We tried to warn them that it was a VERY hard hike.

With the Smarts on the way up

Well these past two weeks have been super busy. We were so tired one night when we got back, when we had gotten home I laid down on the tile floor with no pillow or anything, and the next thing I knew it was morning.

Smart's plane coming in

When the mission President and his wife came down last weekend though, we had a ton of fun. All in all, we had two Family Home Evenings with the two sides of the island, a very long hike, and HOURS of driving with them.

Walking through the valley of desolation

Our first activity with the branch was pretty cool. It was mostly kids that ended up coming so we played a bunch of games with everyone, had lots of cookies, and a whole lot of fun. The next one we had was mostly adults so we didn't play as many games, but they shared a really cool message.

Youth Book of Mormon class

Playing fun games with the kids

Duran shooting into the cups

More games with the kids

Pinky and his three boys

Then on Monday, the Smarts had wanted to go hiking with us cause they hadn't been in forever. They mentioned they've been wanting to go on the boiling lake hike really  bad. We tried to warn them that it was a VERY hard hike. The last time we went it took 4 and a half hours and we were practically jogging a lot of the path. The hurricane wiped out a lot of the trail as well. The hike is so cool though, they wanted to go anyways. So the next day we headed out early to do it. Lucky for them, they happened to come on an extremely rainy day. It absolutely poured the night before and pretty much all of the day. It was so wet, the trail changed from a trail to a stream. There was so much more water we saw a huge waterfall at the start of the hike that wasn't even there the last time we went. We were being hit with massive raindrops and lots of wind. Only time I've ever been freezing in the Caribbean. 6 and a half hours later though, we finally made it back completely soaked.

Flooded trail in the rainforest

Climbing up the trail which had pretty much become a waterfall

Climbing down a mountain

Along the Ridgeline

We had to say goodbye to one of the recent converts down here named Richardson as well. He's Haitian and moving back to Chili to be with the rest of his family. It was cool cause his last Sunday here he brought some of his friends to church so there ended up being like 4 Haitians we had never even talked with there. It's so crazy to see the faith that some of these guys have even when they don't understand like 95 percent of it.

Clear view of the Boiling Lake

At the top of a mountain