January Update

Earlier this afternoon, we went to the home of a family from Diego Martin Mennonite Church. We also had visited there the week before. They are a very musical family and have been wanting to get together with some other musical people from the Mennonite churches in T&T. Since January has 5 Sundays in it, there will be a joint service this month. Usually, the joint service is on the 5th Sunday, but since next week is Mennonite World Fellowship Sunday, they decided to move it to the 4th this time. The worship teams from the different churches take turns leading worship for the joint service. So this time the Diego Martin worship team requested to lead worship. So we have been meeting with music people mostly from Diego Martin, but a few from other churches. We taught a few songs (including harmony, which was mostly new) as well as learned a few new ones, including one African one (along with a dance) and one in Hindi. I think everyone's been having a good time working on this together!
~Roxy

School seemed to pick up a little more this week. For the first three days, nothing much happened and not many people came. Last week most people were back. There actually wasn't as much change over of students as I thought there might be. A lot of people, especially in Roxy's class said they were going to leave and go to a different school this term. Her class has stayed exactly the same, though. I had a new student in my class on Monday, but I haven't seen her since then, so I'm assuming she's not coming back. And there was another new student on Tuesday. One person who dropped out in the middle of last term decided to come back this term and another person who was in my class last term I haven't seen yet. But, the other 11 students have remained the same.
People in school have been talking a lot about Carnival, which is an extremely big and celebrated holiday here! It won't be until next month, but some people are starting to play music already. We actually wanted to go see some steel pans on the way home today, but the music thing went to long, and it was over by the time we got there. We're still trying to figure out what to do for Carnival, because it seems as though most of the Mennonites don't celebrate it because it focuses a lot on the drinking and that kind of stuff. But, we still think it would be fun if we could get in on some of the music. We haven't heard many steel pans live, so we're hoping to catch some between now and Carnival!
~Olivia

The good news of the week is that we finally have our water back! After nearly a month of calling nearly every business day (and spending virtually hours on hold) the water company came on Wednesday afternoon and patched up the line. They basically did the same thing that they did last August shortly after we arrived. We're hoping it lasts longer this time--at least until we head back to the U.S. in July. For now, we're just glad that we are able to do laundry and take showers without worrying about running out of water. The whole affair does make us more mindful of those who don't have access to running water at all.
The day after the water was repaired, we were faced with another reminder that we are living in a country that still is not as developed as what we've been accustomed to. Our car has had an oil leak for a while, and I finally was able to get the mechanic to take a look at it on Thursday. He discovered a leaky gasket. In the United States, it would be a simple matter of getting a new gasket and replacing the old one. The problem here, however, is that parts for the sort of car that we have (a Mitsubishi Galant) are not that easy to come by on the island. So the mechanic suggested that both he and I "keep an eye out" for a replacement gasket. Until then, there's not much that we can do.
~Richard

The day we got our water back was the same day we heard that hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti lost theirs. The local news outlets in Trinidad rarely spend time on world news. There is a fairly developed media network here of print newspapers, radio and TV stations and recording artists. But they are very local in their scope. Mostly we hear about local sports, local crime and dramatic local politics with little concern for the rest of the world. But the earthquake in Haiti has been distincly different. The news here is full of the coverage of it. People in churches are praying for the people of Haiti (and scoffing at Pat Robertson). Companies and individuals and even the government here are offering aid.
The fact that Haiti is also an island country in the general region, even though it may actually be closer to the U.S. than it is to Trinidad, creates a kind of bond. When we hear that there is only 1 airport and one sea port from which to get supplies and that they are badly damaged so that supplies are hard to get in, we know what that is like. When they talk about running out of the supplies that are on the island, we know that if that happens, you have nothing you can do but wait until someone brings more to you. When they talk about the massive death toll, we know that the relationships of people living on an island are so close. In some ways it's like living in a really big small town in which you are always learning that somebody is the cousin of somebody else. Generations have grown up together and most likely everyone has lost people who are very close. And so our prayers go out to you, Haiti. We personally feel closer to you than ever.
Barb