Cuba

As many of you know, we went to Cuba for a week and got back this past Tuesday.  I’ve been meaning to write this ever since.  Cuba was amazing, interesting, all sorts of adjectives that are difficult to summarize but I will surely try here.

From the moment we got off the plane and were picked up by some people who would become fast friends in a ‘56 Ford, I knew Cuba was going to be very different indeed.  The thing that struck me as odd right off the bat was that the road was shared by all sorts of transportation.  From cars from the ‘50’s to horse and buggies to bikes and bike taxis, it was a really diverse roadway system there.  For Cubans, nothing seems more natural I’m sure, but it caught my American eyes off guard.

The friends we made down there were wonderful.  We stayed with a family in Santiago for 3 nights followed by a family in Holguin for 4 nights.  Both sets of families were beyond hospitable and really made us feel at home, at least as much as possible when you have blaring music next door and cats and roosters keeping you up all night.

There is truly no better way to see a country than to stay with locals.  Our first family had 2 children, ages 5 and 6 and I had a blast with them.  The second family had a 3 month old baby so Steffani was in heaven with that part of the trip.  We joked that the first stay was for me since I love that age and the second stay was for Steffani since she loves babies.  The 5 year old girl couldn’t even manage a smile for the camera when we left because she was so sad to see us go.  That truly warmed my heart and made it hard on me too to leave their place.

With kids in particular there doesn’t ever seem to be a language barrier.  I can be silly in any language and kids are ticklish in every language so I usually connect with children no matter where I am.  These kids were no different.  They were so cute and I had so much fun with them; I miss them as I write about them now.  We knew enough Spanish and both sets of hosts knew enough English that the language barrier wasn’t really too much of a problem thankfully.

When we left we asked our church to pray for three c’s; communication, clarity and connections.  We are pleased to say we got all three on this trip.  Our communication went fine as mentioned earlier.  We got clarity in the form of a closed door down there at this point.  And we made connections with the Baptist church that we have already shared with some people from our organization who are going to head down there in April.