Despite our late arrival on Thursday night, we started our day fairly early on Friday. We went and met with Ammiel Perez, who acts as administrative head of the churches of Christ in the eyes of the government. We discussed plans for the youth conference that Herald of Truth sponsors in the summer; Ammiel assured us that everything seems perfectly normal for that event. (Two recent national conferences were cancelled because of complications from the hurricanes that hit Cuba last year)

Ammiel took us to visit one of the nearby congregations in Havana that had been able to purchase a building thanks to help from the Mayfair congregation in Huntsville, Alabama. The house they had purchased has once been a beautiful mansion-like home; now it lies in ruins, and the brothers are working hard to recondition it.

After visiting with Ammiel, we ate lunch at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Havana, then headed for Matanzas (about a 90-minute drive).

On the way, we stopped to visit some radio listeners who knew me from the program I do. That’s always fun. One of the listeners was so excited to put a face with the voice she had heard on the radio; her eyes were glistening with tears as we talked. Since we were on a tourist visa, we couldn’t do as much of that as we usually do, but it was good to meet these people. Arriving in Matanzas, we stopped by to greet Tony Fernandez’ family, then headed on to Varadero, where we would be staying. Tony’s wife, Liudmila, used to work for a travel company and has a good friend that is business manager of the Meliá Varadero, a very nice hotel near Matanzas.

In the evening we arrived at our hotel fairly early, ate an early supper (8 p.m.; that’s early in Latin America), then tried to get some rest.We were worn out from the trip and would need our rest for the busy weekend ahead.