Greetings!

We’ve been in St-Martin nearly 3 weeks and oh, how time flies! My parents were with us the first two weeks, discovering the island at the same time as us. There is much to see and do, but getting settled on the boat has been keeping us busy enough. There has been lots of wind in the past weeks, 15-20 knots with gusts up to 30. The wind would just howl, especially at night when it is usually calm. We thought we’d never get any sleep, but finally, things have settled. We are anchored inside the lagoon, where the water is always calm, although not clean enough to swim in. The past few days, we’ve had rain. On Xmas, it rained so hard, we were able to fill up our reservoirs and I was even able to do laundry in the kitchen sink, changing the rinse water 4 times. Days like this are a welcome break from the sun and allow us to watch movies all day without feeling guilty.

We’ve met the brothers and sisters of the Marigot Spanish congregation. There are about 38 publishers, 4 elders, and 3 pioneers. They are happy that we are here, as the Spanish don’t get visitors very often. Needless to say, there is a lot of work to be done in the ministry, but getting started in a new congregation is always slow. There are no service groups during the week, only on Saturday and Sunday, which are field service ‘’territory’’ days. The pioneers work full-time and go out a couple hours in the evenings doing return visits and studies. There are no territory cards and no way of knowing where the Spanish live. The brothers simply go by memory—one door here, one there... On Saturday morning, the brother in charge simply directs the group to where the group left off last Sunday. So for now, we are very dependent on the brothers and the week-end outings. We are working on finding our own calls and studies. We start our mornings early doing street witnessing. Richard has already been asked to take the service group this coming Sunday.

There is a nice mix of cultures in St-Martin. Many people speak at least 2 languages, including French, English, Haitien Creole, Patois, Dutch, Spanish... There are even a lot of East Indians who own the duty-free jewelry stores in Philipsburgh.

Now that my folks have left, we are trying to get settled into a routine. Richard likes to go for a run in the morning, then stop at a French café for a cappuccino and croissant. One thing we appreciate about the island is all the diversity and the fact that you can find anything in the grocery stores. There are lots of fruit and vegetables, sprouts, asian ingregients and lots of French cheeses and wines. There hasn’t been anything that I can’t find. There are even a couple of health food stores. We still haven’t found our routine with preaching yet, but I’m sure that things will fall into place soon. The congregation seems to have been through a rough patch recently and are still picking up the pieces. Hopefully our presence can be encouraging and add breath of fresh air.

We don’t have an internet connection on the boat as we did last year, which explains
why our blog hasn’t been updated yet. We will try to keep you posted as often as possible and write every couple of weeks. We think about you often.

A bientot.