"Helping" a Fisherman

Last week on our free day, we missionaries went again to the beach. It’s close, easy, and cheap. While I sat under the shade of a palm tree, I couldn’t help but notice a good size boat (not a ship) pull up onto the beach directly in front of us. The young tyke stayed in the boat, but the other two young men heaved on a net to pull it on the beach and up beyond the incoming waves. I watched as they opened the net and began to pull out the fish one by one and throw it into a bucket. I suddenly had the urge to go help them. It was so easy to image that this must be similar to how the fisherman of Jesus’ time earned a living. My urge got the best of me and the next thing I knew I was asking in Spanish if I could help. They looked at me like I had two heads. So I repeated my question. One asked me, “You (actually) like doing this?” I replied, “I don’t know, this is my first time.” After a pause, he said OK, so I started to “help”. I wasn’t afraid to mess with a fish since I’d fished many times with my dad and sometimes my grandpas when I was a kid. The fish weren’t as slimy and as hard to handle as I expected, however many of them were very tangled in the net. I quickly learned there was a right and wrong way to do this job, and it was not nearly as easy as it seemed. Also, within about 2 minutes, I noticed that not only were my arms itching and burning simultaneously, but so was my neck on one side. Only a minute or so later, one of the young guys encouraged me to try to stay out of the net (which is impossible) as much as possible because of jelly fish. It took me awhile, but I finally figured out that “jelly fish juice” was on most parts of the net from times where jelly fish had tangled with the net. There wasn’t anything visible on the net (re: the jellyfish), but anytime a bit of water spritzed on me or when the net hit my skin, it caused it to react as if I’d touched a jelly fish. I refused to stop what I was doing and was determined to tough it out along with the guys. But you can believe I headed for the shower as soon as the catch was done. I guess they’d become accustomed to it. Unfortunately, I found out that I was so focused on getting the fish out of the net, that I didn’t notice that not all of the fish were being thrown in the bucket. Yet, I tossed every fish I touched into the bucket. So when we were finished, the guys had to dump out all the fish and sort them. So I guess I wasn’t but so much help. They told me that they were unable to sell a certain kind of fish. They then washed out and folded their net and headed inland. I wished someone had their camera...but it's not worth risking it in the sand and salty air. But it'll last in my memory for a long time. It was a really special experience.