April 12, 2009

Elder Faux inadvertently erased last weeks pictures tonight so slim pickings this week. It makes us sick as we had some prize pictures we will not ever be able to duplicate. The elders took us to a couple of places during the week that had Dora asking them if they realized how old we are. One trip climbing mountain sides then the other traipsing across an investigators five acre or so garden. While there we were a little behind the elders when one of them tripped and fell completely out of sight because of the terrain. But we have kept up with them and we are not backing off. April 10 being Good Friday it is a national holiday in St Lucia. We accepted an invitation to join a family as they had the day off. They provided our first opportunity to enjoy a true St Lucian meal; a choice of fish; don’t remember the kind, stirred in with cabbage, carrots, and other greens, three large pieces of bread fruit, three or four pieces of yellow Plantain, two pieces of their sweet potato, and a green salad. The bread fruit taste really bland and dry in our opinion. It required a sip of water to moisten it while chewing. The yellow plantain was somewhat tasty just had too much, and the green salad was good. Dave makes this salad sound wonderful, what it was was a little piece of lettuce and a small piece of tomato and no dressing. The plantain is a fruit that looks exactly like a banana but it is hard to peel and needs to be cooked to taste good. Our plates were heaping and we both wondered how we would ever eat it all but we did. Glad for that so they didn’t get an impression we didn’t like what they had prepared for us and which they enjoyed so much themselves. They had grown most of this food in their garden. We had pictures of this meal we were so anxious to send and now a description will have to suffice.We were Castries last Tuesday for district meeting. After the meeting the eight of us (four elders, two couples) went to eat- elders choice.
It was a good choice but we had to get permission from a policeman to park where we did. When we were ready to go the elders said they would stop the traffic while I backed out. In doing so I created a problem in that instead of backing out to go with the traffic, which I thought I was doing, I went against it. As a result I had it stopped going both ways. Thankful for some patient and understanding St Lucian drivers for tolerating that "tourist" that doesn't know what he is doing. And just when you think you are starting to get the hang of it. Tell all hello. Love Elder and Sister, Dave and Dora--