Bequia Part One

Well….the beginning of December started off with a huge trip. It was huge for me, anyway. Trevor has been to Bequia two times already, but this was a first for me. I’ve only been overseas once, and that was last year when we went to Italy. So this is kind of a big deal for me. Bequia is a small island in the Caribbean, which is part of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It only has a population of about 4,000 people, and there’s only around 50-60 believers on the island. They don’t get many believer visitors, so they are always very excited and happy when someone comes to visit them.

This year Trevor and I traveled with Aaron and Rebecah M., and Stephen and Jennifer S. who were going to be spending the week with us in Bequia. So let’s begin our journey.

Day One: Wednesday, November 29. We got up at 3:30 am, only to be told that our flight had been delayed. We didn’t know for how long, but this was going to cause us to miss our connecting flight in Miami, so this was a problem. Bequia is not easy to get to. Miami only has flights there 2 times a week, and the only other place that flies to Saint Vincent (because you actually have to fly to Saint Vincent and then take a ferry to Bequia) is Toronto, Canada. It took a little bit of talking on the phone with the airlines to finally get things figured out. We really needed to be in Bequia no later than Thursday, because we had week of meetings waiting on us. Well, we finally ended up getting booked on another flight that would take us to Chicago, and then on to Toronto from there. There was no way around it. We were going to have to go to Toronto and spend the night there.

So off we went to the airport. Once we got on the flight to Chicago, we sat on the runway for 15 minutes before finally taking off. This was bad. Our connection in Chicago was already tight and we couldn’t afford to be delayed. So far this trip was not going well. Because of the delay in taking off, and the fact that we had to go from one end of the Chicago airport to the other end, we missed our connection. Ugh!! To make a long story short(ish), there wasn’t room on the next flight to Toronto to fly standby, so we had to hang around the airport until the 3:00pm flight. They gave us food vouchers tho, so we at least got a decent meal for our trouble. It was the airlines fault after all, so that was the least they could do. We finally made it to Toronto about 5:30pm. This had been a really long day. We were able to get more food vouchers and a hotel voucher, which we were very thankful for. Again…it was the airlines fault (twice) that we had been delayed, rerouted and had to miss our connection. So having them pay for our food and hotel was expected. We were now in Toronto (the complete opposite end of where we needed to be) and were also going to be a day later than planned, getting to Bequia.

Day Two: Thursday, November 30. Got up and took the shuttle to the Toronto airport. We checked our bags and then decided to get breakfast at the airport since we had time and we still had a $20 food voucher. I won’t go into the insane craziness of trying to get the unnamed resturant in the airport to take our voucher, but it was so bad. They had no reason to not take it. We got it from their own airport, but they didn’t want to take it and after giving us the run around and numerous excuses for 30 mins (yes…30 mins), Trevor finally said, “Fine. Take your food back.” and started to walk away. They then took the voucher and gave us the food. What on earth??? How is this trip going so wrong???

Us at the Toronto airport.

Moving on. We made our flight out with no more issues.

Some views from the plane.





The map on the plane, of our route from Toronto to Saint Vincent.

Arrived in Saint Vincent where we had a taxi waiting on us to take us to the ferry. Thankfully our bags made it safely to Saint Vincent as well. Welcome to the warmth and sunshine for the next 7 days.

This was a huge cruise ship that was docked next to our ferry.

The ferry ride was about an hour long, and it was not good to me. The waters were choppy and it messed up my stomach. I get motion sick easy and didn’t prepare myself for this. But thankfully I kept it together and made it through. It was dark by the time we made it to Bequia, so we got to watch the sunset on the ferry.

The pastor’s son, Bro Obadiah, met us at the ferry. He took us to our villa where we could drop off our luggage. No time to change for service. It started at 7 and we made it to church around 7:30. Bro Stephen was supposed to preach the first service (tonight) but because of our delay in arriving, he switched nights with Bro Aaron. (I guess I should mention that Aaron and Becah were already in Florida for the week prior, visiting her family. So they flew out of Miami the day before with no problems. So they had all day Thursday to rest up in Bequia, while we were still trying to get there from Toronto). Service was good tho. Bro Aaron did a great job.

The believers there were very happy to see us and so happy that the wives came this time. What a wonderful group of people. Much to my surprise, there is no AC here. The church has no AC. The houses don’t have AC. The villa where we were staying only has a window AC unit in the bedrooms. Thank the Lord for that. It would make sleeping a lot nicer. It looks like I’ll have to figure out how to survive in 90* weather for the next 7 days.

We fellowshipped some after service and then we went to bed. We were so tired but glad that we had finally made it.

To be continued….