CDC Trip 6: The Islands of Paradise

These are pics of various islands that I saw. It's a truly unique place in the world.

This is the biggest "city" or most developed place I saw. Those are the biggest buildings in the background.

This is a beach I went to. I'll mention it later in a bit of a miracle I experienced.

The next few pictures are right outside the hotel I stayed at.

I had quite the adventure my 3rd week in. The following pictures are a beach I went to for snorkeling and relaxing. I had a great time but when the group was getting ready to go back to the car I searched and searched and couldn't find my wallet. I spent a long time looking everywhere until we gave up and head back. I had bought some water on the way there at a tiny shop on the way there so we checked there to see if my wallet was there. So I had to give up and was looking into how to cancel my credit cards etc from this tiny island.

I could think of 2 places that my wallet could be: I either left it in the shop and they lied to me or I had left it in my swimming trunks in the pocket and it fell out while I was snorkeling. I felt that it was probably the latter and gave up. This meant I might be able to avoid cancelling my credit card so that I could pay for my hotel since they had my info. My CDC companions offered to loan me money for food and other expenses to last me as we only had 1 week left at this point.

That night, I developed a sore throat and a 103 F temp. It was likely influenza, so I just stayed home and had plenty time to dwell on my wallet. However, I got a call at about 11am in the morning from the US embassy. They told me a man had found a wallet on the beach. Inside that wallet, he found a card saying "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" and he had a neighbor who a member of that church. That neighbor gave the wallet to the missionary headquarters for that church who passed it onto the US embassy as it didn't belong to any missionary. That was my temple recommend. The US embassy called the CDC who gave them my cell phone number.

WHAT A MIRACLE!!! I traveled to the US embassy and found my wallet: soaked, full of sand, with a little mildew and very smelly. It still had $300 in cash and all my credit cards. My best guess is that it truly did fall out in the ocean and get washed on shore. And my temple recommend (church card) guided it back to me.

I'll write a little more about the safety of the islands in the next couple of posts.

This is the beach where I lost my wallet snorkeling.