Another week has flown by, I cant believe it is already August! I am so sad every Saturday, and today was no different. The group this week was from a christian summer camp in Texas called T Bar M. It was ten high schoolers and then two leaders. The five guys were Robert, Joshua, Ryan, Nick, and JT and the five girls were Kathryn, Anna Lisa, Connally, Emily, and Sarah. The couple who lead them, Brittany and Grant were also great. We did a mission trip up in Rock Sound, Eluthera which I had never been to before and it was a blast. The fourteen hour sail, not so much. The way back came a day early, on Thursday, because of the threat of Tropical Storm Emily but the seas were pretty calm for our crossing. Friday apparently the seas were 7-9 so we were glad we came over early! The group was so fun and they all got along so great considering none of them knew each other and they seemed to enjoy all the work they got to do. Bruce and Sheila had a good friend, Sherry also come out for the week. She usually comes with a group of girlfriends but none of them could come so she joined this group for time to catch up and enjoy the Star. She used to sing country up in Tennessee and brought her guitar and would sing every night! It was wonderful and she was so great of a singer. We got spoiled.
In Rock Sound they held a sports camp every evening for kids of all ages. They had about 30 kids show up and they all seemed to love the camp. They played basketball, soccer, football, all kinds of games and I even saw some hula hoops! At the end of the day they would sit down and give talks in each age group about Christ and it seemed to be a big success. We also spent time outside of Green Castle, about twenty minutes away working on building a house for a woman who had slowly been getting her house built by missionary groups. I did a lot of primer painting but didn't get much in my hair, success. We got a good bit of work done in just three days.
Highlights of the week include seeing a rainbow over rock sound as we came into anchor, the ocean hole, eating dingle dogs, watching the group interact with the kids, working on the house, fresh baked bread from woman down the street, the neighbor bringing us fried chicken and fried plantains. Also, listening to good music with the group every night and watching them play liars dice (still not sure of the rules) and learning and playing the dart game (if you make eye contact with someone and they pretend to shoot you with a blow dart you have to play dead until someone pulls it out). Listening to Sherry play the guitar every night and JT too. Having the first lobsters of the season in a delicious lobster omelet. Listening to great songs by the best such as The Beatles, Janis Joplin, even some Dylan. It was so fun especially “American Pie” and “Hallelujah”. One of my favorites from the week was the night Matt, Sherry and I snuck off to get Dingle dogs (hot dogs from dingle motors – the gas station) and missed the dingy back to the boat. So while waiting for the dingy to come back to avoid being eaten alive by mosquitoes we started pacing the dock which turned into “Father Abraham” which Matt and Sherry actually participated in! Then came “Bob and the Button Factory” and the Bananas song and any other songs we could think of and dance to! It was a blast! My other favorite memory was the night Matt and I were sitting in the galley and noticed the jacks container so we started playing jacks on the galley table. I quickly lost the ball and it somehow became a game of spinning jacks and hitting other spinning jacks. Needless to say it was very entertaining and slowly people started coming down and seeing us play. The next thing we knew there was 7 of us fighting over jacks and playing this game we created. It was very hilarious and fun and half the group was always “dead” from the dart game. I really enjoyed everybody and was very sad to see the week come to a close. Their passion for kids and Christ was overwhelming and the joy on the boat was such a blessing and yet again a hard goodbye.
