Early Morning Baptism

Last night I had the blessing of interviewing Lisa Rambalack for baptism.  She is the girlfriend of Jurmaine St Rose, a member of the branch.  

Lisa and Theresa St Rose

Jurmaine has been undergoing treatment for Hodgkins Lymphoma.  His last PET scan was clean, so he has two more treatments and then follow-up.  This has been a great blessing.  Last Sunday Juermaine said in his testimony that he is thankful to have had this cancer.  It has brought him to a point that he would not have arrived at otherwise.  It was a sweet and humble, powerful witness of God’s love for His children.  My tears would not stay inside my eyes.  Anyway, it was my blessing to visit with Lisa to give her the privilege of promising to be faithful and to keep the covenants of baptism that she would be taking today.  It was a sweet experience to pronounce that she is ready to be baptized into the Kingdom of God.

This morning we awoke at 0530, much earlier than usual.  We got up, dressed, drove to town to pick up our Elders Quorum President, Br Pollard, and his family.  They don’t have a car and they wanted to attend the baptism.  We drove back to the east to Baptism Bay.  It is really called Long Bay, but this is where our baptisms are held.  The wind was really blowing and the temperature was actually a little bit cool.  Maybe I am just getting acclimatized but it was in the middle 70’s and felt cool but wonderful.  We were the first ones there.  The Elders arrived next, but clear across the bay.  We were at the wrong end of the bay, but that was quickly corrected.

Others arrived in short order.  There was a good congregation to witness the baptism.  We sang a hymn, had a prayer, had a couple of short, good talks, witnessed the baptism, sang another hymn, had a closing prayer and left.  That is the quick summary.  Here are the details.

Lisa was baptized by Jurmaine.  She is about 5 feet tall in heels.  He is over 6 feet.  

Lisa and Jurmaine

They are a cute couple.  Lisa wore the smallest suit the elders had and it about drowned her.  No matter.  Jurmaine led her about 10 yards into the water.  It was up to his waist but much higher on her.  Elder Ivie and Elder Newman were out there as witnesses.  It is the only time the YFTM’s get to go into the ocean past the soles of their feet.  They all love to have baptisms!

When Jurmaine first put his foot into the water he looked back with a grin on his face.  Is it cold?  He nodded.  Lisa was the last to go in, and she went boldly but the coolness of the water was registering on her face.  

Brrrr!

She was excited to be doing this, though.  Jurmaine pronounced the revealed prayer to be used at baptism, and Lisa was carried under the water and brought forth again, in symbolic representation of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  This represents the death of the old person and the birth of the new, a witness that old things are done away and all has become new.  It is because of the Atonement of Jesus that we can take this symbolic step of cleansing and rebirth. It was a sweet experience for all who attended. 

Lisa, Jurmaine, younger brother Jamoll

The wind died down and the sun came out.

Rats, Cockroaches, and History

I recall a book from my history days.  I was a History Major at Ricks and BYU and graduated from BYU with a BA in History. (I minored in Chemistry.) It was a good field to study,  I learned to read critically and to write crisply.  I learned that primary sources are important and that secondary sources need to be challenged regularly and deeply if the real truth is to prevail.  I couldn’t see any way to make a living with History, however, so I went to dental school.  I think having the degree in History actually helped me get into the University of Washington Dental School.  I have never been sorry of my major.

The book was Rats, Lice, and History by Hans Zinser.  It told the story of how rats with their fleas, and lice with their own pathologic bacteria, played major roles in the history of the world.  Rats  are considered the host vectors of the Bubonic Plague that wiped out about 45-50% of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages, peaking 1348-1350.  That infective agent, bacillus Yersinia Pestis, was carried in fleas that parasitized the rats.  The fleas bit the rats and then they bit the people.  The rats did not die, but the people sure did.  The massive shift in population led to religious, economic, and social upheavals that have had enormous effect on western development.

Tortola Sunset

I was fishing with a friend in Alaska and, as we fought off life-threatening hordes of mosquitoes, we noticed balls of mono-filament fishing line everywhere.  He sagely ventured a prophecy that the earth will be inherited by rats, cockroaches, and mono-filament fishing line.  I could not come up with a valid disagreement.

We had a rat enter our apartment two nights ago. Gaye had gone to bed because we were getting up early to catch the ferry to St Thomas.  I was wrapping up the day and I saw a big gray rat come silently through a hole in the screen door and scurry over under the TV cabinet.  Now I must confess there are few things that I loathe, but mice and rats qualify.  I HATE those rodents!  They give me the heebie-jeebies.  They make my skin crawl.  I consider anything within a mile to be contaminated by the critters.  They are fearless and they multiply rapidly.  So the idea of having one in our apartment was absolutely unnerving to me.  

I ran into the bedroom, flipped on the light (which immediately awakened Gaye), said out loud, “We have a rat in the apartment!”, and picked up a broom to go and do battle with the pest.  I was planning my attack strategy in such a way as to drive it towards the hole through which it entered.  I tried to hold the broom so I would have the best chance of beating the critter to death if it attacked me.  As I was about to maneuver into position, the monster ran quietly across the floor to the hole in the screen and disappeared.  We live on the second floor.  Good Grief!

Wait, I have a theory of the invasion. There is a ledge that runs from our front walkway around to the balcony.  It is wide enough for a rat to do cartwheels.  I’ll bet he came in that way.  Now I know how to lay my defenses.  I knew my ROTC military training would come in handy some day.

I am hunting for rat traps, sticky paper, and even rat poison.  I will lay a field of mines on the balcony and on the approaches that will catch the invader.  I prefer traps because that way I know the varmint is dead.  The sad part is that now I will have to shut the doors to the patio at night.  The night breezes have been cool and refreshing.  Now we are prisoners.  Because of a rat.

Electric Bug Zapper

Large Moth

Coqui Frog

Cockroaches

Did I mention that we have mosquitoes and cockroaches and geckoes, too.  The lizards are cute little guys that probably eat bugs.  The insects have got to go.  Here's a photo of a tarantula at the elders' apt. They are harmless.  

Tarantula at Elders' Apt

Stay tuned.

Change #4796.5

There has been a change in plans.  (We are getting used to having plans suddenly changed.  I am not comfortable with it yet, but we are growing accustomed to it.)  One of the reasons we were going to St Thomas, before the Social Security malfunction that demands a personal appearance at the nearest facility--one of the reasons we were going over is to retrieve some things from the mission office.  That has changed.  

US Postal Service includes Puerto Rico and St Thomas.  It does not come to Tortola because, as I mentioned before, we are not in the US. That means it is easy to get packages to Puerto Rico, but much more difficult to get them to Tortola.  When I had my first interview with President on our first day down here I mentioned that I am a dentist, retired from active practice but still licensed in Idaho.  He became excited as he considered how I might be able to help with some mission applications of young men and women in The Islands.  The dental exam and treatment plans have been holding the applications up.  He asked me if I could do the exams.  Well, I am not licensed in Puerto Rico, but...That doesn’t matter, he said.  A license is all we need.  Technically he is right but ... never mind.  It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.  So I asked Kim to gather up the stuff I need and send it to me.  She found the gear at home, gathered some instruments kindly provided by Dr Lambert in Twin Falls, and boxed it up and shipped it to the mission office.

We can get letters from the US in Road Town because we have rented a mailbox with a service (Khoy’s) that goes to St John (an island right next to St Thomas and also in the USVI) twice per week on a mail run.  They have a US mailbox over there.  We tell people to send things to us at that address and the service picks it up and we get it in Tortola.  It is a couple weeks slower, but who cares.  

The problem is not with letters and cards, it is with bigger things.  Those bigger things end up costing several dollars more if they are shipped to Khoy’s address.  So we have a different method of getting things larger than a letter.  We ship it to the mission office in Puerto Rico and then the next person to come to Tortola from mission HQ brings the goods with him.  Works quite well most of the time.  The problem is that nobody has come to Tortola for three weeks and the package was not there then.  Further, nobody is planning on coming here for another month when we will have our branch conference.  Then we will have lots of visitors from Mission HQ.

We have a way around that, too.  When mission personnel go to St Thomas from Puerto Rico they can take stuff with them without any hassles because Puerto Rico and St Thomas are both US Territories.  We can catch the ferry over to St Thomas and retrieve the delivered goods.  

That accomplishes a couple of good purposes.  First, it gives Gaye and me a reason to get off this tiny little island for a change of scenery.  Second, it gives us a chance to get the goods.  The package with the dental instruments would be the first priority, but we also need a couple of keyboards to loan to our music students, so those could also be delivered by the mission visitors.  It just happens that the branch conference for St Thomas was scheduled for this coming weekend.  Since we would be going over there to resolve the Social Security issue anyway, we could also pick up our packages.  It is sort of like Christmas all over again.  There would be several visitors coming to St Thomas, so getting all the stuff there would be easy.  

Branch conference on St Thomas was rescheduled at the last minute to sometime next month, so we are also rescheduling our visit to a later date.  It turns out that the YFTM’s working on St Thomas are going to PR on Monday and returning on Wednesday, so we will go over on Thursday and return on Friday.  On second thought, we will wait until we are sure the goods have been delivered before we make any plans.  I don’t really like surprises.

Oh, I just learned of another surprise.  We will be having a remote control conference with Mission HQ this next Sunday.  It will be sort of like the stake conferences that are broadcast from Salt Lake to dozens of stakes in a given area.  It seems that somebody who runs the calendar over there likes to pull sudden changes.  Or maybe it has been scheduled for a long time but the message was not sent out.  So that means that I will not be teaching Sunday school next Sunday.  On second thought, I think I will have a lesson ready just in case.

Stay tuned.

ARRRRGH!

January 10, 2013

Okay, today was not one of my better days.  We really don’t have too much to do, to put it mildly.  There are things to do, but sometimes those things are just busy work.  That’s okay because busy work has to be done, too.  But today there wasn’t even much busy work to do.  We did go down to the beach where the baptism will be held Saturday to check it out.  It will be a sweet experience.  While we were there we saw about five guys out on boards the size of snowboards, but these guys were flying along over the waves behind and beneath big sails, like you see in the sky at Point of the Mountain.  There was a stiff trade wind from the east (it is always from the east, always), and those guys were really moving.  One guy would actually go up in the air 30-40 feet, and then fly down to pull off a soft landing on the waves.  Anyway we had fun watching them.  Sorry.  No photos.

Gaye and I worked on our finances today.  I have to preface this with a story.  When we lived in Alaska I would try to balance the checkbook.  It was before personal computers and I used a paper spreadsheet to categorize our purchases.  I have a pathologic need to know where the money has gone.  It doesn’t help slow down the escape, but I feel better knowing where it went.  So I was trying unsuccessfully to work through the mess and 6-year-old Kim came up to ask me what I was doing.  She could see that I was not having a good afternoon.  I told her I was playing the checkbook game.

I got through that event and about a month later, tried it again.  It was not going any better that time.  Juli, about 4 or so, wandered over and asked me what I was doing.  She was attracted by my snarls and growls and the ARRRRGH! that would regularly fill the room.  Kim looked at Juli and said, “Be quiet, Juli!  Dad is playing the checkbook game!”  I hope my kids have recovered from those frustrating exercises.

So today Gaye and I were playing the checkbook game.  I must point out that I switched from paper to computer years ago, and when the dental practice got busier, Gaye offered to help me do the finances of the family.  So I yielded.  For the next 20+ years I had no idea where the money was going.  Gaye entered the checks and paid the bills, eventually getting into online bill paying, but the categories were not useful to me and a report from Quicken was therefore useless.  I dropped out, but every once in while I would yearn for the days when I knew where the money was going.

I have started writing every purchase down in a small book since we have been here on our mission.  It has given me some peace of mind and even a good job to do when there is nothing to do.  Reports are hard to get from paper, though, so we decided we should purchase Quicken.  The problem is that Quicken works on Windows driven PC, but I use a Mac.  Much more intuitive and user friendly.  So we loaded Quicken onto Gaye’s PC and started to record what I had in my little book. It was taking me way too long to relearn how to maneuver around Windows on a PC.  We downloaded our credit card data from the card company, as well as the online banking data from our bank.  Of course the data would come with an entry like “Check 00200997--$400”.  That’s all.  I was having flashbacks of earlier frustrations.

See, Gaye and I have one brain between us.  I am completely left-side dominated.  I see the parts very well.  I love the detail, and the more the better.  Gaye, on the other hand, is very happy to be close enough.  She sees the whole picture, but not the parts very well.  Don’t sweat the details.  We still have money in the checking account.  It went somewhere and we have lots of stuff to show for it.  You know the drill.  So we have been trying to resolve this little impediment to our relationship by communicating better over financial matters.  That is when we discovered that we are not getting our monthly Social Security check.

I decided to start receiving the SS check when I turned 66 in November.  Gaye is waiting for a year until she also hits the magic number next November.  No check was deposited in November, but I assumed that was because it would arrive in the next month.  No problem.  Except that it did not arrive in December, either.  So I called the 800 number for the SS Administration.  I also called our bank to see if the information had perhaps just not downloaded.  I’ll shorten this a little.  After 2+ hours on hold and talking to “the next available representative” I learned that indeed, the check was being paid, but also indeed, it was not being deposited into our account.  So where in the wide universe is it going?

The sweet lady on the SS line asked me for the account number of my bank.  This was after I answered all those security questions designed to prove that I was really Ken Patterson, the owner of the problem.  You know the questions:  What is the name of your first grade school?  What is the first name of your paternal grandmother?  What is the name of your first pet?  Who was your first girlfriend in kindergarten?  What was the middle initial of your second grade teacher’s husband’s name?  I answered them all correctly, for which I felt like giving myself High Five!  So She asked me the number of my bank account, which I slowly read to her.  She said, “No, that is not the account where the check is going”.  I already knew that.

After a few requests of “would you mind holding for just a moment (five minutes) please” she came back and told me that I was two numbers off.  Two numbers of the account number I gave her were not the same as the account number where the money was actually going.  (The bank told me that if I could give them the number they could get the money back for me.  But they had to have the wrong number to make things right.)  She further informed me that she would not be able to tell me the wrong number.  Something about regulations to protect proper identity of people. It was supposed to prevent fraud from being perpetrated on innocent victims.  Of course there was fraud going on!  If not I would not have needed to spend the day with the telephone glued to my ear (the phone does not have a speaker).  I could only get the necessary wrong number only by visiting my local Social Security office.

Have you ever been to a Social Security office?  It is not a pleasant experience.  There is an armed guard without a personality who greets you at the door with terse instructions to turn your cell phone OFF, not just SILENT, but COMPLETELY OFF, then hands you a number from a computer system that has replaced the simple little take-a-number thingy like they have at the local electrical supply store.  Better use of tax payers’ money I suppose.  Then you sit there with lots of other people who voted for Obama and wait for a couple of hours until the lady behind the glass window with the two little holes in it to supposedly communicate through gets through picking her fingernails and calls out your number.  It takes her about 20 seconds to tell me that I don’t have the right paperwork and I will need to come back.  Don’t go there if you don’t have to.

But that is not the big problem here.  We are on Tortola and there is not a Social Security office on Tortola.  That is probably because Tortola is in the British Virgin Islands, and things British and things American were separated quite permanently in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence, and really cemented with the War of 1812.  So I need to go to a Social Security office to get this straightened out, and the nearest one is an hour ferry ride from here in St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.  This is British, that is US.  (I don’t know why they don’t just combine into one country.  They all drive left-side driver vehicles on the left side of the narrow, steep highways and speak the same beautiful but unintelligible Caribbean English that I can’t hear anyway because they speak so softly.  ARRRGH!)

The solution has presented itself.  Gaye and I are going to catch ferry to St Thomas early Monday morning.  Our friends from the MTC, the Peterson’s, with whom we spent New Year’s Day getting pounded by huge waves on Virgin Gorda--those same friends will pick us up at the ferry and take us where we need to go.  We might even go to McDonalds or Burger King for some junk food and nostalgically wander through the aisles of one of the chain stores like K-Mart or Walmart.  We will stay over there Monday night, have FHE with Elder and Sister Peterson, catch the ferry back Tuesday, and hope the Social Security office people there will get this problem straightened out.  And I might then resist curling up into a fetal position with my thumb in my mouth.

Stay tuned.

A Wonderful Sunday

January 6, 2013

I need to resolve one issue I left hanging.  We are driving Suzzie Suzuki.  We had a surprise visit from President Alvarado last week.  In response to my question about vehicles he said the area leadership says the elders will drive the truck and the senior couple will drive the SUV.  That settled that, so we gave the keys to the YFTM’s and we are driving the SUV.  Frankly, it is just fine.  In fact, it is 3 feet shorter and much, much easier to park and maneuver than the truck.  The suspension is not as good, the floor mats are cheap, the seats are more flimsy, but Suzzie gets us up the hills just fine, if a little slower.  She is full-time 4WD so that is not an issue when we need the extra traction going up a steep driveway.  We are safe and secure and happy, and we are paying a lot less for fuel.  I actually felt sorry for the YFTM’s as we were parking in a tight spot.  They will never be able to do that.  Besides, neither vehicle is ours.  We will leave them both here when we are moved, whenever that is.  Now if we could just get rid of the two 2008 Toyota Tacoma trucks.  I am tired of washing them and worrying about them.

Today is fast Sunday.  I love these occasions to reconvince my body who is in charge. We had a wonderful meeting this morning.  The Kalama family have some some big news lately.  Their two oldest girls, Hali’a and Hina, have received their mission calls.  Hina, the younger, is leaving in February for a Spanish California mission.  Hali’a is leaving in April for Quezon Philippines.  She will learn Tagalog. 

Hali'a, Hina, Tau Kalama

So the whole family is going back to Hawaii for their temple endowments and then they will drop Hina off at the Provo MTC on their way back to Tortola.  I think Hali’a is going to work for a few weeks before she enters Provo MTC in April, a week or two after Hina leaves for California.  There were some tender expressions of testimony and love in our meeting today concerning this endeavor.  Our tiny branch will now have 4 YFTM’s (Young Full-Time Missionaries), and there are two more young men getting their papers in.  That is more from one unit than many wards in LDS areas have.  We will all be blessed for it, too.

Krystin in the middle of friends

Krystin Kalama has been practicing the keyboard for a few weeks and today she accompanied the singing her first time in church.  She played the simplified arrangement of We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet, and it was terrific!  I played the other two hymns, also from the simplified arrangements.  Now Krystin has seen that she can do it and she is excited to play again.  We will have her play next week, and the next, and the next, and...There are also some others with whom we will work to get ready to play in a week or four.  Our goal is to have enough players in the branch by the time we leave that they will not even know we have left.  So since we have been here we have had a little part in two landmark activities in Tortola Branch--the first branch choir number and the first branch member accompanying the congregational singing. Haleluiah!!!

Orlando bore testimony today of the effect the Church has had in his life since he joined in October.  He is a good young man.  He got off the education track for a couple of years so he is 18 and still has a year and a half to graduate from high school.  Then he wants to go on his mission and return to study medicine.  He can do it.  Along the way he is setting a great example for his brother and two sisters and his parents.

Orlando at the keyboard

Orlando today

Jermaine has been dealing with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma for a few months.  He is almost finished with the treatments.  He testified that this has been a blessing to him!  He said it has been hard, but that he would not have it any other way.  He told of his wandering from the things he knew were true and right as a young Aaronic Priesthood holder.  He expressed sincere gratitude that this illness has brought him back to what is right, and he expressed a desire to continue on the right path.  He is a handsome guy, about 6’3” tall, 21 years old.  His girl friend, Lisa, is about 5’ tall, so they make an interesting couple. 

Lisa

 Lisa will be baptized this Saturday in the ocean near here.  Jermaine will perform the baptism, and the two YFTM’s will be the witnesses.  It is the only way they will be allowed to wade out into the water, or to even go on the beach for that matter.  I think we will be involved in teaching the fellowshipping lessons after the baptism.  

I will be going out Tuesday night with the Elders Quorum President to show him how Home Teaching should be done.  He is really keen on getting out to visit the members of his group and he wants to do it right.  However, as with most of the members of the branch here, he has not been a member of teh Church all that long.  We will visit his first counsellor.  Then they will go out with their own companions and carry the training to the other members of the priesthood of the branch.  Gaye will be doing the same thing with the Relief Society.  As my friend Doug Ladle put it, we are the starter motors, not the engine.  The goal is to get the engine running and teach them enough that they can keep it running after the starter has shut down.

Stay tuned.

Diane Samuel

Sister Samuel is from Dominican Republic originally.  Spanish is her home language.  English is sometimes a struggle for her.  She had a job but the economy has had its effect on her like so many others.  She has a car but often struggles to buy fuel to run it.  She is a single mom with a daughter living with her.  The daughter is mid-twenties and has been sick.  Diane is in her fifties.  She makes a living by selling ties and other small items at a little stand.  Some days she doesn’t do very well but she always says tomorrow will be better.  One day she was at the church enthusiastically washing the windows and cleaning the area for Sunday meetings.  She worked hard and made it shine.  I suspect she was receiving assistance from the branch fast offerings.  She was happy in her work.

Diane has been the branch accompanist, but she doesn’t read music or play the piano.  She has had the assignment to push the buttons on the electronic piano to play the recorded hymns that were chosen for each Sunday’s meetings. President Kalama has released her from that calling because he wants to support having a live keyboard player playing the hymns each Sunday. 

She loves music and when we announced that we were teaching the keyboarding class, she was one of the first to sign up for lessons.  She has had a hard time learning the keyboarding, but I think she will catch on to the conducting lessons.  (Diane does better counting the music in Spanish than in English. Of course.  She speaks Spanish.) She loves to sing with our little choir, and in the congregational singing.  She has a deep contralto voice.  She sings the melody and soon gets lost when she tries to sing parts.  That doesn’t matter to this choir director (me) however.  I love the spirit she brings.

I have a standing assignment to teach Sunday school class, so as part of my lesson last week, I asked her and some others to tell their conversion stories.  Everybody has a story and they are all fascinating.  (Every couple also has a story of how they got together, and they are all interesting, too.)

Diane said she had a burning desire to know Jesus Christ.  She searched for ways to satisfy that yearning.  She told her friends and the people she was working with of her desire.  Then one day she saw two young men in white shirts with name tags that said they were from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  (At this point in the story she became quite excited as she told us in her broken English about the encounter with the missionaries.)  

“Do you know about Jesus Christ?” she asked them.  They assured her that they did.

“Can you teach me about Jesus Christ?  I want to know Jesus Christ!”  

Diane was baptized three weeks later as she gained her own testimony of Jesus and His mission to rescue fallen mankind from the hopeless morass of a fallen world.  She has been faithful since then.

Diane tells with fondness when she went to Salt Lake City to the temple.  She is excited when she tells about meeting President Hinckley when he stopped in St Thomas a few years ago on his way to Africa.  She said she didn’t want to wash her hand for a month.

These are sweet people.  Not the Church members only but everyone we meet. Gaye and I love them.  Our lives will forever be better because we are having this opportunity to be with them and to serve them.  That is really what a mission is about.  We love the people we serve and all are blessed by that love, a real extension of the love Jesus has for each of us.

Have a great day, and a great 2013.

The Baths

The Baths

We had some visitors from St Thomas for a few days.  We had intended to have Elder George and Sister Sharon Peterson over for Sharon’s birthday December 30, then spend New Year’s Eve at The Baths on Virgin Gorda and they would go home on January 1.  They came over a day earlier, and because of a sudden visit from President Alvarado on December 31, they stayed a day longer. Then we missed the ferry back to St Thomas so they spent most of January 2 with us, too.  I am sure they are tired of us by now.  It was good to get together and compare notes.

January 1 was a long day.  We caught the early ferry to Virgin Gorda.  It was the smallest boat they have, so it bounced a lot and water was blown through the open windows. The windows were closed and we finished the trip with little fresh air.  It was good to get there.  We rented a car, drove around the island, visited two of the Church members who live there (we just happened to drive by their apartment and they were sitting on the veranda), and drove to The Baths, the main focus of our visit.

We had lunch and grabbed our gear to hike the 350 yards to the shore.  There we changed into our swim gear, stowed some bags of clothes, etc, and moved into the trail from The Baths to Devil’s Bay.  

It was a very interesting trail through tight spots, stairs, sand and water, and huge round boulders.  That trail was about 250 yards long, ending at a small bay with a big beach.  

Devil's Bay

The Baths

The Baths is known as a snorkeling site, but the surf was too high and dangerous.  It was exciting to look at but certainly not a place to go swimming.  

Small wave at Devil's Bay

Devil’s Bay is aptly named.  A huge wave came crashing down on Gaye and Sharon when they had turned their backs and rolled them over and over.  Both ended up with wrenched knees and sand every where.  George and I had a good swim out in the bay, but then the hard trip back to the car began.   

I went back through The Cave and picked up the gear I left at The Baths.  The others took the trail up the hill to the parking lot.   I made three trips up the trail hauling gear and finally helping the walking wounded ladies get to the car.  So now we have two ladies with fairly serious injuries to their knees.  The Peterson’s have gone back to St Thomas.  Gaye and I have spent the day doing laundry and getting ourselves ready to go back to work.  Sometimes “vacations” are not worth the cost.

All in all, it was a good experience to get together to compare notes. Elder Peterson has a MSW focussed on 12-Step Addiction Recovery programs.  They are starting a Church-sponsored program on St Thomas and will help the rest of us get similar programs going through the Islands.  We have been having good success with the Keyboarding Instruction program and now Sharon is ready to go back to St Thomas and get it going there.  We had planned on being together for 2-1/2 days and ended spending almost 6 days together.  

Trail through The Cave

The Baths

Devil's Bay

Now it is back to work.  Stay tuned.