WASTING OUR TIME

How serendipidous that we should be in attendance at the Perdmontemps congregation this morning, named for the "waste my time" neighborhood of the same name where the Kingdom Hall is situated. Appropriately, I selected A New Song to open, more for the theme than what the chairman called the "historic date": Singing the first song from our newly published songbook. The brothers and sisters were very vivacious and outgoing, very, well, Caribbean. It's a Sunday morning culture. Worship is part of the landscape.

LESSON FOUR: Go where the people are laid-back. As the talk started, the audience was sparsely scattered around the auditorium. By the end, the attendance was 119...not bad for a congregation of 70. The phenomenon of an audience doubling between the beginning and end of a public discourse simply meant a mini-review of introductory material. In a world of "liming" (Grenadaspeak for "chilling"), it's up to the uptight to adapt accordingly.

After accompanying Ricky on a Bible study (Ian Fleming was his name, but he didn't author the James Bond novels), all four of us left for a late afternoon excursion to Grand Anse beach, which you see at the right from a hilltop overlook. Everything in Grenada has a hilltop overlook. As one author put it, "Grenada is short on bad views." With our requisite neon "noodles" from Wal-Mart, we plunge in! We always travel with flotation devices that we can subsequently leave behind to make room for souvenirs. That way, we can "swim" without going to any actual effort. Look, we're not here to multitask, right? So let's not try to cram a workout into soaking up the sun and surf...