Feast in Freeport, Grand Bahama

Monday was our last full day of work in Grand Bahama. Three of the young men rose by five or so to start tearing off the old shingles on the last half of the church roof so that the skilled roofers could begin roofing about six. They wanted to be finished by early afternoon so that we could go to the ocean again and have time to shower before the "feast" the church was going to have in the evening 

to celebrate the new roof being done.

Jonathan up measuring for siding for the gable ends

Working in the morning

Timmy, David and Tony Byers worked on the gable ends...

  while Jonathan marked and sawed the siding for them.

Carrie peeking over the roof.

While the guys were down for lunch, she climbed up!

Great experience for the young guys

Once when I went outside that morning, I discovered all these heads looking over the roof.

Then much to Becky Paulus's surprise, those heads started singing!

They sang her "Happy Birthday!"

She did record it, and did it ever sound hilarious, as roofers do not try very hard to sing on tune!

Her husband Jeff had bought her a beautiful cheese cake which they shared all around.

Sam and the other guys bringing scaffold and tools to the container and cleaning up.

While the others cleaned up, Jeff Paulus put up some new drywall in the ceiling of the bedroom of our next door neighbor, Ola, the pastor's elderly aunt who had water damage in her ceiling.

Jonathan hauling drywall.

Jeff had hung drywall in Ola's front room the night before. She was happy for the improvements.

We got a kick out of teasing Jonathan for just standing there handing Jeff nails while Jeff did the work!

The trash heap across the road from the front of the church

Drywall patching ready to happen in the church.

The "feast" was to start at seven, it had been announced, but that was Bahamian time. At seven, I went over to the church to see if we ladies could help, and there were three people struggling to figure out how to arrange things, and one or two of those people were deaf!

I got a few guys to help move tables and arrange chairs, and the deaf man gave me a thumbs up!

Before long, both food and people began to arrive, and since it had been drizzling outside, we had to arrange ourselves inside.

But first, said the pastor, we would have some songs of Thanksgiving.

The pastor wanted our team to sing something, so someone chose "Come and Dine."

Also we sang happy birthday to both  Becky and another Bahamian who both had birthday that day.

Finally at closer to 7:45 or 8:00, we could begin to feast.

There were BBQ chicken wings, spicy meatballs, Bahamian cheesy pasta, tossed salad, and pineapple upside down cake.

Jonathan had popped a huge foil tin full of popcorn.

With Pastor Harrison Pinder and his wife

Our dear, sweet neighbor Ola, who let us use her oven over and over and made our Sunday meal with enough rice and peas left over for three more meals!

 When the feast was over, a young Bahamian man showed the young people how to pull conch meat out of the shells they had found down in the ocean.

Yes, in  the ocean. 

They found those conchs with their feet!

The younger part of the crew had a BLAST with those conchs. (pronounced konks).
David and our Sam and perhaps others tried to eat a piece raw like the Bahamians do.

Until late in the evening, a bunch of us played various instruments and sang song after song.

Several of the team tried out the drum set, and I even tried out the tamborine!