February 24th, 2011
Ministry time is winding down, and our contacts took us to a different beach to do some hanging out. They brought snorkel masks and we spent a good few hours snorkeling around coral and rocks. We saw blue starfish, pink urchins, angelfish, needle fish, shiny blue fish, brain coral… The girls pretty much laid out on the beach the whole time, but Bethsaida and Amanda did some snorkeling too, but Jon, Jake, and Jon B dug a huge hole in the sand and our Canadian friend Jon got stuck when we half-buried him (bottom half) to see if he could get out. We all laughed nervously as we dug him out of the sand. He was fine.
Tonight we went to White Beach, “we” being Bethsaida, Amanda, me, Jake, and Canadian Jon. While Bethsaida and Amanda met with a girl friend they had made, we guys sat down and had milkshakes at a bar, where a friendly young man named Elmer waited on us and we got to have some deep discussion with him. He’s gay, goes to Catholic church sometimes, believes in God but pretty much only understands that he exists, not much else. He thought it was too late for him to be saved because he’s sinned so much; we told him otherwise. “Christ came for sinners, not for the righteous.” He seemed to gain some understanding through our conversation and then started telling us about a gay German priest who had come and told him similar things we did, and later got drunk and seduced him on the beach. He asked us why our lives should be so different when we are Christians too. I didn’t really have a direct answer but we just said that that’s between the priest and Jesus, and tried to turn the conversation back to the cross. The girls’ friends were taking them off to Karaoke and another waiter (masculine form of the word) named Trisha came up and started being extremely flirtatious. We figured it was time to go, and we said we’d try to get back and visit Elmer before we left the island on Monday.We went to Karaoke and I sang a song by Louis Armstrong, “Wonderful World” or something. We got back late and went to sleep.
On the business side of things… I’m technically not fully funded, I’m remaining on the race by promise to pay any remaining balance by the end of the final month. Right now that balance is about $4,000. Please help me pay it down by donating! Also, for security reasons I’ll be out of contact for the month of March. No news is good news.
