Tales of Trinidad: Bon Bini (Good Welcome) to Curacao!

We are having a beautiful time in Curacao at our Senior Couple Conference. We arrived on Thursday after a unfortunate wait in the Trinidad airport of a two hour delay. Two of the couples had come from Guyana and had to get up at 2 am to make this flight...which made for a pretty long day arriving in Curacao about 2 pm. We got set up in our rooms and then Dave and I went to the mall to find him some more "Columbia" pants, then we just hung out, watched the movie Second Hand Lions, visited, played games and ate. President and Sister Baird are so very generous with spending this time with us and feeding us such yummy meals.

Friday Dave and a few people took a walk around the golf course, a few went snorkeling and a few of us ladies went and painted Chichi dolls. It was very relaxing to paint and I really enjoyed spending this time with these lovely ladies. After lunch we enjoyed a great presentation by Elder Jones. It was about learning styles and we discovered all the different types and where we fit and what the strengths and weaknesses of each type was. It was really interesting and instructive. I am an enthusiastic learner type, which is, you just want to have someone show you how and then jump in and get it done and Dave is a logical learner, which is you look at all the data and create a step by step plan before you begin. As you can imagine these two types of learner's aren't the most compatible but you can make it work when you understand each one better and you can use each other's strengths to accomplish things.
Later that night, we went to the movie theater to watch the new Aladdin movie which was fabulous!

Saturday morning Dave and I went to the ocean to snorkel. It was so awesome! We only had to swim just a few yards out and there were tons of all kinds of fish and corals. There were large blue and yellow fish and some cool black ones with neon blue polka dots. I mostly just floated and watched the fish interact with each other and Dave swam around and viewed different areas. He saw a large eel too.
We got cleaned up and started the Training part of the Conference at 11 am. The Williams' weren't able to come to Curacao from Trinidad because they were involved in a Special meeting there, so they joined us via the internet. Each couple were given an assignment to teach about. They were all different and all enjoyable. It is such a privilege and blessing to be in this company of followers of Christ. The conference went from 11 to 4 with a break for lunch. We loved it so much and feel so buoyed and boosted up!
That evening we went to a double baptism in the Curacao branch. It was fun to be there and we needed to use the earphones so we could understand what was said. We tried hard to sing the hymns in Spanish but mostly I just sang la la la. The other language they speak is Paupimento, which is a mixture of a few languages. We actually have a partial Book of Mormon translated to Paupimento.

Sunday we went to the Curacao branch and Dave and I went to primary cause they needed him to play the piano. I couldn't sing any of the songs because of the language but it was still fun to have a little guy snuggle up to me and play with my watch that has a blue light that goes on and off. He kept trying to talk with me but unfortunately I wasn't able to understand him.
At 2 pm we connected with the William's again in Trinidad and had another wonderful training by the Bairds. We feel so blessed to have able to have this conference with our fabulous mission President and wife and the other senior couples.
Tomorrow we are going to swim with the turtles, so I'll report on that next week.

These are all the Senior couples (missing the Williams' ) in The Port of Spain Mission.

They are wearing the rose pins I made them.

starting left: Elder and Sister Jones, Dave and I, Elder and Sister Bohne, Elder and Sister Vermeeren, Elder and Sister Haake, Pres. and Sister Baird, Elder and Sister Heiner