Fellow missionary Ashley Lehr & I have been travel buddies on multiple occasions now: Germany in December 2021, Pico Duarte in December 2022, Spain in November 2024. Accordingly, when she started talking about a friends' cruise for her "golden birthday" (age = date)...in June of 2024(!)...I was intrigued. Unused vacation days + a travel credit from Capital One made it largely a no-brainer.
Fast forward to last weekend, and Ashley's Birthday Bash morphed into her parents & I spending a long weekend celebrating at Ashley's place (pictured below) in Cabo Rojo, PR, doing all of her favorite things and then some.
Her kitchen table is small, so she'd set up a folding table in the living room with a color-me tablecloth that even had a crossword puzzle for me! The numbered images are the clues; the words underneath are the answer key.
I knew I'd trained Ashley well for her role hosting short-term volunteers that complements mine in the DR when she sent me a schedule for the weekend in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. Our first of four full days featured a swim in a bioluminescent bay; it's one of just five in the entire world, three of which are in PR (the others are in Jamaica and Vietnam). We stopped to see some salt flats on the way.
The bay is in Parguera, maybe 30 min. from Ashley's house. We checked in with our tour operator about 45 min. early and had some to poke around the cute downtown area.
Our boat's first stop was a shallow area near a mongrove cay, where we fed empanadilla crusts to tarpon while we waited for the sun to set. Another 10 min out to sea put us in an enclave maybe 1/2 mi. across with the ideal conditions for billions of microscopic dinoflagellates to thrive. Their glow is stimulated by motion: appendages look glittery underwater, and our tour guide told us to snap our fingers if we wanted to feel like a wizard. The only way to capture the phenomenon on an iPhone is using long exposure, which results in a photo like the one below.
After brunch at Ashley's go-to cafe mid-morning on Day 2, we spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening doing a hop-on, hop-off private tour of the west coast...and low-key scouting out whether it'd be a good activity for future teams (100%).
Defunct train tunnel built by the Spanish for transporting sugar cane.
Ruins of a 19th century lighthouse that was sentenced to demolition but then conveniently destroyed in a landmark 1918 earthquake.
Our guide treated us to a mid-afternoon pick-me-up of locally made chocolate: milk, dark, and white with cacao nibs.
Jobos Beach.
Last stop: Sunset at Lighthouse Park in Rincon.
We were blessed to receive God's gifts of Word and Sacrament alongside the members of Principe de Paz in Mayaguez Sunday morning...and God's gift of sustenance in the form of a 42 in pizza (made with 5 lbs. each of flour and cheese) at a nondescript roadside stop in the mountains Sunday evening. Thirteen adults ate barely over half of it.
Ashley & I schemed to make a detour for rolled ice cream (my first!) on our way home. From the front seat, her dad could see a sign taped to the bottom of the menu board that I couldn't. I made my decision instantly when he read that it was advertising pumpkin spice as a seasonal flavor.
Is it even a milestone birthday if there's not decorations?! Note the pile of supplies on the table for our team beach day at Playa Combate. Ashley & her colleagues are packing pros; if I lived in PR, I'd need to invest in a folding wagon and a beach chair with straps so you can carry it like a backpack. Combate is Ashley's preferred beach for a reason: no algae, no waves, and just a light breeze. I may have taken a ~30 min. hammock nap...
Ashley's dad was vigilant about making sure she didn't open her presents until her ACTUAL birthday - at or after the time she was born (2:29 pm), in Central Time and everything. We laid low the rest of the day, playing Phase 10 and cleaning out the fridge for dinner.
Thanks be to God for the chance to bond with and celebrate this dear friend. Her and her parents' hospitality and generosity went above and beyond, and my sweet fiancé was all too gracious in encouraging me to go have fun even though it meant leaving him...again...for a non-work function. Keep Ashley in your prayers as she serves in Puerto Rico WHILE simultaneously studying in CTSFW's online deaconess program. It's clear she loves what she does and where the Lord is presently calling her to do it. We don't even have to think about what our next adventure is going to be; Ashley and a handful of others are already planning to be in the DR for the annual Volunteer Coordinators' Conference...which happens to fall over MY birthday!
Until next time, blessings in Christ!
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