here vicariously participated with me in the last flight.

50:40

Grace Community Church, you mentioned earlier, participated in many ways. My home church in Houston participated as well.

50:48

By the way, I got to go back. In the introduction, you mentioned Grace. I've had a long relationship with folks at Grace Community Church.

50:58

Grace to you. John, in particular, has been a friend for over 20 years.

51:05

But we've never been members of Grace Church. We've never lived it. Okay. So like you,

51:11

I've been just a short -term visitor every time we've been there. But I've been there countless times. Yeah.

51:16

And it's a special relationship. And I would say that it's the impact of that ministry, like so many others, has been by far the biggest impact on my growth and understanding of the gospel.

51:31

Yeah. Same here. Same here. I can say the same thing. And I haven't spent as much time with John as have you,

51:41

John MacArthur, as you have, but enough to where I've seen genuine...

51:46

He's a genuinely humble man and loves the Lord. I've got a lot of respect and appreciation for him.

51:53

Absolutely. Yeah. He's been a tremendous impact on my wife,

51:59

Kathy, and me. And like your wife, my wife was saved out of the

52:04

Roman Catholic Church as well. And shortly after her conversion, she started, someone turned her on to John MacArthur, and she started listening to him.

52:12

And very instrumental in her growth. So yeah. That's very good. And speaking of MacArthur, you were telling me,

52:21

I think this was before we started recording, but you took the cover of one of his commentaries in orbit.

52:28

Yeah. The commentary of the New Testament, the last one to be published was a commentary of Mark.

52:35

And a couple of my friends down there, and I, we brainstormed before the flight, what could

52:42

I take? I wanted to take something that would be unique and special to space, to the space station, and then give it back to him.

52:50

So we finally settled on just the cover. So we took all the pages out to make it lighter, because I was limited by the mass

52:57

I could take. Took that cover. And then when it got back to earth, took that and took some pictures of it on orbit and some other elements and put them in a big frame.

53:10

And I have the privilege to present that as a gift to John at Shepard's Conference. I'm pretty sure it was 2017.

53:18

But yeah, that was a special opportunity. Yeah. That's really neat. That's really neat.

53:24

And yeah, I was telling you before we started recording as well, that in 2016, there's only been one time where I've seen the

53:31

International Space Station with my eyes. And when we were living in Idaho and in the mountains and the woods, and I had an app on my phone that told me when it was coming around and when it cleared light, clear night.

53:42

And so I rode out on my little electric scooter down the driveway and looked up and right on time, there it was.

53:48

And I guess you were probably on it. I could be. If it was prior to, if it was over the summer,

53:54

I was definitely on it. Yeah. It was actually. Yeah. Yeah. So that's pretty cool.

54:00

Pretty cool. All right. Well, Jeff, this has been really fascinating, brother. Thank you so much for your time.

54:08

Thank you for your witness, your testimony. Thank you for your book. And how can people find out more about you if they want to find out more about you or if they want to contact you?

54:19

Do you have that those channels available or what? I don't have them out in public at all.

54:25

I do have social media accounts, but I've been completely passive on them since I landed and shortly after I landed in 2016.

54:33

So I maintain a pretty low profile, I guess, in that way to learn anything about me.

54:40

I mean, NASA is good about putting stuff on the Internet so people can search my name and there's all kinds of stuff out there, photography as well as stories and other things.

54:52

And I, like you, I'm a frequent speaker in churches and church conferences and that kind of thing.

54:59

So there's lots of those examples out there that just a search will bring up.

55:06

Yeah. My passion in the ministry is to well, it's largely reflected in the book to give glory to God as creator and provisioning this creation in the work of providence and particularly providence that brings us to faith in Christ.

55:26

I have done some worldview conference work that's a little bit broader than that, but it's so important.

55:35

Most recently, I'm doing some work to address the perception of the conflict between science and scripture, which there is no conflict.

55:46

So it's been an amazing privilege. And like you, you've been given a platform and an opportunity to be a witness to Christ.

55:56

And you, I know, have an elevated sense of not only purpose in that, but a sense of responsibility to steward what the

56:08

Lord has given you and you do it well. And I thank God for that. And that's been my motivation as well to steward what the

56:16

Lord has given me to include the opportunity to, to get off the spherical earth.

56:22

Yeah, indeed, indeed, brother. Well, thank you so much.

56:27

Thank you so much, Jeff. This is, this has been a joy to have you. And I know our viewers are really going to, to enjoy and be edified by it.

56:36

I appreciate, appreciate you very much. And, and praise the Lord for the work that he's, he has done and continues to do through your life.

56:44

Praise God, Justin. Great to see you. You as well. You as well. And Lord willing, I'll see you in May, correct?

56:51

That's right. We'll both be at the Truth Matters Conference at the, near the ARC anyway, in Kentucky.

56:58

Yeah. Have you been to the ARC? Never have. You're in for a treat. It's, it's pretty cool.

57:05

Looking forward to it. Yeah. That was pretty amazing. That was quite a testimony. That conference sold out in 20 some minutes.

57:11

Yeah, it did. It did. I know I was, I was shocked at how quickly it sold out, but boy, it was, it was gone in no time.

57:20

I wish I could extend an invitation to our viewers to come to it, but you can't. I don't think the fire marshal will let you in.

57:28

But, all right. Well, Jeff, thanks again, brother. And may

57:34

God bless you and your wife, your family and, and your ministry there at your church in Washington.

57:40

Thank you, Justin. All right. God bless you. All right, dear ones. Well, thank you so very much for joining us.

57:47

I trust that this was encouraging to you, edifying for you. It certainly was to me.

57:53

So until our next time together, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all.