Mother's Day

Dinah, not totally excited about the last blog when I had her read it, keeps reminding me that I cried twice on Sunday. Once during the Mother's Day service at church and then during the Amazing Race. But in my defence, it was Mother's Day... and they were manly tears that I quickly choked away. Besides, did you see Margie and her son Luke, who is deaf, come across the finish line? Needless to say - both of these events remind me of Deneen and it was a very emotional day yesterday. So Boo Hoo.

On Sunday we were going to do a two tank dive for free with a dive master whose parents are here for the week. But at 8:00 we were bumped in favor of paying customers. Dinah decided she wanted to go to church.

Everything is slow in the islands. And most Sundays it takes two hours to preach a 20 minute sermon. This Sunday was no exception. We stayed for a dinner after church. I have had not ever stayed before and I thought it might be fun.

Earlier I had decided to have Denzel spend the Sunday with us. I thought this would be good for reasons I won't go into. But this was also cool.

Anyway, church was two hours long - lunch was two hours long. Though church was packed. Less than half stayed for lunch. They sat Dinah and me at the head table with the pastor. I told Denzel to come join us, but then someone came and told him he could not sit at a table and made him move. Strike one.

The Baptist church I attend on Grand Turk was founded as a missionary church in 1838. The pastors have been typically called from Jamaica. Though I met the previous pastor, Reverend Woosley, when he visited on a cruise ship. He was English. The current pastor, Reverend Hall, is the first local pastor. He has been pastor for 32 years. At one time, thirty years ago, he was THE Baptist minister in the TCI and served all 13 Baptist churches. I learned all this at lunch.

After lunch we took Denzel snorkeling with us to Chief Minister's beach. My intention was to snorkel all the way to the wall on Mother's Day. we have not done this before either. I thought this would make a good blog. About half way to the wall, the one thing that could become a problem, became a problem. Boats.

When we were just over half way, two boats appeared on the horizon bearing down on us. We turned back to shore and swam out of the way. This was no easy swim. Fast and into the current. The swim exhausted Denzel and I had to assist him. Evidently, I am use to swimming with very strong swimmers. This has been an unknown blessing to me here. I nearly drowned Denzel. Strike two.

After spending the rest of the afternoon at the beach, we returned home and Denzel stayed for dinner. The evening turned out a little better for Denzel. No strike three. We watched one of the new James Bond movies and he anniliated me on Halo. I think he enjoyed the day. He came back over for dinner tonight.