A visit with the Branch President

1-23-12
We had the privilege of having our mission President Alvarado come to our island to install our new branch President Durant who is a medical student at Ross University in Portsmouth. Our group leader, Brother George arranged for a bus to take us there which is only about 30 miles but takes about 1 1/2 hours due to the many curves and road work being done. We had over 20 travel with us and the Branch provided lunch for all and an activity for the youth. It was a very unifying day! We plan to take the youth up each month for a get together to further integrate them with the Branch.

The Zayas are the CES directors for the mission who came here along with President Alvarado and President Hymas and wife. The Zayas and Randell on a perch of a tree that Randell painted at the Shangrila Resort that David and Pauli operate

Brother Zayas putting a pretty flower from the jungle in his wifes hair

After leaving Shangrila we travelled to the east coast of Dominica to the Caribeean Sea and stopped at our favorite restaurant, the Sunset Bay resort (in a previous posting that's where I got my lobsters and we often get virgin pina coladas) where we all had lunch. They showed us the accomodations and on our way saw quite a few iguanas.

A rare green iquana

This is a BIG one!

You can see how long they are in this photo

Yesterday was the beginning of "Carnival" which we think is similar to "Mardi Gras". There is a great deal of reveling and whatever goes along with it. Our investigators invited us to go see the parade which was rather interesting. Lots of ugly masks and unique costumes made of sheets, plastics, etc.

We were very unique in that we were only a very very few white people there.

These people are on stilts

Some navtive costumes

This is the open air market where we come every few days to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. If you look carefully you'll see a rainbow. Also you can see we have a KFC

This is a bridge which is being constructed right by the open air market by the Chinese who do most of the road construction here. You can see they added their mark at each end of the bridge