DAY 17

Wednesday I spent the morning working in the office, but around lunchtime a huge storm came through and the power went out for about three hours. I couldn’t do much without internet or power, so it was a slow day.

Wednesday night we had intern Bible Study, and Brenda talked about the story of the Good Samaritan and related it to not letting ourselves become exhausted from serving others. We often take the commandment, “Love your neighbors as yourself,” to be a commandment telling us to love our neighbors, to love others, which is true, but we often forget the ending of the commandment: “as yourself.” Before we can learn to truly love others, we must first learn to love ourselves and overcome the critical thoughts that constantly circulate our minds. The Good Samaritan story exists inside all of us, and we have all been each of the characters in the story: the man walking down the road who is beat up, the priest who walks by, the Levite, and the good Samaritan. We’ve all been in every position, but we must love ourselves all the same because God loves us. This was an interpretation of the story I had never heard before and I enjoyed it.

DAY 18

Thursday I started on a big project in the office. BMH has two boards: an American board and a Bahamian board. Each group gets donations, which they keep track of in order to solicit more donations, but they have each been keeping track of their donations separately on different spreadsheets. In order to start a giving campaign to raise money, BMH needed to combine these spreadsheets into one master donor list. Unfortunately (or fortunately—depending on how you look at it) these donations go back to 2006 and there were over 1000. Also, different pieces of information were on different spreadsheets. So I spent half of Thursday, all of Friday, all of Monday, and half of Tuesday combining three spreadsheets into one and retyping over 1000 entries. It took around 22 hours total.

Thursday was my half-day off so I took a nap, read, called my mom, and updated the blog. Then on Thursday night KP gave a cultural talk to the group and I gave devotion.

DAY 19

I spent all of Friday working on my spreadsheets. Friday night was the closing bonfire at Abe’s with the group. It was great to hear this group tell stories from the week, where they saw God, and how this experience impacted them. It was a full moon tonight, and it was one of those huge, bright orange moons that is always beyond remarkable. The moon and its reflection on the water paired with the bonfire made for a spectacularly beautiful night.

The Moooooon

Fireside Tunes

Liz by the moon

DAY 20

Today we had breakfast at 5:15 and saw the teams off. Then we cleaned camp, ate lunch from a local barbeque place, took a nice long nap, and then went to Rainbow Inn next to Brenda’s house to swim and hang out. We ended up playing water polo for a while, and then went back to Brenda’s to shower for dinner.

We met up with Brenda at Rainbow Inn for dinner, and after a wonderful seafood dinner a musician named CJ started playing songs for open mic night and we all got up and danced. Tom, Ali, and I know how to swing dance and we tried to teach Jordan (which didn’t go so well) but it was so fun to all dance together. Afterwards we had a good conversation with CJ and learned more about where he came from and what he does.

Another guy came on stage at one point and played Wagon Wheel and it was wonderful.

Swing dancing the night away at Rainbow Inn

DAY 21

On Sunday we didn’t go to church because one of the teams came in at around 1:30 and we probably wouldn’t have been back from church by then (even though church starts at 11—yes it is usually a two to three hour service). The first team got there by 2:30, which meant we had about three hours until dinner, so Maggie and I took the group down to the Caribbean side to collect seashells and take pictures by the sea. It was nice to get to know the first group a little before the next group came in, since we had around 35 people here this week.

The next group came in around dinnertime, and after dinner we had orientation and then it was time for bed.

DAY 22

On Monday I again mostly worked on spreadsheets, and then that afternoon Maggie, Brenda, and I went running and swimming at Abe’s again. We headed back and had dinner, but unfortunately during dinner I started to get a migraine so I went to lie down. I thought I was going to be fine so I went up to intern Bible Study for a while where we laid on the porch with the sun setting in front of us and listened to Brenda read us the story of the valley of dry bones from Ezekiel over and over using different translations. We felt the wind as God’s breath all around us, and heard God’s message that “I have said it, and I will do it.” Having this faith that God brings us the life and is the life and through him we find life is vital to understanding the world we live in.

“37 The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath[a] enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”

And then I had to leave intern Bible Study early because the migraine came in full force, but when I recovered later I found that we each were given a sheet of paper and we passed them around and wrote nice things about each other on them. What a great thing to wake up to.

DAY 23

On Tuesday I finished my spreadsheets in the morning, then I worked on designing a tank for BMH for a while. Be excited. It’s pretty great (if I do say so myself).

Today was the After School Program’s End of Year party (and Liz’s last day in the Bahamas), so we picked all the kids up from school and took them to Cocodimama Beach and we swam and played games and ate food for a few hours. These kids are so much fun to hang out with, and it has been a wonderful pleasure to have been able to play with them twice a week for the past few weeks. They have so much love in their hearts and so much potential. It was a wonderful way for us to be able to finish our time with the kids.

On Tuesday night we again went with the group to Bible Study at the church, which this week was led by Freddie Ferguson, the music director at Wesley Methodist Church. After church we had devotion, and then we had circle time outside where we went around the circle and said our best and worst moments with Liz (because she was leaving the next morning). My worst moment was at Pineapplefest when she burped in my face without turning away. Or when we were both in the room in the middle of the day and she kept trying to peer pressure me into turning on the AC (which isn’t allowed except for at night). My best moment was when we would walk to the store together and talk. I’m sure glad I met Liz Jackson.

Never a Quiet Bus

DAY 24

This morning I had planned to take a sunrise hike to the Atlantic side of the island with the encouragement of one of the team members from Northside UMC. I announced it the night before, and 13 people showed up for the hike at 5:30 am. We made our way through the trail in the dark and made it to the Atlantic for a beautiful, cloudy sunrise. It was beyond worth it to get up that early for such a beautiful experience.

Sunrise group

I went on site this day also, so when we got back to camp I had to change and pack up my stuff for the work site. Then we said bye to Liz and took group pictures in front of the cross.

Bye Liz

I went to the worksite with a group of girls from Northside UMC in Jackson, TN. Our site leader was Pedro, who I had never talked to much but is a wonderful person. We were working on Mr. Warren’s house in Hatchet Bay. Mr. Warren lived in Nassau and worked at the airport for thirty years, but was forced to retire early after a series of procedures. He moved back home to Eleuthera, but his house was is disrepair and needed a lot of work. Previous teams had torn down the walls and ceilings in three rooms and replaced them with fresh sheet rock. We worked on patching, painting, and sanding these walls and ceilings for most of the day.

We went to the beach after work, which is always nice, and then headed back to camp for dinner. After dinner, our local Christian rapper C-Dash came to perform for the teams. He was very good at engaging the audience in his songs, and it was so much fun to sing along with him and the groups.

C-Dash the rapper

DAY 25

This morning I worked on typing up on a spreadsheet the names and information of the kids who have signed up for the kids camp that BMH is hosting in July. Then, Brenda, Maggie, Madison and I loaded up our sound system and twenty folding chairs and drove over to the James Cistern Primary School for graduation. One of our After School kids, Ancito, was the only person in the sixth grade this year, so the whole celebration was for him. The superintendent, principle, teachers, and community members all came together to celebrate his success. All the kids filed in, which was neat to see because we knew all of them. Then people spoke and kids sang and danced and people talked about Ancito’s successes and all he has done and will do in the future. The whole ceremony lasted two hours. In the states, we get upset if a high school graduation lasts two hours for 400 students. And around forty people attended a two hour ceremony for one student graduating sixth grade. Ancito (along with another boy LJ) have been working two days a week at BMH as well as being leaders at After School in order to earn a laptop, so Brenda presented Ancito with his laptop at graduation. Ancito also gave a very emotion filled address thanking all those who have influenced him over the years.

I had never seen them this behaved before

Shawnae, Ranique, Ojay, Nicolette, Camia

Ansito being escorted

Ansito's speeches

It was great to see the community come together like that for education, but after we left Brenda told us how Ancito is an illegal immigrant here (he is Haitian) and doesn’t have any papers, which means he won’t actually be able to attend high school most likely or represent the Bahamas in the Olympics like they were saying he could. And there isn’t anything they can do to change that.

After saying bye to all our kids and Ancito, it was our day off so we went back to camp and packed up our stuff to go to a resort called SkyBeach where we could swim at the pool. On the way we stopped at one of Brenda’s friend’s houses, and as we pulled into the little neighborhood we quickly realized that this was much more like the Bahamas people think of when they think of vacation. Two golf carts in the driveway, a hammock on the screened in wrap-around porch, no one would complain in this neighborhood. One of the houses used to be owned by the English Royal Family. It’s so crazy to think that this neighborhood exists on the same island as the communities where we are doing our mission work.

SkyBeach was closed for a special event, so Brenda said we could go back and swim at the pool in her friend’s neighborhood. So Maggie, Madison and I slept by a private pool with a view of the Atlantic and the sound of waves that the Royals have probably swam in before. Life is good today. 

It was a good day