So, what did you do today?

Here’s what I did…We got up early, had pancakes, and went to meet someone from the office of the ministry of agriculture in Grenville.  From there, we went to a bunch of different sites to take a look at how different people are taking initiative in their areas of expertise.  The first spot we checked, we met a really nice woman who was close to 60 years old.  She took the team down a hill walled with exotic vegetation 10’ tall.  That went down to a small area where she kept some sweet pigs that were almost 3 feet high and looked more like they belonged in the jungle than in this nice ladies backyard.

I’m a little fuzzy on the details because as the team headed down the hill, it started to sprinkle, so I headed back to the car to put the camera away.  The rest of the team were pretty far down, so I made my way to a small building right next to the van.  It turns out it was a post office ‘post’, where mail carriers would meet each other and exchange mail.  If you saw it, you might not call it a building, but maybe a concrete hut.  Inside, there was a woman named Vira.  I went inside to talk to her, and she offered me a chair (a stool with no seat, but 3 pieces of 2×4 placed across it) and shared her testimony of how God had worked in her life from the discovery of a brain tumor discovered at a young age (when she started blacking out at random times) to her eventual operation in Cuba, and the way she was able to share her faith to everyone along the way.  It was a great story, and I’d be glad to share it with you sometime…  When the team got back, they brought some nutmeg and a cocoa bean pod that the lady had given them.  Very cool!

We went to a few more sites, including a farm just off the old Cuban runway on the north side of the island.  As we met with the owner (actually, he doesn’t own the land but the government allows him to farm on it), we saw lizards running back and forth from the house, and he was kind enough to give us some locally grown fruit pronounced gospoo (basically a sweet orange that has green skin instead of orange), carving it with a 14 inch knife   It was also cool to see an old Russian and older Cuban airplane that had been left to sit near the runway.  It was so cool/weird/interesting.

From there, we made our way to the school, where we just missed the process of moving chicken from pets to food, but we got a few pictures of the students stuffing the birds into bags to be sold.  We said goodbye to the ministry of agriculture folks, and headed back to the compound where we enjoyed a very late lunch and a quick nap.

After an awesome meal called Nigerian chicken (kinda a cross between Indian and Ethiopian), we headed out to bible study.  Kevin and I lead worship for about 25 minutes, followed by a good teaching by Neal Whitney.  The ride back was a van stuffed with 14 people (that’s crowded with 8)with several stops around the island to drop folks off before we made it back home where we had some fabulous drinks made from papaya and banana and welcomed Todd O’neil (who had to leave Cincinnati a few days later than us).

I’d love to write more, but it’s super late, and we’re getting up early (again)   I’m still looking for this ‘island schedule’ to show up!

JF

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