Spiritual Emphasis Week

As we mentioned in our last post, this was Spiritual Emphasis Week at WITC, so we didn't have any classes to teach. Therefore we had a little more time on our hands. (I did still preach this morning at Charlieville, so needed some time to prepare for that.) One of the fun activities we engaged in was a visit to Mount St. Benedict for tea. Mount St. Benedict is a Catholic monastery located high on a hillside in the Northern Range that is noted for having one of the best views on the island. So on Friday, we picked the girls up from school and headed straight over to the Pax Guesthouse at the monastery where we had reservations for tea at 3:00. The formal dining room is currently under renovation, but we enjoyed our tea, scones and cake on the verandah overlooking the Caroni Plain. We also met another American family that was checking into the guesthouse. They are here for three years as the father teaches at the University of T & T. It was very peaceful up there above all the traffic that marks our daily lives. It was also rather interesting to look down at the airplanes coming in for a landing at the airport far below.
~Richard

In addition to Richard's sermon preparation for today, we kept busy with several other work related tasks. In addition to our leadership team meeting at the Diego Martin church on Monday evening, I spent some of my time grading papers for class. But another activity that marked our week was baking. If you asked our family what food from the United States we most miss, I think we might all agree that it is fresh milk. The milk we get here is not sold in the dairy case. It is reconstituted powdered milk and even that is very expensive. Most Trinis do not eat milk and cereal for breakfast as our family is used to doing. So, with more time on our hands this week, Richard and I decided to bake breads for breakfast more like Trinis this week. I had also been wanting to learn to make roti, the staple bread here. I finally arranged for my lesson with Babes Jaimani, one of the pastor's wives here and a woman whose good cooking I had heard about before we arrived. She said I had to start with sada roti which is the everyday roti. It is a flat bread, much like pita bread, made on top of the stove on a tawa or flat stone. While she was over, she also taught me how to make homemade fry bake, which is what you make for bake and shark, and pholourie from a mix. It was fun to begin my Trini cooking lessons. Adding up all the things we cooked this week we made homemade sada roti and fry bake twice (once with Babes and once later on my own), pholourie, 2 tea rings, granola bars, chocolate cake, pizza crust and peanut butter cookies for an event at the girls' school. It was good to have the time to enjoy these creative cooking ventures.
~Barb

'The event at the girls' school' was a gospel concert last night. (It occurred to us that it was Halloween, but that is a holiday not celebrated here, so no one else would have thought of that.) Each household was responsible for selling 10 tickets. As it turned out (although we tried) we only sold 4 tickets--one for each of us. So last night we were driving up to the school when we drove into rain. By the time we got to the school, it was still raining, and it was also apparent that it had been raining for some time by then. They had 2 small tents set up--one over the stage and one over the sound equipment. People were all crowded around under the tent for sound equipment, and any other place they could find shelter. Soon the rain settled down, and some of the teachers at the school came by all the chairs, dumped off the water, and wiped them down with rags. People started meandering over to the chairs, finally getting to sit and watch the concert, only to feel the raindrops again in a few minutes! We were excited to finally see a live steel pan though.
~Roxy

Today, our family was invited to go to a water park with some people from the churches. A group of people from the church in Chaguanas was going along with the Hope youth group, who Roxy and I have met with some. My parents decided not to go partly because my dad had to preach at Charlieville Mennonite Church this morning. So, Roxy and I got picked up around 7:40 this morning, and with a stop for doubles, made it to Hope Mennonite Church. Now, a water park here isn't exactly what I'd picture when someone says we're going to a water park. There aren't big rides. The one we went to had two big slides, which went into a small pool, about 4 1/2 feet deep, but just big enough for people to come off of the slides. Then there was a pool for smaller kids that was only about two feet deep but had a lot of small slides and was big enough to play around in. There was also just a big pool to swim around in that went from about 3-5 feet. The last thing they had was a big lake (that was dirty, you wouldn't want to swim in it) that had little pedal boats that you could ride around in. There were tires lining the edges to make it not as hard in case someone ran into it. On one of the tires, we saw a crab and two toads, one toad sitting on top of the other one. We spent all afternoon at the water park, and Roxy and I came home pretty sunburned even though I put on sunscreen 3 times. It was a fun afternoon, but I'm pretty exhausted, especially since I'm still recovering from a cold. My voice is pretty much gone after being sick, then going to a concert, where I had to yell to be heard, then singing a bunch in church today, and then spending all afternoon at the water park!
~Olivia