Blessings and Challenges

  "What has been your biggest challenge and your greatest blessing while serving on the mission field?" 

 A simple question that I was recently asked, but I had to think a little how to answer it. There has certainly been more than one challenge this past year, but also, more than one blessing. It's hard to say what is the biggest one is, but this is what came to my mind first....

The biggest challenge..."missing my friends and family...."

The biggest blessing..."making new friends and "family"...."

 The biggest challenge...I miss my friends and family, and while I am thankful for ways to stay connected with them, even with the many miles that separate us, sometimes I miss that interaction of actually being with them! I just wish I could curl up on their sofa and have a real life chat, plan a quick coffee date or just simply hang out! I miss those days where I'd call my sister and, on a whim, we'd decide mom is going to have some visitors that day:) We would call her on the way to her house and ask (tell) her if it's alright if we spend the morning there. Yea, I miss them and those random times of togetherness....

BUT...I AM thankful for Skype and phone calls and other ways to stay connected with them. I also am thankful for two dedicated ladies that email us church news and announcements faithfully every Monday morning. That helps tremendously with feeling connected to our home church family.

The biggest blessing...there are many people we would have never met if we wouldn't have moved here. 

Our Grenadian friends that wove their way into our hearts and will remain there forever. I have learned more from them, than they'll ever learn from me.

Visitors that came as strangers and left as friends.

 Casual acquaintances that we have got to know much better. There is something about having someone live with you for a week or more that gets you acquainted with each other really well, really fast:) You get to see all our quirks, faults and failures first hand!

   Church family....Yesterday, I had to think of what a wonderful blessing it is to have a church family here in Grenada. While we come from many parts of the globe, different backgrounds and skin colors of all shades, there is unity in spite of our diversity. For the most part.....

 ....this past Sunday, we had a visitor that took the liberty to add to the sermon, with loud, random, off the wall comments, interjected here and there. From the looks of him, I believe he was high on drugs or else his brain was already partially fried from years of drug use. Sporting numerous ear rings, necklaces and chains, he had a "hard" look about him. With a small rattle in his hand, that he shook incessantly, he was rather distracting. He wore his small glasses perched halfway down  his nose and his piercing eyes looked at you in a way that made you feel like he's looking right through you, or perhaps, doesn't even see you at all. His baggy pants stopped a few inches short of his black army boots. He was a stranger to us, no one had ever seen him before, and I had to wonder what his life story is and where he came from.  Laborie is known as the "drug capital" of Grenada and I don't know if that's what drew him to our part of town. Before church he was seen handing out tracts with a Brooklyn NY address on the back. Did he find a random stack somewhere and in his drug-induced haze, just decide to hand them out OR was he an "undercover" Christian, feigning ignorance to see how we would respond to a "druggie?" OR do I have a too wild of an imagination....(most likely:))

 So anyway, as with life anywhere on the globe, there are challenges we all deal with, along with the blessings God gives us.

Warning: Picture overload....there's been a lot happening lately....

...starting with Bible Conference, Sunday, December 28, till Tuesday, December 30.

On Sunday we had two sessions in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. The rest of the days we had 2 sessions each evening. 

 Due to a flight cancellation, our speaker, Merle Burkholder and his wife, arrived Sunday morning at 6:30, on an overnight flight, instead of Saturday afternoon as planned. They got to the guest house around 8:00, and had to head out a little over an hour later for the conference. Just the thought makes me weary! Especially since he had four topics that day! During the conference, we received some very practical, easy to understand, teaching on the fruits of the Spirit. The children loved the stories he told to illustrate a point:)

The Bible Conference ended Tuesday evening and then crusades 

started Thursday evening and went till the next Tuesday evening. 

We enjoyed the week very much, but after going away every evening

for almost two weeks, it was nice to spend an evening at home again. 

Merle & Edith Burkholder

They are originally from Pennsylvania, but are serving with a mission in Canada.

They are very involved with the Open Hands program in various countries and travel

 extensively, which gave him with some very interesting stories to tell! Like the one small island

 he visited, where they felt so bad serving him "poor man's food," like shrimp and lobster

 every night for supper, that, on the last night, they treated him to a "real" feast....and cooked a dog:(

We took Merle and Edith to visit the "Coconut," a small community of family that lives very simply. Grandmas, aunts and mothers all raise the children together. Cousins grow up knowing each other as well as siblings. Grandma sits on the porch, rocking away, proudly watching her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren play together. There is something appealing about this simple, laid back lifestyle, although the male role models are sadly lacking.

  Playing Dominos...we took Pastor Conhi and his boys along. This is where he grew up.

    Playing football...aka soccer. I think the little boy holding the ball is the most adorable boy ever!

                               Watching one of the men trying to make a go cart:) Not sure
                                 how that will work, but there are plenty of hills for one!:)

                                                          Visiting at the Coconut

                                                      Buddies.....Carter and Kenyon Mahon

          If you don't have a basketball net, you make one. A very teetery tottery one, for sure!

            The children were very excited with the new addition of a tarp roof for their clubhouse!

                                         "This is so humiliating! I am a boy. In a girl's dress."

          Steph Nolt, Andrea Good, Karla Martin, Jessica Nolt, Amanda Brubaker & SarahWeaver

Steph Nolt, who was in the youth group when we were youth leaders, brought 5 of her friends to visit Grenada. I have a feeling when they think of Grenada, they think of rain. Like lots of rain. Like mud- slide inducing, torrents of rain! Well, the first day was nice....the day they were inside painting. We didn't know the next 6 days it would be dumping buckets of rain...

On some of these pictures, you will see Grenada through the eyes of someone else...since there was a "professional" among us, (she claims not, but she was), I couldn't resist stealing some pics of her camera card. Thanks, Amanda (Danelle's Photography's assistant) Also, some from Steph's camera...

                                                            St George's, capital town of Grenada

This was their first project...painting a house for a couple that occasionally attends our church. She had been giving Chris money, little by little, to save up to buy paint. She was afraid if she kept it, she would spend it on something else. She was beyond excited about her house getting a fresh coat of paint and could talk of nothing else! There was hardly any paint left on the walls. She can't wait till it's done and she can sit down and admire her gooooorgus house!:)

                              The walls before paint...very bare with almost no existing paint.

                                                     Steph hard at work! It's looking better!

 

Ok, this is weird, but every time I look at this picture I have to think of Cinderella!:)

 Must be bringing up memories of a picture in a book from my childhood! lol

They used a wire brush to clean the walls first and got so dusty and dirty in 

the process! The lady was so excited to get her house painted, she just though

 they could skip that step. Chris tried to explain to her that the paint won't

  stick but she didn't really care, she just wanted that paint on those walls ASAP!

                        The girls did an art class for each class at school. It made the teachers
                           and students happy. Disregard Christi's thumb down sign...not sure
                           what that was all about. She loved the candy train her class made.

                                             A happy, smiling student sitting at her desk.

                      The excited kindergarteners and first graders proud of their handiwork!

                          For this class they constructed gingerbread houses, a wonderful idea!
                 

                                                   Love this flat roof Grenadain "hut":)

Hard at it, eating and building....

I didn't take this picture, and I'm not a prophet or anything, but I can

 guarantee there was a shriek about 2 seconds after this picture was snapped....

Did I mention it rained? And rained. And rained! We took the girls to Mt. Caramel, a natural rock slide Sunday afternoon. They had to walk through this muck and mire to get there. I opted for the easy way out, and stayed back to "guard" the bags, since the truck doesn't lock. Or, I don't know, maybe it locks, but there's no key to unlock it? Chris uses a screw driver to start it....which I didn't trust to use when I needed to put my window up when the sky began to unleash driving sheets of rain. A nice, red vinyl tablecloth pinched in the door frame did the trick. Kinda. Sorta. I had a good book to read, so nothing else really mattered:)

                                                                Water-filled foot prints

        The rock slide...they were gonna get wet either way, so it didn't really matter that it rained:)

                                                                   A slippery slide!

                                                 We took the 3 oldest Fox boys along

         The one morning we baked cookies and went in to the hospital to visit and hand them
            out. Who should we happen to meet, but the lady whose house we are painting!

A picture from Fort Frederick

                                                                   Anondale Falls
One of the visitors remarked that Grenada is so beautiful that they don't think they would ever get tired of the beautiful scenery. I said, "No, I never get tired of it, but the truth is, you do become accustomed to it and don't think about it as much as when we first moved here. Now I see pictures of snow covered trees and glistening ice from home and I think, 'Wow! How beautiful!':)"

                        " Master, the tempest is raging! The billows are tossing high!

                           The sky is o'er shadowed with blackness, No help or shelter is nigh;
                           Carest Thou not that we persish? How cans't Thy lie asleep?
                           When each moment so madly is threatening, a grave in the watery deep?".........

                          .........The winds and the waves shall obey Thy will, "Peace be still!"
                  Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed seas, or demons, or men, or whatever may be!
                    No water can swallow the ship where lies, the Master of oceon and earth and skies!
                   They all shall sweetly obey Thy will, "Peace be still!".....peace be still....

                                                School children in Grenville. Almost all,
                                          if not all, of the school children wear uniforms
               

                                   Carter and his crane he made. If you can't find him, he's
                              probably out in the shed banging around building something!

                                          Some happy children with belated birthday cakes:)

                                  The children loved when they played games with them

                                         We went to sing at The Poor House one morning,
                                         a government run home for the aged and handicapped

It's a little (ok, alot) hard to dry wash when it's been raining for days and the humidity level is 100%.
Chris strung weed eater string from one end of the hall to the next, to form indoor wash lines. Even with a fan blowing on it non-stop for 2 days, it still was damp.

                           Giving the boys some much needed haircuts....it's pretty handy
                             to step outside and let the wind take care of the falling hair:)

                                     We'll miss you too, girls! Was great getting to know you!

About the same time the girls were boarding their plane to head back home, we were boarding the Osprey Shuttle to travel to Caricou, an island about 30 miles from Grenada. It is a small island, only 13 square miles, with a population of around 8,000 people. The youth are planning to hold their annual mission trip there this coming weekend, so we went to put up posters. They will have a one night crusade Friday evening and Bible Clubs for the children on Saturday. We got a motel for the night and traveled back on the same boat the next day. Chris was not looking forward to the ride back, since he found out on the way there, that he still gets horrible motion sickness. The water was quite choppy on the way there, and he was very glad to see land after the 2 hour ride. I don't know if it was his motion sickness pill or calmer seas, but he felt much better on the way home.

                  

       Hillsborough, the main town in Caricou. This town was the cutest, sleepiest, little town I ever saw!

                                             Some scenery pictures from Caricou...beautiful blue water!

           Made me wonder what prompted someone to post this large sign in their yard:)

    For you tractor lovers...this is a Fendt...not sure what year, but I imagine it dates back pretty far!

                                      Little white sailboats serenely resting in the deep blue sea

                                  Lazy, fluffy, white clouds slowly float over barren hills,
                                   while the dismantled red bus mourns it's demise

                           A desolate overgrown graveyard...if only old head stones could tell stories

It was fun seeing another island. Although it was very similar to Grenada, it had some of it's own unique characteristics. We were thankful for Thaddeus and Rose's willingness to babysit our children
while we were gone!
                                         

                                                             Cozy canine cuddles

Yeah, they love the mutt....and he loves them. My feelings can better be described as tolerate

                                           And that's the end, my friends!
                           Please continue to remember us in prayer. Your prayers are
                            as vital as the work we are involved in here on this little island.
                                                         Some prayer requests:
The need for pastors...it's so easy to look ahead and wonder if God will supply
our need for workers, but we want to trust that it's all in His control.

The need for teachers for the 2015-16 term

Scott and Yvonne Martin...planning to arrive in Grenada on March 5

Youth Caricou Mission trip