Catchin' up

We have still been crazy busy since Saturday so here is a brief catch-up list.

SATRUDAY: Jemulla Francois, one of  the local primary girls from the branch turned 8 last week and got to be baptized!  Her father baptized her (his first time baptizing anyone) in the Caribbean Sea and it was SO cool!  Everyone just met down at the beach, we had a little service, the baptism was performed, and they just pulled up a folding chair on the beach for Jemulla to sit on while they confirmed her a member of the church.  The Francois are such a great family and asset to the branch!

This is Jemullyn and Jemulla Francois, (fran*swaa).  All 5 kids in their family are really close and they are constantly watching out for each other, even if it's just keeping each other in line.
Here are the 4 elders on the island with the first semester students from the branch.  All of the missionaries down here are awesome, they are constantly on the go.  
After the baptism, we went with a group of friends to Secret Beach.  If you were really really ambitious, you go snorkel over there but most people hire a boat to take them there (which is what we did).  It's just a little strip of beach not far from our house that is really pretty.  The rocks are covered with snails and crabs and there are some cool places to snorkel.  A guy in the branch has a spear gun and went and caught an Angel Fish.  I had to jump at the chance to get my picture with it.  (sorry for posting so many horrible pictures of me swimming!)

These are just some more pictures from Secret Beach.  I was standing on one end of the beach to take the bottom picture.  As you can see, it's really not that big and the water is shallow for quite a ways into the ocean which makes it really green and pretty.

SUNDAY: Woke up at the crack of dawn, got ready, walked 45 minutes to church, arrived dripping in sweat, spoke in sacrament, taught in primary, sweat to death on the 45 minute walk home, ate, slept, made home made pretzels (a newly learned skill), ate, went to bed.  That pretty much sums up our Sundays. We got to speak in church for the 2nd time this semester.  I have a feeling that we will average about 2 times a semester due to lack of members. Since we've been married I haven't taken naps for longer than about an hour until we got here.  I can take a 3-4 hour nap here, it is insane!  Keith can out-sleep me by at least an hour, usually I have to wake him up for dinner around 6:00

MONDAY: We ran some errands, got Keith's Visa (finally-mine still hasn't come yet), got him a temp. driver's license, and rented a car for Tuesday.  Some of the buildings here are dirty and stuff, but the police station was easily the scariest, dirtiest building I have been in since being in Dominica.  Ironic?

TUESDAY: We had a rental car and moved to our new apartment.  We were going to move some of our things, go shopping around Portsmouth (where we live) and then into Roseau (the capital with grocery stores that have more than 5 isles)  and then finish moving in the evening. Grocery stores close between 5:00 & 8:00, so we wanted to make sure we could hit them all.  Luckily, we had all of our stuff packed up because when the cleaning lady came that morning, she said someone was moving in that afternoon and she needed us to get out as soon as possible so that she could clean.  WHAT?  I told the lady we would be out on Wednesday...  lucky for them, we were ready!  We moved and then loaded up on groceries.  We were able to get a lot of our back up water supply which makes me feel a lot better.  The water goes off randomly here and who knows when it will come back on....especially during hurricane season.    

TODAY: I'm finding any excuse possible to not unload our suitcases from moving yesterday, hence the reason for a mile long post on our  blog!   :)