Thursday update

Today went well. Several of the crew picked up trash early this morning in the ditch we cleaned out last year. Laurel seems to have been a hit with some of the older ladies in the FUIK neighborhood by making brownies for them today as part of a presentation to them.

Chika prepared lunch once again for the group. It consisted of (you now have Doris talking as Gene missed this lunch) chicken stew, white rice, peas and carrots and glass cake. Glass cake in a jello-o type mixture and we were very honored because it is not the norm for them to serve dessert. Chika also served more of her homemade juices. She is trying to encourage the use of native plants in cooking and healing in Curacao. They were interesting flavors. The youth have been wonderful about trying new things and very nice manners have been used to thank our hostess. This is still Doris talking...we met a missionary, Joan, who is now living in Fike and has offered her home for our next visit. She said she could take 20 if we did not mind waiting on bathroom time. She lives on Emma's block and is a teacher now. Her husband is very kind and they have 4 grown children. Joan is about to be a Grand Ma for the first time so we had a lot of celebrating and thanking God for our children, it is just a joy to be here. Now back to Gene...

Allan Murphy took his group to the beach near the old quarantine building this afternoon around 2 pm. Our youth were invited, so they and a couple of adults went with them. The remainder of our group joined the advance guard just as the Alabama group was heading back to the Pearl. The evening was capped off with fine dining at McDonald's along Ring Road. Everybody ate outside. Especially for those that still have their not completely dry swim attire on underneath, the place felt like it was freezing. The persistent Curacao breeze was a great improvement to indoor dining there. Most of us ate on the edge of their very large outdoor playground. At the end, we even congregated in one corner of the area to have a brief devotional. Arrival time at the houses was around 9 pm and we are in those early stages of clean up where you try to get the obvious things in order now since we know Friday night will really be compressed. Saturday morning will be a 4:30 wake-up which is only an hour earlier than we have been observing, but still early enough that we do not want to have to do all the clean up on Friday night.

VBS may end about an hour early tomorrow and we will come back to the house for dinner. We have been told not to eat dessert and we are requested to meet our hosts at 7 pm at a location to be revealed tomorrow.

There are far too many stories to relay here and some will be new to me since the driving we have been doing keeps Steve, Brian and myself away from the action quite a bit. What I do know is that the group here is highly appreciative of the support they have received this year. The numbers remained high today. Another of those rough measures I use to gauge attendance is how many van trips it takes to move folks. The youth were out at Caracas Bai today and it took 8 trips to get them to FUIK. Two of those were Cesar's large van.

I am going to say goodbye for now.

Goodnight,

gene