Make a Difference! (Matt. 25:31-46)
roger walter
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Senior Pastor http://bit.ly/qO3Vg
Seventh-day Adventist Community Church of Vancouver
Begin forwarded message:
From: DAN WESTONHello all,
I am sending this to everyone I can think of at the moment who may have some interest in my trip to Grenada. If you don't want to receive further messages please reply and ask me to delete you from the list and I will do so. I don't want to be a bother. If you think of others who may have an interest, please feel free to forward.
I arrived on the island of Grenada as scheduled at 7:30 last Tuesday evening. I was met by Sue Bartels and their two children Stephen (15) and Sarah (12). (I am here because John Bartels has some health issues that have made it necessary for him to be away for several weeks for treatment and the building project of a Christian television studio is right in the middle of construction, so he asked me to come and be his eyes and ears for a while.) It was already dark when I arrived so I didn't get to see any of the island on the way to the house where I am staying. I was taken to the site of the TV station the next morning and stayed busy the rest of the week. The house where I am staying is about a mile from the construction site so I have been walking back and forth morning and evening.
Sue had graciously provided some groceries to last me a couple of days. On Thursday afternoon she took me shopping in St. Georges for groceries. St. Georges still has many of the 18th century buildings. The streets are very narrow and steep. I went to an open-air market where I purchased some produce from the local growers and was accosted to purchase various articles made by local artisans. A very interesting place. I did go to an Ace Hardware store and an IGA supermarket as well to purchase some items. Sue chose Thursday afternoon because that is when the shipments of fresh groceries arrive on the island and the shelves are freshly stocked at the IGA supermarket. They even have a small mall with a dozen or so stores next to the IGA store.
On Saturday I attended a local SDA church in St. Georges where the Bartels' family are members. There are about 13,000 SDA members on the island of Grenada. The total population of the island is somewhere around 110,000.
Today I spent doing laundry and preparing for tomorrow when I expect to meet with another engineer from the island and plan to make some ground resistance measurements to verify if the grounding system design will be adequate to protect the electronic equipment inside the building.
The weather has been, well, tropical! It is not as humid as Guam was and not as hot. More like Hawaii, actually! Even though it is the "Dry Season", it has rained several times, sometimes quite heavy. It is the tropical type of rainstorm where it rains for a few minutes and then the sun comes out again. Yes, I did bring an umbrella! However, I need the umbrella more for shade than for protection from the rain. I forgot to add sunscreen a couple times and have gotten a small amount of sunburn – it doesn't take long when the sun is directly overhead. Maybe I will actually have some tan when I return!
I discovered that the buses don't run on Sunday, so I didn't have transportation to the beach today. Bummer! - a tropical island and I can't even get to the beach! I will check into a rental car for next weekend. I would like to visit the rest of the island. The locals call the southern part of the island the city and the northern part the country, so it must be less densely populated on the northern part. I am on the southern part not far from St. Georges in a community called St. Pauls. I still haven't been able to locate the house or the construction site on Google maps.
Grenada doesn't have very much level ground – either you are going up or down. The roads are all very narrow and the people drive on the wrong side of the street! The people are friendly and I have been treated well so far. Fortunately they all speak English, although there is some local dialect that sometimes makes it hard to communicate. On top of that the foreman on the construction site stutters which makes it harder to understand him.
More later.. :)
May God bless,
Dan
