April 10 Friday: The morning was spent reading under a palm tree. I had a garden burger for lunch while using the internet and listening to a group of Asians somehow tied to OPEC strategize oil policy for the islands prior to a meeting with government officials. I got a text mid afternoon to see if I would be willing to do the children's story at church tomorrow. I said sure I can do that. I went to the SDA school for vespers at 7pm. After that I hung out at Cameron's place and we watched a dvd about “The Young Age of the Earth” that presented evidence that would support the age of the earth at millenia instead of millions of years. They discussed the rapid creating of coal and oil and the conditions that would have been required to enact that on a world wide scale. An interesting side note was that the program was partially sponsored by McKee Foods, based in Tennessee, probably better known as the company behind Little Debbie. Well it turns out Debbie is Cameron's cousin. We talked about that for a bit and I told him I have a vinyl record that had a Little Debbie song as the B-side.

April 11 Saturday: Got up early today, showered, ate a breakfast of rolls with peanut butter, banana, and honey. Made a mental note that tomorrow would be a good day to get some laundry done as I am running low on clean tropical weather appropriate clothing and the long sleeve items have no chance of being worn in this weather. Reread Matthew 25 that I had picked as the source of my children's story idea and made the 15 minute walk over to the SDA church.

I arrived about 10 minutes before the theoretical start time of 9:30 for sabbath school, but as was mentioned several times last weekend, everything operates on island time and sabbath school started promptly at 10 whether anyone was ready or not. The leader for the english class after we split up is Ethiopian and I asked him afterwards if he knew Adu Worku. Of course he did, small adventist world as always. Anyway, he likes class participation and makes sure everyone gets a chance to give some input on the topic. After SS Cameron came and told me that things were a little chaotic because the Youth group were supposed to be leading out for the service and they did not realize that until slightly earlier in the morning. But I at least had the children's story covered and knew about where it would be in the service. Church is theoretically to start at 11, but since sabbath school starts late and the youth were scrambling to get a rough program assembled, it wasn't until 11:30 that we got underway. Everything proceeded smoothly once we got started. There were about 20 kids for the children's story, most of whom are young enough to not be in school yet, so their grasp of English is highly suspect, but they are eager anyway and for the most part attentive. They like raising their hands, even if they do not have any idea what you are asking about. Quite a few adults commented afterwards that they really liked my story of the talents and using pennies to make it interactive. So it was at least a little productive.

After lunch, I took a nap for an hour, listened to a Roy Ice sermon on mp3 and finished reading CS Lewis' Abolition of Man, his brief book comprised of three lectures on how education shapes morality. It is a challenge to read at times, but that is also why I enjoy reading it. Close to 6pm I headed back over to the school for their vespers program, consisting of a song service and a Bible charades game. One boy was doing all the charade/acting and the audience was divided into two groups to do the guessing. The boy was actually impressive in pantomiming the various scenes. I have a hard time coming up with that kind of thing and he was doing it on the fly as a moderator would give him a new person or event. I got Samuel and Peter and nearly had Ruth (I guessed Naomi), but most of the points went to the other group which is fine. They were again going to have an open gym night, but Cameron wanted to get something to eat first, so we went to his place. He had made a rice casserole that was really quite good. Instead of going to the gym though we stayed and played a game of Scrabble. Later when his roommate returned we were talking about books and I was telling them about The Confession of Max Tivoli, which tells the story of a man born in San Francisco at the end of the 1800's who ages backwards, starting with the appearance of an old man and becoming progressively younger. They thought it sounded a lot like the recent Brad Pitt film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which none of us had seen. So Cameron went down to the movie store and rented it. I went by the FlameTree and picked up the books I have finished reading and brought them to see if they would like to ready any of them. We reconvened and watched Benjamin Button. It does have a similar theme to the book I read, the time periods are slightly different, one is a San Francisco story and the other from the Deep South/East Coast and they have very different endings. I liked the book better, although I found Max Tivoli to be a much less likable character than Pitt's character in the film.

April 12: This has been a lazy day. I slept in since we were up til 2 last night with the movie, had breakfast and a refreshing shower. I have tried to reach my scuba contact and have not been successful. Cameron says he would like to get certified at the same time I do, so that will make it more enjoyable and should work out for both of us. I still need to go and take care of my laundry and hopefully get some internet time in at MIR. It is Easter Sunday, so I do not know if they have any special events going on at MIR, which might change that plan. I'll see soon. And with the shuffling schedules, it now looks like I will head up to Laura tomorrow, where there are some good shell finding beaches and things like that.