Sunday Morning

Last night as we were driving through town, we notice a bunch of chairs being lined up at a corner of the soccer field. They looked familiar, and I wondered if the church was planning an activity. We should have stopped, but didn't as we were on our way to take our friends to dinner. We went to a nearby restaurant literally built on a mangrove. (Mangroves (generally) are trees and shrubs that grow in saline (brackish) coastal habitats in the tropics and subtropics. from Wikipedia) The mangroves are on one of the best surfing spots on the planet; therefore, the restaurant was crowded with surfers. The owner has an Alaskan Husky that wanders about the place and was frightening to our friends' one-year-old. Between the baby, the dog and the surfers, we managed to have a nice time with our friends. When we drove back into town, the lights were out. It is very, very dark around here without the few lights here and there. We dropped our friends off and went home as a thunder storm was approaching, the first one of the season.

The generators were working in our condos, so we had power, but no air conditioning. That is fine with us, since we don't use it at night. There was no Internet and no TV, so we read for a little while and went to bed. There was thundering and lighting all night, and the generator kept going on and off. The water went off and on also during the night. We managed to sleep off and on also. We feel so much closer to Nature here! This morning we got up early to get ready for church, which was supposed to start at 9:00 am. As we were driving at 9:00 sharp by one of the church members' home, we noticed that they were still home; nevertheless, we drove to church, but found it locked. Back to the church member's home we drove. By this time, it has started to sprinkle a bit. They told us that there was no worship service today because they have had an event last night, and some people wanted to visit a member in the hospital instead.

It started to rain, so we went inside. We sat around their dining room table and tried to talk over the increasing noise of the heavy rain on their tin roof. The night before they had an outreach event in town. Only one of the residents opposed to it, but they had permission. They were praising the Lord for the power outage. Since people did not have anything to do, they took their chairs out on their porches and heard the Word of God preached. There are two bars on opposite corners of the soccer field, but they had to close due to the lack of power; therefore, there was no music blaring and no men drinking beer! Praise the Lord! We told them about our plans for next Saturday. We hope to be able to coordinate efforts with them, of course. After about one and a half hour, we prayed together and left in the rain. That was our Sunday worship service this week.

It stopped raining now, and, obviously, we have Internet again. We just came from visiting our American neighbors. Yes, we still remember how to speak English. Just another interesting day at the beach...