First Sunday Meeting

Group when the road is safe...r!

     Getting Settled In

It sure doesn't take long to feel like you have family in our organization!  This family left today for Columbia and I thought I was going to cry saying goodbye.  The picture to the left was the group at our first Sunday meeting(plus me, taking the picture).  We were a bit disappointed until we realized that the torrential downpours from the night before had made "The Road"  extremely dangerous for travel due to landslides and boulders.  I say "The Road" because there is only one main road on the entire island.  So if "The Road" isn't good, you're not going anywhere.  The group here may be small, but they definitely have mastered the feeling of the worldwide brotherhood.  Each person has a special, important role to play.  When one is missing, the entire group really feels it.  To the right is Canyon giving his first Bible Reading in Saba.  There is much for everyone to do, so it is nice to see Canyon excited to jump in and want to help out as much as he can.  Of course, this is inside of the little Kingdom Hall.  Brothers came from Florida and helped them to remodel it and fix it up.  We take things like that for granted in the states, but for a little isolated group like this such acts of kindness really help them to feel like they "matter".   Meetings are a lot of fun. Clint is doing an amazing job with trying to help both

Service in 'The Bottom"...haven't found the top yet.

the Spanish and English in the group.  He spends hour upon hour preparing in both languages.  Everyone works as a team to make the meetings understood by everyone.  If someone doesn't understand, someone else jumps in and translates.  We all laugh a lot! One of Canyon's duties each meeting is to catch the anoles(like lizards...ADORABLE!)and put them outside...he found out the hard way that lizards are to some sisters here as spiders are to some sisters at home...only they can jump farther :)

Amber :)

THE MINISTRY:  We are enjoying doing quite a few Bible studies.   When we arrived, there was a list of names of those who like to study and we have been slowly finding them and making arrangements with them.  One is with a group of children.  Clint had a bible study with the older boy, 13, and Canyon and I took the 5 younger ones, ages 3-10.  It was so much fun!  When we arrive they all came out to meet us with their Bibles and books in their hands eager to study.  I had printed out some activities from JW.org to do and Canyon read to them Bible

"The Bottom" where many in the congregation live.

stories that went along with the printouts.  I think we will be excited to go see them every week!  Several of the kids were at meeting today!  I hated to take photos as we are just getting to know the students, but perhaps in the future... These other pictures are just some fun things we have seen while out in the ministry.  After the ministry one day, we took a tour of an organic farm.  A volcanic island and a rain forest do not give you ideal soil...so the cows on the island help out with that.  Only problem...there are only 4 cows on the island...so every drop of
fertilizer is precious!  We have a goal of meeting

Parsley...his favorite herb.

all four cows and naming them. We called the one above "Amber" since he is brown and his contributions are so precious.  The tour was very educational...and yummy!  They insisted we help ourselves to some produce and spices. We got to ask all our questions about how to take care of our banana trees behind the cottage.  Did you know they die after they produce a bunch of bananas?  We can't wait to harvest ours!!!  



"The Road" is a story all in itself.  It is 10 miles long and connects the 4 little towns.  You are looking at it in this picture...the main road on the island under construction.  They are trying to make it wider and this is the only piece of heavy machinery we have seen them use.  Other than this it seems to be shovels, wheelbarrows, and strong backs.  They take the stones out of what they are knocking down and hand build a stone wall.  It is beautiful when they are done...and a little less frightening on the spots that are wider!  The views from it are amazing, but you better not even attempt a glance if you are driving.  Again...this is the only road, so everyone needs to be on island time and not really care if they are delayed.  Driving is a bit frightening.  We have been here nearly two weeks and I just started driving a bit...and I am terrified to drive in town!!!  What we consider one lane in PA is often 2 lanes with parking on the side!  Everyone is constantly backing up and squeezing through.  Most cars have their sides scraped up.

"The Road" on a good day.

Living Room/Dining Room/School Room/Office

Saban weather forecast:  Yep, it's gonna rain in 5 minutes...again!



We hung feeders and have lots of cute birds coming already.  Even a crested hummingbird!

There are goats EVERYWHERE.  We went for a hike and they couldn't figure why we were on their turf.
It was so steep and rocky we really felt like we were part of their family.  They hunt goats here just like we do deer.
Only difference is they actually own the goats and hunt the island searching for THEIR own goats to shoot. 

"Tropic" birds with long tails.

The beach we hiked to one evening in hopes of going swimming...treasure hunting instead.

It may not have been good for swimming, but it sure was beautiful!

                                                                          

You can see better in this picture why we didn't swim.  Can't go swimming?  No problem...rock climbing is always fun, too!

Second stage of our trip...Shawn and Becky Light arrive. YIPPEE!! They graciously offered to come and help out with the meetings so Clint wouldn't be doing all the brothers parts himself.  Clint will have some help from here on out, so life will be a little less stressful...YEAH!!!  They flew into the airport...the smallest commercial runway in the world...in high winds...we took the ferry:)  We watched them land...wow... This picture shows nearly the entire runway, their plane, and the airport.  The end of the runway that you see...a 100' cliff into the ocean.  It is funny that we have only been here two weeks, but already knew quite a few in the crowd at the airport.  The island population is only around 1,800.

Yeah...Shawn and Becky are here!

They flew in Saturday evening and Shawn gave the talk Sunday morning.  You don't get a break here!  No torrential rains this time, so we had 19 at meeting! 

Shawn's first time giving a talk that is translated into Spanish.  He started out with an illustration with all these big complicated science words....the sister translating,and all of us, eventually had to just laugh at any attempt to translate it.  We didn't even understand them and English is our first language!  He quickly saw our lost looks and simplified it 'on the fly'.  He even kept his cool while a little girl was playing peek-a-boo with him at the door beside him!  He is adapting quite well to the uniqueness of it all and gave a great talk.  Clint is getting to be an expert at conducting the Question and Answer parts, though he humbly thinks he is struggling.  This is the first meeting that felt somewhat "normal". 

This is our 2 1/2 hour family meeting we had to get Canyon's talk #3 out for next week.  He insisted that he give it in both languages so everyone could understand it...and HE hand wrote it out in both languages!  He really got into it and had fun doing most of it himself.  Clint helped him translate it with the help of google translate.  Think of him,and pray for him,this week when you hear the talk on how Jesus set a pattern for us.  It is a pretty big task to take on for a kid that just turned 9!  He has really embraced doing all he can to be encouraging to the friends here.  You should hear his voice in a little concrete Kingdom Hall.  Everyone here is loving his enthusiasm for singing and joining in.  It sounds so beautiful with both languages so heartfelt at the same time.  I am sure it can be heard from blocks away!  If I am tech savvy enough, I will tape it and put it on the blog next week. 

Endless beautiful views!  Until next week........

We made it to Saba!



Canyon loves airplanes!

We traveled from St. Martin by cargo ship...to cheap to fly:)

Sometimes just getting to where you are going turns out to be an adventure in itself.  Though this time it helped to make it clear to us that Jehovah wanted us to come to Saba.  Every obstacle just fell to the wayside with a prayer and a day of patience.  See, we had wrote to several branches and Mexico assigned us a congregation to go to help out.  We contacted the brother in the congregation there and he excitedly started helping us to make plans to go in January.  Unexpectedly, the congregation in Mexico got dissolved!  How disappointing.  We had
 already started making our plans.  That 

The trip was beautiful and nobody got sea sick!  It gave us a
to get to know some the local Sabans.

 Sunday we walked into the Spanish meeting excited to welcome back the McKinney family from there recent trip to serving in Saba.  Rather than tell us about their trip, they immediately started asking us where we were going this winter.  We told them of our disappointing news about Mexico to which they smiled and asked us to consider going to Saba.  Here it turns out that there weren't going to be any servants in Saba to do the meetings for the months of November and December.  We weren't planning on going until January.  So we said we would go home and give it some thought.  There was no way we could go in November, but what was there to think about...we had to offer to go in December even though we knew we would be pushing it to get things in order.  Now...lodging...WAY expensive!  What are we to do?  Pray!  The next day a cottage fell into our laps for a good deal(thanks Grimsleys!) Next flights...only ones that we could get with our air miles were from JFK, yuck! How would we get there?  Pray!  Next day at meeting Messermans offered to take us(thanks Dan and Jan!)  I still felt horrible to make them take us, there has to be another way...they are so busy...yep...Pray!  I remembered Cindy got married and moved up there...maybe she has some advice.  Can you believe, her kids were going to be down our way visiting grandparents and they needed a ride home when we needed a place up there to stay and park our truck.  PERFECT! We gave her kids a ride and she gave us a place to stay and park our truck(thanks Mike and Cindy!) A flight and a ferry ride later and here we are!

The view from Maggie's Cottage where we are staying. 

 So, here is our home away from home.  We are

Maggie's Cottage

 renting it from a brother that comes here six months of the year to help out.  Saba is literally a mountain coming straight out of the water.  The only flat spots are those semi leveled for a house.  The house may be small, but the view is breathtaking!  We thought we would have to take a taxi from the ferry, but some of the friends were there to greet us and give us a ride.  As we had got up at 3am, didn't get off the ferry until about 7pm, AND we had no idea where the cottage was, we were very thankful(thanks Bennet, Aleida, and Consuelo)!  The next night was Clint's first meeting in Spanglish.  We spent

The view from above the cottage.  You can see St. Eustatius
in the distance. Behind it is St. Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat.
Turn your head to the left to see St. Martin & St. Barts.

 the next day busily unpacking, getting things running in the house(it had been closed up), getting talks out, and doing school.  So for those of you that said, "Have a great vacation", HAHA!  Of course, Clint did a great job with his first meeting.  The wonderful friends helped every step of the way.  Some parts and comments were translated...into English if they were given in Spanish and vice versa.  The singing was in both languages.  Everyone gave their comments and talks in whatever language they were comfortable with...sometimes it was a mix of both.  Everyone, all 11, made us feel very welcomed.  Oh, I almost forgot.  Remember how there weren't going to be any brothers here to do meetings the month of November?  We were told that a brother had left the day before we arrived.  "What brother?", we asked.  We had been told they had no one for November.  They obviously had Jehovah looking out for them.  A brother just happened to 'randomly' come here for the month of November on vacation and decided to go to meetings while he was here.  Imagine his surprise when he went to his first meeting and got asked to help the sisters do meetings that month!!!  He did his best to encourage them and they were very appreciative!  The timing was far to exact for it to be a coincidence(thanks Jehovah!)

The Kingdom Hall is very nice!

 Candy and her daughter, Esmeralda invited us out in the ministry right away.  We had a list of names of those who liked to study, but no idea where they were located.  Esmeralda happily spent the morning helping us make contact with some of them.  The first one I went to said she was excited to resume her study, asked for all the magazines she had missed, and told me she wanted to get baptized!  There are more that want to study than the local sisters can keep up with even though it is a small island.  They are all doing their best and seem to have studies at all times of the day/week.  It is refreshing to see  
such an interest in studying the Bible!  By the time the day was over, we had 6 studies scheduled for Tuesday and 1 for Monday...and we haven't even gotten through half of the names on the list!  All were eager to resume their studies.  We are anxious to work the territory.  Informal witnessing has been going great.  Canyon is having fun placing tracts anytime we are out and about getting groceries, etc.  Lots of people ask us why we are here, so that lends itself to some terrific conversations.  I stopped in a shop to pick up a map of the island and was chatting with clerk.  It turns out her family is
 here because her husband is a medical student.  He was raised as a witness, but left as a teen.  They now have a kid, so she said he is taking life more seriously and going back to medical school to be a doctor.  She happily took the latest magazines...you never know what else he may take more seriously now!  You can see by the maps that every house on the island is mapped out.  We think we are #8.  One of the maps has the names of all the homeowners on it!  Small island, indeed. 

Making a truffala tree forest...crafting.

I also included the picture of the school schedule we received to show you how busy meetings will be.  You can see we all have parts every week.  Almost everyone does until you account for demonstrations.  Actually, I am glad I just looked at it.  I was helping Canyon work on his Bible reading and forgot I have a talk!   

 After school on Thursday, we finally made it to a little beach.  It is a man made area for the kids since the coastline is mostly steep cliffs plunging into the ocean.  It just so happens it is on our side of the island...YEAH!  The sand is a bit deceiving.  It is so hard that Canyon broke his shovel trying to make a road.  The water was a perfect temperature and clear.  We will have to come back with our snorkel gear. 

 

Canyon misses his kitties and hamster, but he is always good at finding new fun creatures to enjoy!  He caught a lot of
anoles so far.  The top one was on the window over my bed and the one below was in the Kingdom Hall. 



The peak is Mt. Scenery.  It is 2,877ft to the top.  We will be hiking up there!