This time last week...

This time last week we were sitting/playing/swimming/resting at the beach!  The ship has a holiday every 6 weeks - so we end up being blessed with a 3 day weekend quite often! 

We had the wonderful privilege and fabulous experience of going to "The Island" with some friends.  It actually ended up that the vast majority of the 2 boatloads of people were from our Gateway...and they just happen to be some of our favorite friends on the ship :)(non-gateway ship friends are cool, too...).

Mercy Ships has made arrangements with....hmmm....I'm not sure whether to say a "Boat Business" or "some guys with some boats" or something different altogether - regardless of what the right words are, Mercy Ships has made arrangements for boats to come right here to the dock, pick us up, take us to the island, drop us off and then bring us right back here to the ship at the end of the day. It's SUPER convenient...and the Cash's are super fond of super convenient sometimes.  It costs 50,000 francs for the adults (about $7) and is FREE for kids.  That was one of the best $14 we've spent yet...

So we loaded up into boats around 9:30 and headed to Roume Island.  Eli and Caroline weren't too sure about the boats...I think they had something more like "Ms. Jean's pontoon from Lake Harding" in mind.  But, much to their credit, they stayed calm ... a bit pensive...but calm and we all enjoyed the 45ish minute ride to the Island. 

It was fun getting a different view of the Africa Mercy (that's it in the background of the picture below...)

Emma's face cracks me up!  That's pretty much the face she had the whole ride...

The "other" boat.  Ours looked very smiliar.   That's Mr. Dave & Mr. Nick in the front row, 

See?! Same Emma face. 

Some houses that we passed as we were getting close to our destination.  Emma said "that's the Wells' house." (the one on the right)  Chad & Hollie, do you own property in Guinea that we don't know about??

 So we got to the Island and got out of boats right into the water...(not sure what I was expecting...but I hadn't thought of that possibility)(my flip flop got stuck in the mud and I kind of thought it was gone forever....but my foot managed to find it....)(I was thankful...those flip flops are what I wear about 98% of the time).  We eventually found "our spot" and settled in for a delightful few hours of running and playing and swimming and splashing and building and frisbee throwing. 

We had a picnic lunch and Nick even played some football (soccer) on the beach with some local guys. We could have shopped right there on the beach if we had wanted to - some guys brought out some fabric and all sorts of beautiful jewelry. Around 3:30 we loaded back into the boats and headed back to the Africa Mercy. Emma promptly fell asleep. 

Yup, she slept just like this.

Home sweet Home.

We got back to the Africa Mercy to find that the tide had gone out - so instead of stepping from the boat directly to the dock, we had to climb up a ladder...which is quite interesting with a 2 year old and a few bags of stuff.  I started out with Emma on my back...but quickly (wisely?) realized that wasn't the best idea and someone ended up handing her up to me (I'm thankful for whoever was holding me as I reached down to pull her up!).  Somewhere in that process my flip flop managed to fall into the water....thought it was definitely gone for good (again) - but a nice African fella managed to fish it out for me.  Caroline's flip flop also fell into the water...it was fished out, too.  (lesson learned:  Cash girls do not need to wear flip flops on future adventures of this nature...)

Favorite parts of the day/things we're most thankful for:

• Seeing the kids RUNNING on the beach.  There's something more special than ever about wide open spaces.
• The chance to "get away"...to be off ship...to have a change of scenery and a change of pace in a peaceful and beautiful part of God's creation.
• No sunburns...

One of the other ladies that went with us took some really incredible pictures - they really capture the beauty of Africa (sadly the world doesn't always associate the word "beauty" with the word "Africa").  Here's a link to her blog post about the island if you're interested Reka's blog - more pictures!

Our God gives such good gifts...our trip to the Island was certainly one of them! 

Surely there will be more to come!