Grand Cayman Island 2013: Sunday: Cayman-style church, parasailing, and stingrays!

Since it was Sunday, Alex and I decided to check out a local church to see what it might be like here on the island. Just 1.5 miles up the road, there was a church called Wesleyan Holiness Church, so we visited there. Everyone was extremely friendly, several members approached us before the service started and welcomed us, asked where we were from, etc. One guy just had a daughter and grandbaby move to near Muncie, IN! She had attended Ball State earlier and moved back there.

Their worship service was very lively, to say the least! The worship songs were mostly familiar, same as we sing back home, but there were a lot of extra "Hallelujah" and "Praise the Lord" exclamations, during the singing, praying, and the sermon! One lady became really excited (I'm not sure that's the right word ... maybe it was more like catching the Holy Spirit!) during a song and just went on and on with the "Hallelujahs" over and over! Also, the pastor invited everyone who wanted to to come to the front and join him for a prayer. About 1/2 of the congregation did so and everyone said their prayers at the same time out loud! The pastor was the loudest, so you could hear him over the rest, but there was a lot of murmuring of prayers everywhere! The pastor was very intense during the sermon, and if someone did not reply "Amen" or something like that right away, he wondered if we had all fallen asleep, and kind of prompted us to be more interactive! It was fun! He went over the usual time and at one point looked at the clock and exclaimed "Oh, we'll be on Mountain Standard Time today, it's only 11" (instead of 12!). After the service we had to wait around for a little while for Daryl to come and get us, and 3 or 4 people asked if we needed a ride! Very friendly people!

We had lunch at another local favorite food stand, Heritage Kitchen. Again, the grouper I ate was really good (pineapple grouper), the kids had barbeque ribs, Daryl had Cayman Style Mahi, also very good!

A lot of things are closed on Sundays here, so we did not really expect to do much but hang out at the pool and beach, but then we saw the parasailing boat out. So we called and sure enough they were running! We booked it and their own boat taxi picked us up on our own beach 30 minutes later! The little boat took us out to a bigger boat where we did the parasailing. We went up in two doubles, first Daryl and Ben, then Alex and I! It was an unbelievable experience, wow! First of all the water was so incredibly blue, even a different shade of blue yet than what we had seen close to the beach, like an intense royal blue. Then we saw a sea turtle swimming just a little way out from the boat. Unfortunately I had my camera inside of the waterproof case and could not get a good photo in time (it is hard to zoom with the case on).

Ben and Daryl taking off!

On the way back down, they dip you in the ocean,

then lift you back up before you land on the boat!

My toes looking straight down!

Self portrait ... good thing I had a wrist strap on the camera!

look at the variety of blues in the ocean!

This shows how high up we were from the boat pulling us!

From the air we saw another turtle (Ben and Daryl saw 3!), along with the beautiful shore line, beaches, boats, and the blue ocean, all the fantastic shades of blue!

We are really doing it all this vacation! So many wonderful memories being made! We hope the boys will appreciate it; there have been a few times they would have preferred to stay in the condo and watch TV or play iPod and Kindle, instead of go out to the beach! I guess I'm on the laptop doing this, though, too, so I understand. We all need a little down time!

In the evening, Daryl and I went out snorkeling again, just off our beach. We went out a bit farther and found amazing reefs, including several varieties of sting rays and a multitude of awesome fish!