To Convert or not to Convert...that was never the question

So, it’s funny, you spend your whole life avoiding those Jehovah Witness’ that come knocking on your door, right?  You hide behind the window, you mute the tv, whatever.  It only took me 30 seconds to invite a half dozen of them onto the boat.  (I know they’re reading this, but I think they get my sense of humor…)

There we were, at Treelodge Resort, eating their Friday night special of Mangrove Crabs.  Jake was playing with Mark and Maria’s son and Andy and I were getting to know some expats around the island.  Soon, Mark’s mother comes in and introduces herself as “Peggy Sue!  Buddy Holly made me famous!”  I would love to imitate her southern accent but I don’t know how…she sounded perfectly normal to me.  Peggy Sue is from Nashville, Tennessee and this is her first trip out of the country.  We enjoyed talking to her and getting a little slice of home as we commiserated about the lack of honey and yellow cornmeal around here and there’s no way you could possibly get any grits even if you tried. 

Jake playing with Ochi (short for Oceano, I think) while we
were having dinner.

Soon, I looked over and saw Jake talking to an entire table full of people.  So I got up and went over there to tell him not to “bug” them.  They said he was fine and they enjoyed him chatting them up.  It turns out one of the couples was thinking of buying a catamaran and sailing around as well and they had lots of questions.  I had a seat and we talked for a while about boats…then I tried to shut up (hard for me sometimes) and asked them what they were doing on the island.  I was sitting at a table of Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Three of them lived on the island and three of them were visiting.  Now I’ve met Jehovah’s Witnesses before but it was always one here or there (a kid in school and a date of a friend of ours at the Navy Ball one time, who incidentally didn’t stand up for the National Anthem), so I admit everything I think of them, is totally made up in my mind (consider the National Anthem incident).  I was wrong on all accounts and knew it immediately as I talked to these guys.  So, by the time Andy had come over, I had invited every one to the boat to take a look.

And so they did.  Unfortunately, only four of them were able to come over, but I think they enjoyed their stay.  They got to look around our boat, ask questions, and compare it to others they had seen or heard about.  We had some people do this for us when were just looking and it was invaluable to be able to finally imagine yourself in a particular space and then get to make decisions from there.  It was a sweltering hot day, but they took it all in stride and in the end, I think they had a good time.  We did gain a few books out of it (wink, wink), but maybe we made some friends too!