First Month in Trinidad

Today marks exactly one month since we touched down in Trinidad. With school starting for all of us this past week, we are finally beginning to establish a routine and settle into "normal" life.
We are continuing to make visits to each of the Mennonite churches of Trinidad in an attempt to get to know them all better. This morning we worshiped at Diego Martin Mennonite Church. The worship leader for the morning happened to be one of the students in my philosophy class--the only Mennonite student who is in any of the classes that either Barb or I are teaching. Diego Martin is located just the other side of Port of Spain (the capital city). This is the church that we will probably be spending most of our time attending, especially in the latter part of our term here. Pastor Rawl Gunpath will be on sabbatical starting in January, and we've been asked to help out at the church while he's gone. For now, though, there are still three more churches that we haven't visited. I've also been invited to preach sometime here at the Charlieville church, and am expecting to get similar invitations from at least one or two of the other churches as well.
~Richard

Last night, was the first time the youth group at Carlsen Field Mennonite Church met and Roxy and I were invited to go. There is always lots of singing at those kind of things, so we're starting to get to know some of the songs better, because most of them I didn't know before we came here. When we first got to the youth group, someone gave me a green plum. I've had green plums one other time while we were here, but I thought they were kind of weird. This time, there was a plate of salt, with slices of hot pepper on it. People tend to like really spicy things here. Anyone could just dip their plum in, and someone convinced me to try it. I just barely touched it to the pepper, and it was extremely spicy! I shouldn't be surprised anymore how spicy things here are, but I still am always surprised whenever I taste something really spicy. The rest of the youth group time was fun; we sang, had some devotions and played a game. And I'm getting to know some of the youth here better, too, which is good.
~Olivia

The second day of school seemed much easier than the first for me. For one thing, halfway through the day, they gave me a 'timetable', which is just a class schedule. So that was very useful! One of the reasons that this might turn out to be a better school than some is that they have some art or music type classes, which is not completely a given. And on Friday, I spent 5 out of 8 periods doing a class called VAPA, which is Visual And Performing Arts. I think that 2 of those 5 were actually supposed to be tech ed, but the same teacher does both, and so I guess that she just decided she would rather do VAPA at that point! We're making tea towels soon, so I spent nearly 2 and a half hours embroidering on Friday, and have also been spending a lot of time doing that this weekend for homework!
~Roxy

On Friday I taught the first session of my second class. Yes, here I will be teaching class every Friday evening this semester. This was my Marriage and Family class. About half the students were in my other class and several were in Richard's. Out of 8 students, we had 5 countries represented. I am really enjoying the teaching.
When we look back at our prayer list, it is amazing to see how each of our prayers has been answered. Our water leak was fixed earlier this week, we have renters, our internet is up and running which is really helpful in a variety of ways including preparation for class, the girls have found and started school and our teaching here has begun. It is amazing to know that so many of you have been praying for us. So for this week, let's just let our prayers be thanksgivings.
Barb