Family Day

Kevin has declared Monday's family day. So far, we usually go shopping and out to lunch somewhere. When we get home, the boys do school in the afternoon. Today, we decided to go "exploring" on the southern coast...east of Kingston. We took swimming clothes just in case we found a place to go swimming!

The roads down here are horrible! So we drove close to a couple of hours on winding roads, through several small towns right on the coast. Every now and then we'd get a glimpse of the ocean, (Caribbean sea). Each small town you drive through looks like....well the ghetto. Downtown ghetto. With lots of people walking all around. I was getting a little down at heart. Here we were driving, driving, driving, and all we were seeing was ghetto!!
Just as we were coming into an area known as St Thomas, we came around a curve, and there it was, the most beautiful bright green and blue waters. The sun was so bright it was reflecting off of the water, and there were sparkles dancing on the waves....BREATHTAKING FOR SURE!! It took a few minutes, but we found a turn off to the shore...the beach was trashed, garbage everywhere, but RIGHT NEXT TO THIS BEACH, was a fenced off beach, very clean!! There was only one lone person at either beach, just sitting there looking at the water, and they left when we pulled up. We all walked to the water, which also was the end of the fence, crossed over to the other beach, and settled in!
I'm not real fond of ocean swimming, and the Lord knows me...so on this private beach, He had a roped off area with buoys floating on the water, so we would know where it was safe!! Sandy bottomed too...I walked to the end of the buoys and it was barely past my waist!!
We had a great time! The water was really like bathwater! The waves were hardly noticeable. Joey chased crabs around alot. Nathan and I looked for shells, we all went swimming...AND WE WERE ALL ALONE!!
We noticed at the end of the beach were these huge rocks...too tall to even climb. So we walked over, and saw that on the other side of these huge rocks was a small beach area, surrounded by the mountains. It was like a little cove, hidden from veiw until you went way over. So Kevin walks into the water, (waist deep) walks around the huge rocks, and gets to the other side where the cove was. Soon enough we all made it over. There my boys found a huge lizard crawling up the mountain, and lots of bamboo that had washed ashore. We pretended we were the Swiss family Robinson...it was so much fun! Derek carried the bamboo back to the other side later, and floated on it the rest of the day.
Serving God is Awesome! I was thinking today, it is amazing that we even have an opportunity to serve in this country. God has directed our path to this destination for the time being, and yet we still get to enjoy it as well.
Anyhow, sorry this is so long, We just had a great day!!