The Cross that Weathered the Hurricane

 Late Sunday afternoon when we visited the site of missionary Cecil Kemp's destroyed church and parsonage, we found this scene across the road.

 As we understood it, Cecil had built this concrete lighthouse himself, but as you can see, the top blew off in the hurricane.

Boys will be boys, and they promptly set about finding a way up to the second story that had a deck, 

from which they climbed the ladder all the way to the top.

Not to be outdone by her brothers and cousins, Carrie climbed up, too!

Meanwhile, we noticed that there were still a few things that had remained intact through the storm--

conch shells that had been set in concrete and stone surrounding a flower garden.
And a few others, too.

And there was the cross.
Still standing.

"The cross it standeth fast,
Defying every blast.
Hallelujah for the cross!"

Even the lighthouse lost its top.

as it stood on the rugged cliff above the ocean.
Hard to believe flood water swirled around this lighthouse and down over the cliff in that terrible hurricane.

The boys and Jonathan made their way down somehow...

to the rocks and waves below.

Around us, the sky darkened that evening, and around us the world was dark.

When our taxi driver in Nassau found out we were heading to Freeport to roof a church, he asked what kind of church it was and what they believed. Our answer led to him quickly letting us know that he did not believe in the cross like we did. He believed it was a log, not a cross with Jesus' arms outstretched. He also did not believe Jesus was God. Jesus was the son of God, he said, but not God Almighty,

He was a well indoctrinated Jehovah's Witness, and he proceeded, as he whizzed around bends and darted in and out of traffic, to tell us why Jesus is not God. He pulled Scripture after Scripture out, even quoting the references, to prove his point. 

We could hardly get a word in edgewise, but I tried to ask questions and use Scriptures to make him think.

His questions made my children do some searching of the Scriptures to find out why we believe Jesus is not just the Son of God, but is God Himself.
How appropriate then when Stefan Paulus chose for his message Sunday morning in church

the theme "The Foolishness and the Power of the Cross."

To the world, the cross is foolish.
To us, it is the power of God.

Right during the hurricane, a man named Robert came to the cross to be saved!

While there, we heard about how the Kemp family was trying to escape the flood water by climbing to their attic. 

It was then that the roof blew off! 

Now the Kemps had to escape back down into their first level. Fearing that the particle board kitchen cupboards would disintegrate under them, Cecil had his wife on the kitchen stove. I  believe there were about five feet of water in the house.

Then Cecil heard yelling outside, and went out to find a neighbor, Ronald, clinging to a tree.

Cecil headed out to try to help rescue the man, who jumped, but missed Cecil. 

Ronald went under and disappeared. 

Cecil, a strong, athletic man and a good swimmer, dove once but was unsuccessful. 

He dove again, and managed to snag something on the man, and dragged him to safety.

But while clinging to that tree, that man Robert had bowed at the cross and given his heart to Jesus.
The church was destroyed.
The top of the lighthouse blew down.
Robert almost lost his life.

But the cross still stood, reminding us all that Jesus still saves today.
He still saves, even right in the middle of Hurricane Dorian.
Robert meant what he said when he surrendered his life to the Lord, and has since been baptized.
Hallelujah for the cross! 

Sunday in the Bahamas--Delight and Destruction

We all worked so hard Thursday afternoon through Saturday that we were very, very thankful for Sunday.

Here is a photo of the whole Mission Helps team, sixteen of us, with the finished half of the church roof behind us.

L to R front row-Jeff and Becky Paulus, Carrie, Kaitlyn Paulus, Anna, Samuel and David Morley, Clark Freer and Nelson Wenger

Back Row-Timmy, Sam, Tom Susan, Jonathan, Rex McDowell III, Toni Byer, Stefan Paulus.

*****

The pastor loves to play music. He is on the keyboard. Bahamians love noise and beat!

The Americans were pretty laid back! Jonathan, Rex, Jeff and Stefan came up with a quartet, "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" with Jeff on the guitar.

David on guitar accompanied Kaitlyn on a pencil flute to the tune of "Amazing Grace."

Our family sang "God Hath Not Promised Skies Always Blue" to a congregation who had lived through the most destructive hurricane in Bahamian history only a few months ago.

Rex played trumpet with Becky accompanying.

Stefan Paulus preached about the Foolishness and the Power of the Cross, a very pertinent message after talking to a Jehovah's Witness taxi driver a few days earlier who said he did not believe in the kind of cross we do.

Circle of men talking after service

An elderly neighbor lady who lived in the unit next to ours cooked a delightful Sunday meal for us

of pineapple chicken....

and a humongous pot of "rice and peas." I made a cranberry jello in a pot since there were no glass dishes except a bowl that wasn't big enough.

That was the delightful part of the day--as we worshipped together with a congregation that had weathered the hurricane and were still worshipping with resilience.

But then came the sad part as we traveled thirty miles in the late afternoon toward High Point.

The devastation along the way was indescribable. Above, the tops of palm trees are all snapped off.

Below the scenery is one ongoing wreck.

Electric wires were tangled all along the way, some still on the road. Some new poles have been put in by now.

Countless trees were snapped completely over from either wind or the storm surge flood waters.

Our neighbor on the other side of our unit, Pearl, told us that she lost fifteen relatives and two close friends in the hurricane or storm surge.  Her friends had not gone to safer places. They could have saved themselves, she thought, but they did not take warnings seriously enough.

Along with many others, they simply vanished, never to be heard of again.

The pastor of the church we roofed, his aunts who live there, and others who had taken refuge in the church during the hurricane had to evacuate yet again to another church for safety when flood waters suddenly came up around them, ten inches in all the buildings and more outdoors. The church is on a bit higher level than other areas of the island which were covered in up to ten or twenty feet of saltwater from the ocean surge that passed over the island.

Out at High Rock, there was even more devastation.

We walked about where the flood and hurricane had destroyed the church and parsonage,

and where the hurricane, with its 200-mph winds, had blown the concrete top off the lighthouse that missionary Cecil Kemp had built on the cliff by the ocean.

We were told how the flooding water had carved channels through the island in some ways, leaving pathways like this...

and this.

One wondered if this was stuff that was here, or stuff from elsewhere that just ended up here.

And we kept wondering how many bodies might just be back in the woods or under the debris.

I don't know how this stretcher ended up here.

But something I noticed was that in many places, tropical flowers were blooming again.

One of the young palms (probably a bush palm) was blooming right in the midst of the basement area of a missing building.

And for the first time on the island, I heard a bird twittering.

The man on the airplane had said the birds would not be back for two years, but it had only been a few months and a bird was twittering.

Somehow, I felt that God wanted a church to continue there, perhaps to be rebuilt, perhaps just to keep meeting in the little white tent we passed.

Due to a misunderstanding, Jonathan thought the Kemps were in Freeport for the evening, but it turned out later that they were actually there at their home and tent Sunday evening.

Just before leaving High Point, Rex McDowell II got a bit acquainted with a Bahamian young man who used to collect sea shells and other such souvenirs to sell to tourists, a business that is almost nil now since the hurricane. After visiting with him and trying to encourage him, Jeff Paulus suggested we pray with him.

We stood in a circle with this man and prayed for God's blessing and help to him in his life.

He seemed to appreciate it.

Then most everybody scurried to have another walk along the ocean while I decided to stay clean and warm inside the vehicle. It was quite breezy and chilly and sandy!

On the way home, we passed fires burning in the devastated vegetation.

This is what used to be a museum that "Salutes the Memory of Space Pioneers Who Splashed Down Near This Site--

Alan B. Shepard, Jr.

Gus Grissom

Ham the Monkey."

Moonlight in the palm tree by the church

Ladies, Lizards, and Grilled Octopus

We ladies kept busy just coming up with  menus that had to be altered on at least a daily or hourly basis, keeping food prepared for a crew of 16 (and occasionally an extra one or two), washing dishes afterward, going to the store for missing ingredients or sodas for the hard-working guys, and trying to keep a semblance of order in our unit. Carrie was a huge help with breakfasts. Here I am frying potatoes for one of the breakfasts.

So while the guys started working on the roof each morning...

we were busy inside.

Here is one of the breakfasts laid out--fried potatoes and onions, bacon (which I brought from Costco here in the States), toast, sliced eggs, cereals, and peanut butter, etc. Eggs were actually not much more expensive than here so we had scrambled eggs with bacon bits (from Costco) almost every morning. We wanted the hard-working guys to have a good breakfast with protein every morning and not just junk food. Harold Martin had told us not to be chincy with feeding the crew, and I had brought some things from Costco to help out so we wouldn't have to buy expensive bacon and things like that there.

Some of the excitements around there were lizards.

This one lost its tail when someone pulled it.

Don't worry. As far as we know, it will grow a new one.

Saturday evening we went to the ocean. Jonathan and I walked along the shore finding pretty shells and enjoying the sunset.

That evening the crew wanted to go out to eat some authentic seafood, so after hours of googling and finding many restaurants closed after the hurricane, we finally found a place where, after waiting and waiting, we were finally seated all together at two or three long tables pushed together. 

Just for fun, someone ordered an appetizer of grilled octopus for everyone to try who wanted to.

Nearly everyone wanted to try it, and I even ate a very tiny chunk, just so I could say I ate octopus once!

It tasted a bit like chicken, and was drowned in lime or lemon juice, so it was also tart.

A Bahamian neighbor who went along absolutely refused to try a bite of octopus, but did not hesitate to eat fish eyeball and socket right in front of all of us!

Here is Carrie getting ready to try octopus!

Some of the young men also tried out fish eyeballs and socket from the whole snapper fish some of the crew ordered. But those dishes we ordered were only brought after a very, very long wait time. The proprietor felt so bad about the wait, that he sent out three bowls of salad and two platters of lobster tails free of charge while we continued to wait!

What a treat!

My stomach was bothering me that evening, and I did not dare try lobster or seafood, so just ordered chicken and appreciated the Bahamian rice and peas (legumes like small beans) and a can of apple juice.

We did not get out of the restaurant till after 11 o'clock, having been seated not much before 10 o'clock. I was soo tired. I wished very much to just be in bed, but with a crew of this size, 

we had to exercise a lot of patience with both crew and restaurant. 

It was an experience the crew will never forget, that was for sure!

Here is a "sea fan," which was given to me by a Bahamian who collects sea shells to sell.

Since the hurricane, few tourists are coming to the island and there is little or no business for people like him.

Beautiful sunset!

Clark Freer trying to split a coconut. We enjoyed drinking the coconut juice and eating the tender pulp inside.

On Monday morning, the crew was up on the roof again, and little did we know the surprise they were planning for a certain birthday lady named Becky Paulus.

That morning she and the rest of us ladies went shopping for some cold sodas for the guys, and the Pauluses wanted a few little treats to take home from the Bahamas to their youth group, so they went to this cute little candy and popcorn shop. You can see all kinds of flavors of popcorn in the tubes under the counter.

Back home we hurried to make lunch.

I'm stir-frying carrots, onions, cabbage, and pepper for a veggie dish over top of the left-over Bahamian "rice and peas" dish from Sunday.

Late in the morning, someone got Becky to come outside, and here was this row of roofers' heads looking over the peak of the church roof suddenly singing, "Happy Birthday to You!"

That made Becky's day!

Her husband Jeff bought her a beautiful cheesecake which they shared all around!

The line of guys coming through for lunch.