our days continue to flash by. We think about home daily. Our T.V. cable package includes the C.B.C. from Toronto. We did try to watch some play-off hockey (this is the only time of year we watch hockey on T.V.) but it seemed to be awkward and inappropriate to sit in the cool night air, listen to the surf on the beach in a temperature of 24c and watch hockey! So we watch the “boys of summer” instead! We ask each other, with little anxiety anymore, how we are settling down, and we both agree on the richness of our days and the warmth and openness of the people who fill them. So, what do we miss? Our adult children and friends as well as our favourite coffee shop chain!I had an introduction to the medical system this month when the husband of an Elder was rushed to the General Hospital in St. George’s. The General Hospital here operates as other hospitals do in other parts of the world that struggle financially. You wear your own pyjamas; bring your own sheets; buy your own medication for the nurses to administer; at around double the cost in Canada, I might add. Your family feeds you as they always have. Need kidney dialysis three days a week? At $400 CAD per treatment that amounts to $1,200 CAD each week. When your monthly income is under $1,000 CAD how can you afford the dialysis or medication? If you live with cancer, heart issues and diabetes it is the malignant poverty that is invariable fatal. The average expectation of life is 64 years for men, 66 years for women. Oh, by the way, I’m sure you will have noticed how much the act of hand washing is in the news across the world. The toilet at the General Hospital was spotlessly clean, just like the hospital itself. However, despite the signs in many prominent places in the toilet about the necessity of hand washing there was no soap. You bring that with you too.
The school holiday for the Easter break brought the youth from
Belair P.C. together with the youth from Samaritan P.C. for a party at Bathway Beach. It was billed as a “Beach Party with Jesus and other Notables”. There are some photos at the bottom of the blog, click on them and see the day up close! We sang and sang and sang then played and played and played then ate and ate and ate. The adults who supervised came home, went to bed early and slept and slept and slept! Jesus? He laughed and laughed and laughed and gave us so many gifts and blessings that day that most of us there will never forget him.The 2009 Graduating Class from MacDonald College held their final assembly Wednesday afternoon of this last week. We sang hymns and praise songs, prayed, read scripture, heard a homily, received many words of advice and felt the bitter-sweet joy/sadness as well as the elation/fear around the upcoming separation. It was as powerful a church service as I have ever been at. And, as the students were blessed, one of the most moving.
Proverbs 3: 5-6 tells us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding: in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Over the last few months’ life here has been a response to the reality which we find here in Grenada, to what truly is. To do this we have been leaning on the Lord so much that we have barely noticed how clear our path was and is. As I sat one evening, swept up and away by the glory of the sunset over Sateurs, I finally knew that what all of us on this Island are called to is indeed far beyond us, and yet by virtue of our very baptism it is already ours.
Trust in the Lord indeed, trust in the Lord.
