Beach day...and the never ending walk

For a Saturday retreat, the missionaries from SIL (known as Wycliff in the US) invited the AIM missionaries to join them for a day on this little island. It was so beautiful and really relaxing. We climbed into this small motor boats that took us from the beach hotel called White Sands to a small island. No one lives there, but they have little Danda (Africa canopy) set up to hang out under.

When you get there, there are two guys hanging out in the restaurant. Really just an open area with a bar that sells some soda and anything you can get from the sea. You place your order in the morning…and just hang out on the beach. There is a great reef there to snorkel. Then the men go fishing and catch lunch to fry it up and serve it with chips.

That was the freshest fish I have ever had! After lunch we chilled for a bit and decided to walk around.

(this is the boat we took to the island..filled to the brim with people...and some water)

nd the island. It should have taken just under an hour to walk all the way around and Carley assured me that she had done it before. So 5 of us set off for our little walk. After about 40 minutes, we have to wade through this area, but don’t really think anything of it..since we did it once before. All we can see is a shallow pool and the island curves around so we can’t see very far down the beach. We all off through the water, but as we round the curve, it just more water and another curve. Firguring it can’t be much farther, we press on. The water isn’t that deep…just ankle height. Unfortunatley, the corners kept coming and the water kept getting deeper. But we keep giving it one more corner to get around. Finally it gets shallower, and we are sure that the next corner will be the beach where we started. Once round the last corner, instead of beach..there is HUGE flooded inlet. The next curve is quite a ways away. Now I should mention that one of the girls walking with us is only about 11 years old and another did not bring any shoes. The sea floor is just covered in small spiky sea urchins which feel like needles piercing your skin if you step on one. Of course I slipped and stepped on one. Sigh…that was a painful few days. So we trudge through the water coaxing the shoeless girl that she won’t hurt herself and the sobbing younger girl that everything will be alright.

I haven’t prayed that hard for a while, but with the tide coming in and us not sure how far we would have to walk through the water, I was feeling a bit nervous. There were also a lot of holes there which I am pretty sure were homes to crabs. We thankfully crossed the great abyss and found shore not too far away. The boat to take us home was just about loading up and as we came up on the dune, the SIL leader came over. He was sent out to find where we had gone. It was quite a funny story, once we got back and were stranded in the water. But we learned a great lesson from this….ALWAYS check to see when the tide comes in BEFORE you walk around an island!