Well, our busy month is almost done! We are working with our final work crew which leaves Thursday, August 28th. After that, we will have no more work crews until Jan or Feb. We have enjoyed working with the work crews. We have learned a lot, been challenged, made new friends, worked hard, played hard, laughed a lot, grown a lot, and been blessed through all of these crews!

Also, we had a lot of fun with our cousins and uncle here! They worked hard alongside the work crews but also got to spend time playing games with us. It was a lot of fun! We were so thankful for our time with them!

Now that its rainy season, we are learning that there are some things that are beyond our control and that we just have to adjust to. Things such as having to give our dog, Mia, 3 baths a day because no matter where we let her out, it is muddy and she loves water and mud! Also, that no matter how hard we try, it is very hard to keep the house clean... there is constantly mud and dirt being tracked through the house whether by canine or people. And, since our hot water heaters are solar powered and it is mostly cloudy... there will be little to no hot water! And we now have to find ways to dry our clothes inside since the rain doesn't allow us to hang dry our clothes and we have no Dryer. Lastly, mosquitos thrive during this season. And no matter how hard we try, we just can't seem to keep them out of our house! So we have a lot of new adjustments to make but we are thankful for the rain which is much needed on this side of the Island and we are enjoying the new adventure the rain brings.



On another note: Please pray for us as we have some big decisions to make in the next few weeks. Our jobs here have changed and the camp's needs have changed so we have some decisions to make. Please pray for wisdom and guidance for us! Thanks!

We got hit with a Tropical Depression on Friday. It was pretty cool! We were woken up at 4am by an incredible amount of lightning, rain, and wind! It was so windy that the rain was coming in horizontally. There was almost no break between flashes of lightning (although there wasn't a lot of thunder... at least not compared to what we are used to in Michigan). And the rain on the tin carport roofs was very loud! It was crazy! Later we heard that it upgraded to a Tropical Storm and got the name "Fay". From what we hear, we have another storm headed our way that might hit Friday. We don't know how bad of a storm it will be though.

On another note... our uncle and 2 cousins arrived Sunday evening. We knew that my Uncle Dick and my cousin Todd was coming but we didn't know that my other cousin MacKenzie was coming! It was an awesome surprise! We are so excited to have them! They are going to be here for a week working with the work crews and spending time with us. We are loving it! Thank you for those that took part in the surprise!

Here are some pictures from the last few weeks....

Below is a picture of a "cherry picker" (that was what it was called...I'm not sure of the technical name) with Mike on it. You can see how tall it can get based on how high it towers over the basketball hoop and light pole.The picture with Megin was taken from the top of a "cherry picker" . The picture is a landscape picture taken of the camp's waterfront.

This week has been a crazy week. First, we have two groups overlapping and running on different schedules so we feel like we are constantly juggling things like vehicles, schedules, sight-seeing trips, work projects, trips to the airport, and etc. Second, we found a large sea turtle on our property that laid eggs so we had the job of trying to keep it alive until the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) could come take care of it. Then a couple of days later we found baby sea turtles wandering around on the other side of camp so once again we had to save the turtles and wait for DNR. Since then the DNR has invaded our property in search for sea turtles. (Its kind of scary running into them in the middle of the night walking around our property.) Third, our camp secretary and financial manager, Tamara, just found out that she has to be on bed rest for the next couple of weeks which means that we have to not only juggle all the work crews but also fill in her shoes. So instead of working 60 hour weeks with a day off, Mike and I will be working 90 hour weeks with no days off (not even Sunday). Please pray for us during this time! Pray that we will have patience, strength, perseverance, joy, enthusiasm, good health, and so on.

Also, we wanted to tell you about one of the work crews that we worked with this week. They are a group from Palm Bay, Florida. They were so laid-back, adventurous, and had such servants' hearts. They were constantly surprising us! This group of 8 had more senior citizens than young adults. Yet when we didn't have a vehicle to go get Frappes (an awesome PR treat that all of our groups love), they all piled in the back of the pickup truck (despite the sprinkling rain) including an 84 year old man and his 74 year old wife. And they did that a few times throughout their time with us. Then on Sunday, we usually take the groups to the rainforest. Older groups will usually go to a rainforest that is further away and has a paved path for them to walk to a swimming area and younger groups will go to the rainforest that has waterfalls and a high cliff to jump from but requires some treacherous hiking. This group surprised us by wanting to go to the rainforest with the waterfalls instead of the other. And they had a blast! They were a fun group!

Unfortunately, for some reason, we still can't upload any pictures on our blog. But we'll keep trying. Sorry!

We just finished with our first work crew. What a great group! They were a Senior High and Junior High Youth Group from Indiana. They worked so hard and hardly complained at all and they were so fun and nice. They were a blessing to us! Thank you Indiana work crew!
Another work crew came yesterday from Florida and a second group is coming tomorrow from Seattle. So we will have two overlapping teams here for the next week.
Please pray for us as it can be pretty chaotic with more than one team here at a time.
Also, please pray for us and the teams as it has gotten pretty hot recently (105 degrees) and will still continue to get hotter as August progresses. The heat makes it hard to work (especially with the type of manual labor that we do here) and it can be hard on our bodies making people tired and cranky.
We were hoping to post some pictures from our time with Indiana but we are once again having problems with the internet so we'll have to try again another time.
Thanks!