In the Bahamas

To be completely honest, it's super hard to put into words everything that has happened, things that haven't happened, things that we are seeing, and that we aren't seeing, things that we understand, and things we don't understand. 

We have been traveling all over this beautiful island of Eleuthera experiencing a lot of God's incredible creation -- people and landscape. The following will be somewhat of an  explanation of what we have been doing while we have been here. 

On Sunday morning, our group left SIFAT to meet our pilots, Cameron and Steve (from Bahamas Habitat) at the Ashland, Alabama airport. Once we arrived, we loaded our belongings and food for the week into the planes, buckled up, head phoned up, and began our flight to the Bahamas. We had to take two planes to accommodate our group. These were very small, private planes, which are totally different than commercial planes that I am used to flying in. To say that the wind was blowing would be an understatement. We had to make a pitstop in Georgia and in Florida before we could leave the U.S. 

While in the air, our pilot, Steve would give us information about the plane, about the Bahamas and about everything we were seeing and hearing. The headphones (that Mary and I have on) were connected to those in our plane so we could communicate with one another (if you don't have them on, it is very loud and hard to talk back and forth), as well as to the radio control at different airports along the way. It was so interesting getting to hear all of the flight information that I didn't understand at all! 

We arrived in the Bahamas at around 4:30pm. We walked into a small airport where we had a few of the customs workers check and stamp our passports. We loaded all of our things into a couple of vehicles and traveled (on the left side of the road) to a house with a Christmas tree shining through the window. This house belonged to the Weinburger's. This family is one that Cameron knows very well and they invited our group over for pizza, mac and cheese, rice and beans, mini red-velvet muffins and Bahamian Goombay Punch. This welcoming family was our first taste of the incredibly joyous people that we have seen in so many of the Bahamians that we have met along the way. After the Weinburger's house, we got into the van and drove to the North part of Eleuthera and got on a "ferry" to cross over to Harbor Island where our place of rest was. 

(The captain of the ferry who taxis us from Eleuthera to Harbor Island and back again.)

The ferry is actually a motor boat that everyone piles into and travels the two miles across the Caribbean. Once we arrived at Harbor Island, we unloaded our things and walked up the hill to the Wesleyan Methodist Manse (manse = house), had worship together and crashed for the night. 

The next morning, we woke up and had a small morning reading and quiet time before we left for our activities for the day. We traveled to the main land and visited with a few more people that Cameron knows and then we drove all the way down to the southern tip of the island to take a tour at the Cape Eleuthera Institute/Island School. They are doing some pretty incredible stuff with sustainable resources such as, composting all waste materials, solar and wind energy, and bio-diesel. We really learned a lot about each of those and how much "off the grid" one community could be. Also, they offer a school for those in high school to enroll for one semester to learn and research all things marine. (Seriously check out their website.)

(This is one of the pigs that the Institute/School has on their property. They harvest majority of their livestock and vegetation to help keep down food costs.) 

After we left the Institute, we drove to a place called Lighthouse Beach. This was our first experience walking on Bahamian sand and touching the crystal clear water.

After the guys climbed on the rocks and we all took turns body surfing on the waves, we grabbed a bite to eat and headed back to the manse for worship before going to bed. 

Yesterday, we began the morning with prayer and quiet time, and loaded up to visit Current Island. Current Island is a small community made up of around 50 people who happen to all be family members through blood or by marriage. We took this boat across to Current Island to see the Zion Children's Home. 

"The The Bahamas Conference of the Methodist Church, Bahamas Methodist Haibtat and Bahamas Habitat, working with volunteers, donors, and The Government of The Bahamas are establishing a home on Current Island for abused, abandoned, and neglected children."

This is one of two buildings that will house the children and house parents. The projects will hopefully be completed in February. They are hoping to add a garden on the property as well. Future with some of SIFAT's appropriate technology??? 

We rode in the bed of a truck to get to the construction site, the church and then walked to see the school on the Island. 

(Bailey with some of the kids from the school on Current Island)

We went to Preacher's Cave for lunch, which is where some of the first settlers of the Island lived for a good while until they moved to another Island close by called Spanish Wells. This was a super cool rock formation/semi-cave that Addison and Dave really enjoyed playing around on and then we all ended up on the beach and what do you know? A rainbow popped out to see us!

After we left Preacher's Cave, we had the possibility of going to a place called Blackwood's, a Haitian squatter community. There is a law in the Bahamas that if you live on a piece of land for seven years, it becomes yours. So, this is where a lot of Haitians come to seek some sort of refuge, but also to find some work on Eleuthera Island. There is also a community right next to the Haitian squatter community that is where a lot of resorts and private homes are. It's wild to see extreme material poverty and extreme material wealth all in one glance. 

At the time, our entire group did not feel that it was best for us to enter into their community for several different reasons. We didn't want to seem like intruders as a large group of Caucasian Americans and there was a bit of uneasiness as we would be walking into some of these people's lives for the first and maybe last time. To be honest, I felt uncomfortable, which could be exactly where God wants me to be. We discussed good versus bad, help versus harm, and what our role in that situation would be, so we prayed about it and decided to leave and continue the conversation about that community over dinner that night. We are still wrestling with our role in that specific community with those specific people. (Please be in prayer for all of us as we continue thinking through the uncomfortable and the unknowns.) 

On our way back to Harbor Island, we stopped and marveled at The Glass Window Bridge, which, I believe is the skinniest part of the Island. It used to be a natural bridge until it no longer could withstand the massive waves. This is where the Caribbean and the Atlantic Oceans meet. Looking at the picture, on the left side of the bridge was the Atlantic and on the right side is the Caribbean. The Atlantic Ocean was roaring waves and the Caribbean was smooth as glass in some spots. The waves were incredibly powerful.

We ended the day watching the sun set at a small spot just off the Queen's Highway, the main road that runs from North to South on the Island. The water was pretty shallow for a ways out, so we took advantage of the last few rays of sun and the cool water to have a bit of frisbee playing and relay races. 

Again, we ended the night with dinner, worship and a time of prayer for the things that were on our hearts, for the Lord and his presence in the people here and in us, for God to continue feeding us and loving us, and for our words and our actions to be glorifying to God. We also got to speak with the pastor, John about his interaction with some of the people in Blackwood's. He knows a few of the Haitians who live there and he said he would go with our group to help maybe soften the lines and break down a possible barrier. He also reassured us that the Lord is moving and working in ways that we don't even know through us being here. God already has a plan. He is already in control of the situation and we are to have the ministry of presence in this place. 
Our responsibility is to go.  

Apologies for no pictures from today, as today ended up being a day of work -- let me explain.

The house we are staying in while in the Bahamas is the Wesleyan Methodist Church parsonage. John is the pastor of five churches throughout the Island and lives in the parsonage. One of those churches happens to be on Harbor Island. We asked him if there was anything that we could do to help him out at the parsonage or at any of his churches and he, of course, said...YES!!!!! The girls work on cleaning and organizing their Sunday School space, and the guys helped John power wash and clean up around the yard at the parsonage. This took a good while to take care of and all is not done yet, so a part of our Friday will be finishing up the loose ends before we leave on Saturday. 

We talked over lunch about how we all felt about going to visit the people who live in Blackwood's. Some of us were still wrestling with a lot of the specifics and logistics and plans and what happens in the future things. What we decided, was that it would be a place for us to be a light. Even if we don't get to come back, we could make some sort of helpful impact on either the kids we meet or any of the community members we communicate with while visiting with them. 
We decided to go. 

We also made the decision that taking my camera into their community and continually snapping pictures wouldn't be the best idea. We took Becca's phone to take some pictures, but it ended up not having a lot of battery left in it anyway. Maybe that was God saying...Be yourself. Give yourself. Be as much as you can be to the people you meet and don't take anything away from that.

We played soccer. We blew bubbles. We played Ring Around the Rosy. We played Dog-Catcher (a hit at County Road 88 in Alabama on Thursday's). We hugged. We played relay races. We played Duck, Duck, Goose. We sang a few songs. We laughed. We played with hair. We tickled. We circled up and said what we were thankful for. We prayed the Lord's Prayer. We loved so hard. We gave all we had. 

We went. Praise God that we went.

Gratitude goes out to: walking by faith