Archives for April 2013

There are so many wonderful things happening with CEF in St. Kitts and Nevis! The TCE class (Teaching Children Effectively) in Nevis is going great. And our first ever church partnership After-School Good News Club begins next Tuesday!

“Normal” life here is a roller coaster. Wonderful things are usually followed by not-so-wonderful things… and the hard times are usually followed by awesome times. We (as in the expatriates living here) have a saying, “OISK”… Only In St. Kitts.

For example, you are running late to an appointment and hit traffic… which isn’t normal on an island with 40,000 people… only to find out the reason for the back up is an abandoned tractor in the middle of the road… surely it broke down you think… but it’s just the driver’s lunch break (true story)… well that would be an OISK moment!

Unfortunately, this time… it’s my fault and St. Kitts had nothing to do with it.

On Saturday Sean traveled to Nevis for the TCE class and called around 4:30 to let me know he was heading back and I needed to pick him up at the port. So I got Maddy into the van, got in myself and proceeded to back out of the driveway only to drive into the wall in front of me.

Our driveway has a decent incline so I’m not sure if I put the van in reverse and didn’t hit the gas hard enough, rolling into the wall…. or if I put the van into drive thinking it was in reverse. Either way… it’s the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done.

The van is fine… Maddy and I are fine… the wall is NOT fine. Apparently the top part of the wall was made with solid concrete but the middle section, where the van hit, was made with hollow cinder blocks filled with crumbly rocks and sand. So once one block crumbled… a chain reaction was set off and more than half the wall tumbled down the stairs below.

Here are some pictures…

Thankfully we didn’t go over the edge…. and despite how awful it looks, the van really just has a few scratches. I don’t think I actually hit the wall as hard as it looks. Still… it is definitely embarrassing and I am learning a humility lesson for sure.

Although Sean says the wall can be replaced easily by himself and a couple other guys, we know our property manager will want it professionally done. So we will be getting an estimate in the next coming days. We have a property damage clause on our auto insurance so we are hoping this will be covered. Either way, it hopefully won’t be too expensive to replace.

Maddy told me not to drive into walls again… and I plan to park much differently from now on!

Life on the roller coaster is never dull!

Things have been busy around here lately. Last week we had the privilege of spending time with the Willis Family from Heritage Baptist Church in Prattville! They were here on vacation, along with some of their daughter’s friends, and kindly made time to meet with us and help us in our ministry.

Sean took the girls to a school in Sandy Point and Tyrell Williams Primary where they shared the Gospel and loved on the kids in several classes. Their help was needed! Sean asked some of the kids if they knew what Easter is all about and they told him Easter meant flying kites. Flying kites is a tradition in St. Kitts on Easter weekend… people from all over the island get together to fly kites and have competitions. But it was sad that for these kids, flying kites was the reason we celebrate Easter.

Celebrating Easter

On Good Friday we had a service at the beach with our church Caribbean Christian Fellowship. It was such a blessing to see lots of people there and to worship the Lord surrounded by such a beautiful setting!

Caribbean Christian Fellowship started a few years ago as a Bible Study for some of the expatriate vet students on the island and has grown into a small church. People from several schools now attend along with expatriates working in St. Kitts and even some locals. There are over 1000 students studying here and the vast majority of them are not Christian. Many of the students party and drink way too much every weekend. It’s not uncommon for the Christian students to be ostracized because of their beliefs. The original Bible Study was actually kicked off campus because they refused to compromise their beliefs. It seemed kind of strange for us to move away from America to get plugged into an American church! But we love our church family here in St. Kitts and want to do what we can to encourage the Christian students and help them reach out to their peers.

On Easter the service pretty much doubled! We are praying for many of these students… that God would work in their hearts and they will continue coming to church.

Mission Trip Team

The Graysons are hosting their first mission trip of the year and they are teaching a 5 Day Club with us! The team has Christian Youth in Action teens and Good News Club volunteers from Fort Wayne, Indiana! Sean has been helping with the driving and hanging out with the group. Their 5 Day Club is at Tyrell Williams Primary (the same school the Heritage Baptist girls taught at last week) and is going great! The school was actually on holiday Monday and Tuesday morning and we still had kids show up!

The team has only a few more days left… they will be leaving on Monday. It’s been such a blessing to partner with them!

Weather

Summer is definitely coming… the breeze is slowing down and the temperature continues to rise. Before the last 7 days it had only rained three times since we came back in January. With it being so dry, we’ve had LOTS of fires. By March we already had 50% of the amount of fires from all of 2012! It’s really sad when driving around the island to see so much vegetation gone or brown. They don’t fight fires here like we do in America… they just kind of let them burn out on their own. In the last week we had three good soaking days. Hopefully the trend will continue! Some of the neighborhoods are having their water shut off every evening from the lack of rain.

In April

Maddy will be starting a local dance class on the 6th! The Nevis Teaching Children Effectively class starts next Saturday. Right now we only have two people signed up and we really need to have at least four. Sean will have to pay to ride the ferry there and back every Saturday for six weeks so we are praying for two more people to register. The Graysons are having another mission trip that we will help out with and we are continuing to work on getting two after school Good News Clubs started.

We are also praying that we can fix our van this month. In May we will host our first mission trip team and we really need new suspension and shocks before then.

Thank you everyone for keeping up with us, praying for and supporting the ministry in St. Kitts and Nevis!