Garrison’s Virgin Island View

It was quite rainy and cloudy the first few days that we were here.    The people tell us to be grateful because when the sun comes out it will be very HOT.  Well, we are kinda used to that, but it never really gets comfortable for us to be that hot!  So we liked this cloudy weather just fine. St. Kitts does get cruise ships.  They are trying to build up the tourism here and the people here are always saying welcome to our island, and we hope you enjoy yourselves.  All in all they are a very friendly people. Monday....which we planned on being our P-day ended up not being that at all.  We started out with a 9am appointment with a recent convert that was really enjoyable.  After that, we tried to find a connector for our computer to hook up with our printer.  It's not like we can just go to Best Buy and find that.....nope, we had to special order it and hopefully it will be here in a week.....after that, we picked up a member and he show...

We had Monday to pack, clean the apartment, run errands and tie everything up in St. Thomas.  We did sneak in a game of pickle ball with our dear elders!  It ended up raining during our 5th game....we were tied 2-2....so we just called a draw!  We are going to miss playing with these two.  Hoping that they can find some replacements for us! We boarded the plane on Tuesday  morning.  We had SO (too) MUCH STUFF....we ended up having to throw out about 12 pounds of stuff....yoga matt, brown sugar ,  shoes, clothes, you name it.....all went into the garbage at the airport.  Then in Puerto Rico we had a 5 hour layover before boarding the plane to come to St. Kitts and we had to throw more stuff away:  our fins, more shoes, books......we vow when we come home, we are just leaving all our stuff here......what a hassel that was!  We didn't get to St. Kitts until almost 8:00 pm by the time we went through customs and all that....well, th...

Welp, this is our last full week in St. Thomas.  In so many ways, it is bitter sweet.  Along the way, there have been so many days where I would say to Elder Garrison that I didn't know if I could ever stay here for 18 months, but now that we are actually going to be leaving, there are so mamy things that we will miss.  But the thing that we are going to miss the most are the wonderful people that we have worked with in the St. Thomas Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  We have made life-long friends HERE for sure.  We will also miss the people in the many organizations that we have volunteered at:  My Brother's Workshop, The Red Cross, Eldra Schulterbrandt, The Salvation Army, Queen Louise Home for the Elderly and the St. Thomas Humane Society.  After volunteering at these places once a week for a year, we have come to love so many people and we will treasure our memories of that service. Sunday evening we got a picture fro...

We started the week after Christmas on the pickle ball courts bright and early.  The Elders won two games and we won two games.....we BARELY beat them on the 5th game.....so they have come a long ways since they started!  We teased them and said that it must have been the equipment because they both had new T-shirts, Elder Sigcha had new tennis shoes and Elder Fineanganofo had a new pickle ball racquet!  All teasing aside, we are proud of their progress (and worried that next week they will beat us!).  Don't let their smiles fool you, Elder Sigcha has a wicked spin serve and Elder Finney is like a wall at the net! Tuesday was a day that we had waited for almost for a year!  Mike and Denae and the kids arrived. The kids did pretty well after flying here on a red-eye!  They were pretty warm in those clothes though!  We changed that pretty quickly! They arrived on December 31st, which was Trent's 5th birthday!  So we celebrated his birth...