This morning we went back to the First Baptist Church of West End where Elmer’s dad is the pastor. They had a guest speaker today from Rochester, New York named Eric. He is one of 4 radio guys from the states that are here to check on the local Christian radio station to see if they can help in anyway. The missionaries that have been overseeing the radio station are going back to the states for health reasons. After lunch, Bev finished reading Spirit Wars by Kris Vallotton. (Bev -> ISSM’ers this is a great one to read! Just sayin’.) Bev played a little soccer with little Josiah (2 years old) on the porch until he decided to run into the ocean and got all wet. Andrea cooked dinner this evening to celebrate her dad’s (Carlos) birthday! We were invited to join in and had a great time celebrating. We helped clean up and then went and exchanged contact info with our Canadian friends who will be leaving us tomorrow.
John worked offline on the blog this morning – we still had no internet. Bev enjoyed reading. Today the boys from the Baptist Orphanage are coming to Casa Isabella for lunch and a day of swimming. So, about 11:30 am we headed to Coxen Hole to buy some ice cream at the grocery store as our contribution. The boys had a great time. Bev got to play with them and pitch the Frisbee and soccer ball to them as they dove or jumped off the pier. Bev said that you can make up games anywhere. Ms. Sherry had bought all the food for lunch and Elmer’s mom and a friend cooked it. We had rice with chicken and potato salad – it was very good. They also made a cake, so everyone got cake and ice cream for dessert. The boys and adults had a great time. After a great day of fun, all the boys jumped into the back of the pickup and went to watch Elmer’s baseball game. Four of the boys that were here today play on Elmer’s team. The boys range from 8 – 18 years old. We learned that a couple from Canada are in the process of adopting the 8 year old boy. Carlos asked us if we would move out of the apartment and back into the downstairs bedroom in the house. It’s nice and we don’t mind at all, so we spent some time this evening moving our things.
This morning John was working on the blog. Our internet is still not working. Surprise, Surprise!! We are constantly sweeping the sand out of our room and front porch area – imagine that. We left around 11:30 am for Pandy Town to help Pastor Mesa and his wife feed 200 children. On the way we stopped at Anthony’s Key Resort for lunch – I think we really just wanted to see if Clinton was working today. We got to talk with him again and he has invited us to his home on Tuesday to meet his family – we are hoping it works out. Next, we stopped off at Eldon’s grocery store and bought cookies for 200 children as our contribution to the meal. We were told that they would began serving meals at 4:00 pm, but when we arrived no one was getting ready. We found Pastor Mesa and a guy named Eduardo outside in the back of the church. Eduardo spoke good English so he was able to be our interpreter as we talked to Pastor Mesa. We were told that something had happened to the water pump that supplies the church and the cooking/serving area. Without water they could not cook or clean and had no bathroom facilities. So they had canceled the meal for this evening. The Pastor’s wife had called Pastor Jennie and asked her to call Elmer to let us know, but we never got the message. We gave them the cookies we had picked up and they seemed appreciative of that. We hope to go back next Wednesday and help them feed lunch to the children. It was a long drive to Pandy Town to find out the meal had been canceled, but we were glad we came because we got to meet Eduardo who speaks English and of all places he used to live in the Indianapolis area. He had worked in Noblesville and all of the surrounding area as a painter. He has kids that still live on the west side of Indy. He was pulled over one evening while in Indiana and when they saw his license they deported him back to Honduras. I think he will be another great contact for us in Roatan. We made it back to Casa Isabella, but are hopeful we can help serve food next Wednesday.
Happy Birthday to our granddaughter Ella!! Love and miss you.
John started his day at 6:30 am by go fishing. He used the crabs he put in the refrigerator from the night before for his bait. We headed out to the Blue Harbor Arboretum where we took a tour of their huge hydroponics farm. It is a commercial operation that grows several kinds of lettuce and sell to all the restaurants and grocery stores on the island. John was mostly interested in the hydroponics, but the 164 acres of land had all kinds of fruit and nut trees. We bought some cashews that had been harvested and roasted there on the property. On the way back, we stopped in at Anthony’s Key Resort. We had never stopped there, so we were curious what their facility looked like. It was very nice and appeared to be a pretty high dollar resort. They had a restaurant called Frangipani Bar, so we ate lunch there with a beautiful view of the ocean. John asked our waiter, Clinton, if there was anything we could pray for him for. He said yes and asked if we would pray for his family – especially his sister. I think his sister is caught up in drinking and drugs and likes the party scene. He told us that he lives in Flowers Bay and goes to a Baptist Church. After we left there we headed back to Casa Isabella. Bev spotted an orphanage called the Sandy Bay Lighthouse Ministries. Ashley and Nathan had told us about visiting the orphanage when they had visited Roatan back in May. The gates were closed, so we just drove up and took a picture. We came back to Casa Isabella and went fishing.
Today started out a little slow, but then became a great day. We went in to Sandy Bay to drop off the meds to Miss Peggy at the clinic. She wasn’t there so one of the staff called her for us to see when she was coming in. She told them that she had been having some throat problems and was headed to the mainland for surgery. No one there even knew she was going to have surgery. We left all of the medications that we have been carrying around with us this whole time with one of the staff. We will email Miss Peggy later and let her know we dropped them off. (After dropping off the meds, later that day we drove through 2 random road blocks looking for drugs. Our car did not get searched, but we sure felt better about having left the meds at the clinic.) We then decided to take a quick drive into the La Colonia community to just look around. The paved road only goes so far then it gets bad. We had driven into the community before and turned around where the pavement ends. Well, when we got to the end of the pavement and started to turn around we realized that we had a flat tire. Bev got us on some semi flat land and John jumped out to change the tire. Keep in mind that this is one of the Spanish speaking communities. Should not be of any surprise, but out of not where a well-dressed very nice man appears. He could speak a little English, but he did not ask if we needed help he just started helping John change the tire. The tire was rusted on so no matter how hard we tried it would not come off. The man helping us asked someone nearby for a hammer and he was able to beat the tire off. Bev loved the hammer, it was a hammer head attached to a pipe. If this guy had not stopped and helped us, I think we would still be there trying to get the tire off – God is good. We took the car back to where we rented it in Coxen Hole and within 20 minutes we were back on the road with a full size tire. We went back to the Claro internet store and told them it had stopped working again. They checked it and we think we have it working now. We then headed out to Punta Gorda to see if we could find Laurie Potter who Ashley and Nathan met on their trip here in May. Laurie was going to be our connection to finding the couple that feed kids once a week in Oak Ridge, but she was not home. We went back to Pandy Town and asked Pastor Jennie if she knew this couple. She did not, but after a few phone calls she had located them. Because this couple only speak Spanish, Pastor Jennie offered to come along as our interpreter. We met Pastor Mesa and his wife and they showed us around their church and where they feed the children. They feed 150-200 children once a week. They wish they could do more but that is all the money that they have. A couple from the states sends them $500 a month and that is just enough to feed the children once a week. We asked them when would be the next time that they would be feeding the kids. They told us this Friday and asked if we would like to come. So we plan to go back to Pandy Town around 4:00 pm on Friday and help serve food. When we finished there, Pastor Jennie borrowed someone’s boat and took us out to see Calabash Bight. This is the area where Pastor Jennie grew up. Pastor Jennie invited us to go with her and a few others from her church to St. Helene which is farther east and you can only get there by boat. It will be about a 25 minute boat ride. She will let us know all the details later. If we go it will be a week from this Friday. What a great day! When we got back, John went fishing as usual. He needed some bait, so since Bev is now a seasoned crab hunter – he sent her out to hunt crab so he could use them for bait. Success – Bev brought back 6 crabs so John could fish. And yes she went into the bush to hunt them with flip flops and shorts on.
