Costa Rica, Day 1

Last night I was so tired I completely knocked out.  Head hit the pillow and I was out.  That never happens.  It felt good to come, not to a hotel, but to my friend’s home.  It’s good to see his younger daughter,  Sophi, all dressed up and going to her new job as an attorney.

We got up and by 10 Danny had cooked breakfast, we’d done laundry and run some errands.  We got me a Claro sim card, taking advantage of a special that gives unlimited data and texting for three days (the amount of time I remain here), and doubling the ₡1,000 minimum recharge to ₡2,000.  So for ₡1500 (about $3.00; ₡500 for the card and ₡1000 for the recharge), I have unlimited service while I’m here.  It will expire after 3 months, or I can recharge it for about $1.00 a month and keep a Costa Rican phone number.  Now I have a Costa Rican number, a Jamaican number and, somewhere, an Egyptian number.  The cost of the Jamaican and the Costa Rican sim cards combined is slightly over what ATT charges to ACTIVATE international service, so I think this is the solution that will work for me.  Recharge the SIM on the internet before I go, and have service the minute I set down.  By way of comparison, ATT charges $0.50 per text with international service.  The Costa Rican and Jamaican costs are about 10 cents per text.  It may seem trivial, but pennies make dollars.  Developing the practice of saving where I can allows me to squirrel money away to take trips like this.

Danny is a tour guide, so he always wants me to see and do things in Costa Rica.  I’ve pretty much done all the touristy things, but I wanted to go ziplining, so we went by Expediciones Tropicales.  I started with their online brochure and picked out two things:  the Doka, Grecia, and Sarchi tour (coffee and sugar cane plantations, an old church, butterfly farm, and oxcart factory); and the Monte Zurqui Canopy Tour.  We went by their office only to find that the Monte Zurqui Canopy Tour no longer exists – it’s now enhanced and is the Canopy San Luis Tour.  It includes something like 12 zips with 18 platforms, a superman line, and a rappelling line.  I was excited, but this is the end of the tourist season, and they didn’t have enough people to do the trip.  So I booked the Doka, Grecia, Sarchi tour (which now has only a drive through the coffee plantations, and no butterfly farm).  They gave us a couple of names of other  zipline tours, one of which is close to one of Danny’s other properties, so we left his number with them in case something opened up, and decided we’d check out the other tours.

We ran some errands, including a trip to the grocery store where I bought food/snacks for the next three days for under $20.00.  We got something called peibaye, which is a date but isn’t sweet and looks and tastes like a small yam.  That’s my new food for the trip, I guess.  We went out to lunch, trying first at a Chinese joint in San Jose then moving to a Columbian place in Escazu.  Before we’d finished, Expediciones Tropicales called to let me know that they would, in fact, be doing a zipline tour tomorrow.  Not sure how that’s going to work out since this is the rainy season and it is POURING right now, but I’m excited, and they will allow me to use my gopro. So we shall see.  The zipline tour is scheduled for tomorrow and the coffee plantation tour for Thursday.  I leave on Friday morning.

On the trip from Jamaica to Costa Rica, I wore these Tommie’s Copper compression thingies.  They’re supposed to be for my knees, but they don’t seem to do much good.  They did, however, manage to really irritate my skin, causing first something some kind of irritation that turned into some nasty looking bumps.  My friend Danny went into his garden, cut some aloe vera, and came to put it on my sores. Honestly, they don’t make friends like this any more!!

I’ve just transferred my dolphin pics from cd and dvd to my hard drive.  I can never figure out how to upload a dvd to youtube though, so that may have to wait til I’m home. This has been an amazing trip. (note to self:  take the external hard drive tomorrow and see if they can load the pics directly onto it rather than onto a dvd.)

 Prayerfully, I’ll be energized to go back to work.  It seems we got the last contract we bid on, and they’re asking me for budget numbers.  That’s always something worth interrupting your vacation.  

My Adventures in Jamaica

So Annual Conference was over, and the delegation left to return to the US.  I’d found a MoBay hotel on Expedia.  It’s the Wexford, it’s on Gloucester Street in Mobay, it’s Jamaican-owned, and many Jamaicans seem to patronize it.  (As a matter of fact,while writing this, in the lobby, I ran into Dr. Marjorie Lewis, the President of United Theological College of the West Indies, and one of our Annual Conference guests!  She's been staying here with her mother).   I talked with another guy who got it on Expedia,  His rate was higher than mine, but they were both under $100/day, with taxes included.  That includes breakfast, a pool, access to a private beach area/water park, and wifi in the lobby.  He is from Martinique, and we both noted that the hotel is Jamaican-owned and patronized largely by Jamaicans.  It is fairly well appointed; slate veranda, faux marble lobby, a decent elevator, wood trim,  wood flooring.  A step up in quality and down in price from our Annual Conference hotel.  I don’t know if there would ever be an Annual Conference in MoBay, but if there were, I would certainly recommend this hotel.  It’s right beside the Pelican restaurant, a place to which Bishop Reddick treated us last year, and that is right beside a Burger King, for all those who miss American food when traveling abroad. Additionally, there's a Chinese restaurant on the other side of the hotel.  It's secure, and has easy access to shopping in MoBay, including a crafts area.

I hired a driver and took some time to explore.  I made another genius move and contracted with the driver, someone I knew, before contacting an American who was familiar with the environment.  Big mistake.  While the driver told me he’d have to rent a car and I’d have to pay for the rental and for gas (which decreased the amount I paid him), the tank was on E and he filled it up.  We used between a quarter and a half tank of gas.  So I’m wondering if he used the rest of the gas for himself personally or what?  Not a big deal, but it added to my out of pocket cost,  and when I told someone who’d done it before how much I agreed to pay him, and then when I found one of the places I was going to would have given me a round-trip ride for a fraction of what  I paid him – well, I decided to make sure I got my money’s worth.  I didn’t choose to renegotiate because I choose to keep my word; next time I’ll just be wiser, even with people I trust. And I have to say that the guy was a GREAT driver/tour guide, threw in a couple of extra sites, got me some local fruit, fronted me money when I had no Jamaican dollars or small US bills – he was great and did everything I wanted, I just think I paid for an extra half tank of gas and I don’t know why.

So. The plan was to go to 9 Mile, Bob Marley’s birthplace/resting place, and then to swim with dolphins.  On the way to 9 Mile, we stopped at Discovery Cove, the place where Columbus first landed in Jamaica.  I took pics of and with a lot of 15^th Century items, and then we were on our way.  We passed by huge ships processing bauxite (a raw material for aluminum), and by the big cruise ships.  He showed me lots of mountain communities, including communities where people have no water and have to collect water for the whole town in big reservoirs.  He showed me yam farms and how the farmers have them to grow up on poles.

Finally we arrived a 9 Mile.  It’s up a mountain.  On the way in, you see the school that Bob Marley’s mom built.  The road to 9 Mile is lined with people begging for money.  Once inside the complex, you have to pay a $20.00 entrance fee for a “tour.”  The tour is a bunch of stoned (I swear they were high; Gary says they weren’t) Rastas making dumb jokes and stretching out what should be a 20 minute photo op into a painful hour of attempting to make Bob Marley into a saint.  Do’t get me wrong, I love Bob, and there was a time when I loved smoking weed.  When I smoked weed, though, if I offered it to you and you said no, I was like “Cool.  More for me.”  These folks offered you weed literally every 20 yards, and after a while it was no longer novel, it was just annoying.  I couldn’t help but wonder if we Christians are as annoying in our presentation of the Gospel.  Do we make it relevant and appealing to those to whom we offer it, or is our attitude simply “here.  Do this.  You need it.  It’s good for you.”  Because that latter attitude doesn’t work. 

So you see the house where he was born, you go up the hill and see the place where his maternal grandparents are buried, you go up the hill some more (or maybe this was below) and see his albums, you see a room with his mother’s bed in it.  Then at the top of the hill (I think this is before his mother’s bed), you have to take off your shoes.  You see what used to be their kitchen, you see the meditation rock upon which he used to sit and write songs, you see his mother’s mausoleum, and you see his mausoleum.  The spaces around his mausoleum in particular are very tight;  I saw a fellow in a wheelchair being wheeled up the mountain and felt bad for him, as there’s no way his chair can fit around the mausoleum.  The weirdest thing about it was that inside Bob’s mausoleum no pictures or video are allowed, no alcohol or cigarettes are allowed but you can smoke all the weed you want.  No one in our group chose to do that, but still the stench of old weed permeated the structure.  There was a time when I loved the smell of weed, and when my own house probably smelled like that.  Thankfully, that time is long gone

So that, along with incessant offers to smoke weed, two gift shops, a group of drummer/musicians (I often find myself wondering if Bob Marley is so revered because he’s the only Rastaman who can actually hold a tune…), and a whole lot of weak, quasi-narcissistic banter about Rastafarianism was 9Mile.  Glad I did it.  Never have to do it again.

From 9 Mile, we made it to Dolphin Cove.  I was spozed to be there at 2, but the swim didn’t start til 2:30.  We actually got there about 1:45, but there still wasn’t time to do anything else before the swim.  I did the same swim as last year.  I toyed with the idea of swimming with two dolphins, but wasn’t sure how it worked.  I think I’m going to try that next time, though.  So I did my dolphin swim, watched a little bit of the shark show, and went snorkeling while waiting to hold a stingray.  I held the stingray, and by the time I finished, realized I’d lost my key while snorkeling.  The shark guys said they’d look for it and they took their snorkels and started searching.  I wanted to go in and help them, but the folk on deck wouldn’t let me.  After a while, I decided to go ask the locker attendant if they had a master key.  Of course the person with the master key was off site…

At which point the diving guys showed up with my key!!!  That may have been the highlight of both our days.  The signs said “No Tipping,” but he went above and beyond, and I showed my gratitude.  Afterwards, I walked through the park and took some more pictures with the birds.  Last year, there were several birds on me and in my arms.  This year, I just held Mango while he kissed me.  So I kissed fish and birds on this trip.  Maybe I can get some monkeys in Costa Rica.

While worshipping with Good News CME Church in Jamaica, I noticed they don’t use the CME Hymnal, they use a hymnal called Redemption Songs.  I noticed the ladies with it (probably have a picture of it), and immediately recall Bob Marley’s song of the same name.  In that song, he’s talking about freeing oneself mentally, by using Redemption Songs.  (Marley, incidentally, was buried with a soccer ball, a Bible, and a spliff.  Maybe something else, but that’s what  I remember.  While his theology appeared to be Rastafarian (the union of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba produced the line from which the Messiah comes,  and that Messiah is, I believe, an Ethiopian head of state.  Or something like that.  It’s like the Kebra Negast, but with weed).  While his theology appeared to be Rasta, he certainly revered the Bible.  It’s not a big stretch to think that this book, Redemption Songs, containing hymns based on Biblical passages, would be the tool he thought of as emancipatory.  That just blows me away!!!! 

So of course I had to get a copy of the hymnal.  That’s the one thing I would have bought on 9Mile, but it wasn’t there. So Gary took me into Ocho Rios and we found a bookstore, but they didn’t have it.  They directed us to another bookstore, which was closed.  He asked them to open up, they did, they had the book, and they sold it to me!!! (See why I can’t be too upset for paying him a little extra?  The guy is good.).  We had patties and then headed back to MoBay.  He stopped a couple of times for me to  get pictures of sunsets.  And he must have noticed that I like trying new things:  As we were leaving MoBay, everyone was asking about sugar cane, so I bought a bag (it was $1.00) and we cut it up so whoever wanted to could try it.  Gary stopped on the side of the road and got this really cool fruit called jackfruit.  It’s interesting looking, and it was very tasty.  He’s a good tour guide – show me new and interesting things, teach me about your home, and give me photo ops.

When I can get to a pc with a DVD drive, I will put the dolphin pictures here.

The rest of the pictures from the day can be found here.  Again, you should be able to click on the blue hyperlink, but if that doesn't work, just cut and paste the text below:

Mobay at Sunset:

(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202828451286179.1073741872.1048146180&type=1&l=234eeca66e)

"Discovery" Cove and 9 Mile:

(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202835712067694.1073741874.1048146180&type=1&l=d620b1b204)

My pics from Dolphin Cove and with Mango the parrot:

(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202835786389552.1073741875.1048146180&type=1&l=80e9243598)

And now I’m off to Costa Rica! Pura Vida!

As I leave, some thoughts on the Jamaica Annual Conference

In a few hours I leave Jamaica, after a wonderful week here.  Last year, I blogged daily on my experiences; this year I found myself more caught up in those experiences and less inclined to step back and look at them critically.  I do have some thoughts about the church experience, but will come to that later.

I was writing this while sitting in the lobby of the Wexford hotel, tuning in to the livestream of Carter Tabernacle CME Church (www.cartertabernaclecme.org).  While the internet access here does not appear to be high speed, which causes the feed to cut in and out, I didn’t have to put on anything other than shorts and sandals.  That’s important to me. While The Church of the Inner Spring or its cyber derivatives are never a substitute for f2f fellowshipping with the Saints,  this was a delightful way to worship while on vacation.

Where to begin? We got here on Easter Monday, and aside from the airline losing one member’s luggage, our arrival was relatively uneventful.  (I’m seeing right now that I should write every day.  There are SO many experiences that don’t get recorded if I don’t write them down at the time).  The members of the delegation were:

(I'll have to come back and list the members and churches after I get them from the organizers.  I dare not do it from memory lest I leave someone out...)

Some of them were with the group last year; some had come in previous years; some were new.

My notes say that I’m first to talk about the wonderful hospitality shown us by our hosts at Good News CME Church, and indeed the entire Jamaica Annual Conference.  Every day we were treated to a family-style feast featuring curried chicken, curried goat, fried chicken, escovietch fish, peas and rice, and salad  This open-air church always had bottles of ice-cold water and other cold beverages available for us to drink.  Our Jamaican hosts always made sure that we, the visitors, were fed first, and offered us the comfort of dining in their newly built Steph's Place, an addition to the Pauline B. Grant Early Childhood Education building.  The namesake, Stephanie Crispinelli, perished in the Haiti Earthquake and her family set up a foundation to assist people in developing countries.  I think it merits highlighting that they chose the Pauline B. Grant Early Childhood Education center, under the auspices of the Good News CME Church, as a recipient of that funding.  The building is newly-constructed, and can serve as a multi-purpose facility.

I may be out of line for these comments, but this is my personal blog with my personal views.  From what I can gather, the CME Church in Jamaica appears to be growing via both planting and assimilating/converting.  I think the number of people may be greater via the latter method, while the number of charges increases via the former.  Either way, the people, coming from a wide diversity of spiritual and theological backgrounds, have to be taught the basic tenets of Methodism, and the history and polity of the CME Church.  Much of this happens at Annual Conference.  Every interaction has the potential to be a teaching moment.

I’ve only visited one of our CME Churches in Africa, but the recent influx of several hundred thousand new members there suggests to me that the situation is similar in the Motherland.  Which is why I believe there is a need to put SEASONED leaders in our overseas assignments, as these leaders must teach new converts AND navigate a myriad of cultural factors. (I’m can't even comment on the implications of sending the Bishop elected with the least number of votes to the Motherland.   Between that and the indigenous African Bishop, what message does that send about how we regard Africa?  And have we no thoughts for expanding into  the rest of the world?  What will happen then?  Will we have an indigenous European Bishop?  An indigenous Asian, South American, or Australian one?  What does the term “overseas missions” mean to people who live outside the US, people we regard as potential recipients of our missionary efforts?  I totally understand the North-American-centrism of our US-originated  Christian denominations; I just think it might be time to re-think it.  And I’m not talking just about the CME church.  OK, end rant.)

Some members of the USA group were particularly taken with one chorus sung at Good News: 

I want to go to holiness.

I’m tired of the lukewarm-ness

I’m tired of the poor conditions.

I want to go to holiness.

It sort of caught fire with us, and we found ourselves spontaneously breaking into  the chorus on the bus on our last trip away from the Conference.  It’s quite a fitting song.  Not just in Good News CME, not just in the CME Church, but in many of my interactions here in Jamaica, I see a fervor for holiness, a thirst for knowledge of the True and Living God.  I see a marked contrast between some of us who have so many material things, but who can’t be bothered to pray too often or too long – between us and between those who are willing to gather in a borrowed location (or even in changing locations) just to come together and praise the Lord.

In the Annual Conference, I sat immediately behind the Pastors’ bar.  When they were making their reports, I noticed the report of a man who has Bible Study only once a month, but when he has it, the majority of his members come.  It seems to me that things such as sacrifice, perseverance, and endurance here are more than just concepts:  They are very real phenomena, very real in a Third World sort of way, which is a completely different scale than those phenomena in a First World kind of way.  (The fact that I use the terms “Third World” and “First World” rather than “Developing Countries” and “Industrialized Countries” highlights not only the differences, but some of the attitudes that make those differences so pervasive.)

The Annual Conference began on Tuesday morning.  Like every other Annual Conference in our church, there were morning devotions, and then the presentation of the Bishop.  Don’t know if it’s because he’s a Dukie or because he’s SUCH a Methodist, but Bishop Reddick has a clear and logical organizational style that’s been missing in our Zion.  I didn’t take notes on all the sermons and Bible studies presented, but I did note that the opening teaching was from John 21:20-22, and the topic was “You Must Follow Me.”  He started out by going through the seasons of the Christian year, and arriving at Eastertide (as he went through them, he explained their theological meanings and significance in the life of the church; e.g., not just Kingdomtide, but “Kingdomtide comes after Pentecost, and its color is green, which is the color of growth.  He is already the King; the kingdoms of this world become His Kingdom.  He is here.”)

So we then moved to Eastertide, and Bishop Reddick compared Peter’s response to Jesus’ questions about loving Him to our own responses to Jesus:  “Yes, Lord,  but …..”  In this text and in our lives, Jesus is telling us to follow Him.  This text reminds us to grapple with the question, “what is the Lord calling me to do?”  and as a corollary, “what purposes does God have for the CME Church in Jamaica?”  There are lots of bodies;  what does God call THIS body to do? 

I’m skipping over a few examples of Bishops and Missionaries in Jamaica responding to  that question, and going to the closing, which reminds us that perhaps God is calling us to FOCUS.  Bishop Reddick left us with three closing points:

·         We are each called to be not someone else, but ourselves.  We are God’s richness. What does God call us to do? What is our identity?  The richness of Christian fellowship is learning to appreciate one another.

·         Christ wants us to be constantly edified in His Grace and Love.  God wants to build us up, and we are to build each other up in the Lord.

·         The church is not just a building; a building is where the church meets.  But there must be a plan for the building – a plan from the inside out.  We must count all the cost to finish the building, and then must persist in working the plan.

I thought this address was particularly well done, for two reasons:  1) there is the teaching element. As I said, people come from diverse theological backgrounds, and every moment is a teaching moment.  The address started out by taking people through the Christian year:  the times/duration of the seasons, the meanings, the colors and their significance.  We have plenty of CMEs Stateside who have served for decades and don’t understand these things.  2) this address was also well done because it emphasized individual importance.  I can’t know what it’s like to live in a lesser-developed county with lots of people from industrialized countries always coming in and throwing their cash and culture around.  (The closest I can imagine is being a poor Southern black girl in a New England prep school.  Even if the people don’t say it, there’s a marked difference – I remember one weekend trying to scrape up enough money to get from Boston to NYC.  Kids in my class were going to Aruba for that weekend.  I didn’t even know where Aruba was. We were in academia, and I could hold my own with or best most of them intellectually, so that’s how I coped,) But there could be a tendency, when two very disparate cultures or economic situations come into contact – there could be an opportunity for resentment, dependence, and/or an air of superiority.  I think Bishop Reddick’s teaching was designed to emphasize individual importance, and rightly so.

I’ve gone off topic again.  But it's my blog; I can do that.  The Annual Conference was great:  Presiding Elder  Rev. Dr. Ore L Spragin, Jr. did Bible Study each morning, taking us through the 5^th and 6^th (and maybe into the 7^th) chapters of the Book of Acts; Presiding Elder Rev. Elroy Ewart preached the Communion sermon; Rev. Clementine Mays did the morning meditation on  the first business day, and Rev. Lena Laing preached the closing service that night.  Both the Connectional Lay Leader, Mr. Cliff Harris, and the Connectional Missionary President, Dr. Princess Pegues, were present and had breakout sessions to instruct the congregations in how to organize Lay Departments and Women’s Missionary Societies.

A few of us from the US:  Rev. Clarence Kelby Heath, Rev. Manuel Henderson, Rev. Clementine Mays and myself, all serve on our Annual Conference Committees on Ministerial Examination.  As such, we were privileged to sit with the Jamaica Region’s Chair as she examined some candidates.  It was sort of like building a house while living in it:  candidates were present, and clearly active in ministry, but the undergirding structures (study, examination, and understanding of the Holy Word and the Discipline of the CME Church) needed shoring up.  We agreed to keep in touch, and I believe this process will be useful to everyone, as this is another place where teaching and training can occur.

There were some deviations from the scheduled order of business, mostly necessary training breakouts.  The Jamaica Conference took time during one of the worship services to have the Quadrennial Celebration for Bishop and Mrs. Reddick.  They then showed appreciation to all the missionaries and to every single member of the visiting US group.  That was amazing, and we are deeply appreciative of the great lengths to which they continually went in order to welcome us.  It was beyond kind.

The final day was for Disciplinary Questions and the most beautiful part of Annual Conference, the Ordination service (when I take my kids to conference, I give them a pretty long rope, but they have to make Communion and Ordination).  Again, I was privileged to participate, not only with the laying on of hands as an Elder but also with reading Scripture.  I’m not trying to brag, but I am incredibly grateful when I realize that I’ve participated on the Annual Conference level in Holy Communion, Ordination and, in my own Conference, as a Bible Study teacher.  It’s quite humbling to look around and realize that so many people who are equally qualified never have those opportunities.

Annual Conference Pictures can be found here:  You should be able to click on the blue hyperlinks, but I've left the web address in (in parenthesis) so you can cut and paste that if need be.

Getting there:
(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202808351783704.1073741867.1048146180&type=1&l=9013b31c6c)

Opening Day:

(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202808395264791.1073741868.1048146180&type=1&l=6d28765c93)

4.23.14 before Breakfast:

(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202810512037709.1073741869.1048146180&type=1&l=4c1f34d61e)

Day Two:

(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202815043350989.1073741870.1048146180&type=1&l=33504670ed)

Final Day:

(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202828551768691.1073741873.1048146180&type=1&l=ee51601db6)

Leaving:

(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202826620400408.1073741871.1048146180&type=1&l=f66c3760eb)

Mobay at Sunset:

(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202828451286179.1073741872.1048146180&type=1&l=234eeca66e)

Aprill 21 - First Day

Not in the mood to write much, but here are a couple of things I've noticed so far:

      1)  Getting out of NYC is like flipping a switch. I unlocked my phone and brought a spare, but since yesterday was a holiday here in Jamaica, I couldn’t buy a sim card.  I’m not even bothering with international service any more, so my phone is off.  And I’m still alive!!  I struggle so hard to manage my expectations when I’m in the City; as soon as I leave it, I’m reminded of Paul in his letter to  the church at Philippi, where he says :”…I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to  be content whatever the circumstances.  I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.  I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.” 

2    

2         2)  I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m talking about anyone, because I’m not.  But as I travel, I am acutely aware of how much of our own expectations we bring to any given situation, and how our interactions then become an exercise in dealing with our expectations rather than in dealing with the reality before us.  Sometimes we’re so entrenched in our expectations that they warp or completely obscure any reality different from them.  And then I wonder if the same might be true of our relationship with God.  Is it possible we’re so busy trying to view God through our own individual lenses that we miss the opportunity to view ourselves and the world around us through the Divine lens of the Creator?  How much do we miss because we’re waiting for God to send a thunderbolt from the sky and are unaware of the gentle caress of the wind?    

3    3)    So my task becomes to live more and more in the moment, to value each moment as a Divine gift, to appreciate the beauty in it, and to treasure it as such.  I’ve got a lot of work to do, but that’s the next step for me.

     Got a message from a preacher in Philadelphia whose daughter lives here in Jamaica.  We communicated last night; she wants to come to the Annual Conference.  I'm looking forward to going to Good News, seeing the good people, and hearing more of the Good News.  We're heading to breakfast now; I'ma go be social.