New Year's or Old Year's Eve

I'm finally getting to sit down and post, and I have so much to say! Guyana is an amazing experience. I have learned so much in the past 2 weeks, and feel like 3 months have gone by. There are the struggles, but God has been so good.

It is very amusing to be a spectacle everywhere you go here. I get stared at wherever I go, especially the market, and get called fun, inappropriate, and just plain strange names. Some of which include "white girls, white girls", "Beautiful", kissing noises made to try and get my attention, "Sweet, Sweet", etc. I always ignore people, and Ellen tends to answer/acknowledge them when they talk to us/her/me. I guess I feel safer ignoring people. Its probably not a good policy, as today I had a black man try to say something to me, and I completely ignored him, and then he said "You no talk to black men?" I then looked at him, and finally said "Sometimes." And then looked away. Ellen pointed out that I may appear to be a jerk to these people, but the thought never crossed my mind, I'm just thinking, "If I don't look at you or have anything to do with you, you can't and won't hurt or bother me." I believe Ellen thinks that's flawed thinking.

I was tempted, as Ellen to be sad that I wasn't going to be home with everyone for the Holidays, especially when I hear about how much fun every one's having, and the time being spent with family, but God has provided exciting things for us to do for the Holidays here. Tonight, we are having a "combined service", which means that all of the churches in fellowship here will meet- #57, Roadside, and Corriverton. They are all coming here to Corriverton, and we will have a combined church service as well as a time of fellowship, games, sharing of our upcoming plans for 2009, prayer for those plans, and food. I asked Brother John on Sunday if we could cook all American food, and he thought that sounded like a fine idea. So I made a rather strange menu, but you have to deal with your resources: spaghetti with veggie spaghetti sauce, Golden Knots, melon salad, cereal bars, chocolate chunk cookies (because there are NO chocolate chips here!), brownies, and iced tea. Today will be spent preparing all of this for tonight, so there is much work to be done, of which I am happy about. I love to be busy. They call this holiday Old Year's Day, and Ellen kinda likes that term, so maybe she'll come back calling it that:).

Yesterday was a very busy day for Ellen and I, we taught a vacation bible school of sorts in two different villages which are pretty far away from here- #57, and #55. There were about 30 kids at each, and we were going from 9:30 in the morning til 4:30 in the afternoon. I really enjoyed being able to interact with the children, though many of them are so stone faced, and its SO difficult to get them to talk. I think they are still a little shy around us, and they often touch our skin, and ask where we live. One little boy asked Ellen how her skin got so white, and she said something like, "When I was born, they washed all the darkness off with water." Our lesson yesterday was the same for both villages, and we based it out of Acts 16:16-34, which in short, is about Paul and Silas getting thrown into Prison and the jailer saying "What must I do to be saved?" We read the story straight from the bible, then retold it, elaborating on certain words and explaining it a little more simply for them, using flannel graph, and finally, we had them act it out, which they seemed to have fun with.

I have enjoyed the opportunities I've had to teach one-on-one. I am trying to make a point to get into people's lives, and establish relationships.

Saturdays, I teach Hemdath, a guy from the church who wants to learn phonics, spelling, and in general, English. He can read and write, but they teach sight reading here, so he has a difficult time breaking words down, and spelling them out. Also, with the creolese, they pronounce so many things wrong here, so he when I tell him to write a word, and he writes how the word is pronounced here in Guyana. I'm working on the alphabet, and forcing him to pronounce the 'a', 'e', 'o', and 'u's correctly.

Sunday, I taught Ravini some piano, and she ate it up. She is so excited to play, and she will ask me to play her "favorite song", a song I played, and we sang, for a special a couple Sundays ago. I find myself playing By Grace Alone whenever there's a keyboard and Ravini near. She is such a sweet girl, and becoming very special to me. She's 12 years old, and Brother Moti's daughter. He is going to be the Pastor of #57 as soon as the building is finished.

Sunday evenings, they have a time of learning new songs before the service starts here in Corriverton, and we will be teaching that from now on. I find it frustrating to get them to sing on tune, and I need patience! I am so thankful for Ellen and our being able to sing together. Hopefully we will be able to teach the some of the people here how to sing on key and to not waiver in their notes. Everywhere we go here it seems we sing. Brother John will ask us to sing even if we go to someone's house for dinner or just stop by. We sing a special at every single church service, and any other special events there are. The people here seem to like hearing us sing, and more than one person has told me that they want to learn how to sing like we do. They are amazed at playing the piano with "10 fingers" as they call it. They have never seen someone play with both hands, so they will stare at me when I play. I so wish that I could sight read music better, sometimes I just pick a key and start playing the songs by ear, but that can be frustrating.

Matching clothes here is not a big deal, in fact, it doesn't seem to matter at all. As long as you have clothes on your body, and sometimes not even that, you're good. Life is so much simpler here, and people don't ever seems to be stressed out. They have much smaller agendas, and they enjoy one another's company rather than rushing around. I want to be more like that. I have hardly felt stressed out since I got here, but I could see that changing once the school starts up in January. I think they are going to put us to work there.

It has rained pretty much since we got here, which makes it cooler. I was telling Ellen yesterday, its funny that sweat running down my face, back, etc. does not even bother me anymore, and in fact, I don't even notice it sometimes, because its so normal. She agreed, and we are both thankful for how fast we have gotten used to the weather.

I still can't get over the random times of day and evening that a car will drive by with a blaring voice telling where someone lived, who their family was, where all of their family lived, and where services will be held. That's their way of announcing the death of a person. It creeps me out still.

I'm sure there's much more to say, but there's much work to be done, and I need to get going with it. Please continue to pray for the people here that their hearts would be open and receptive to Christ, and for us, that we would have the words to say, and be living testimonies among these people.

It's Christmas

I'm tempted to miss everyone at home, especially thinking of what they're probably doing right now and what they will do later today. God has been very good to me though. I have not felt extremely homesick yet, and am so happy to have Katie here with me. The work here is slow right now. I am able to do a lot of reading and thinking right now. We spend most of our morning and day at the house right now, our evenings are spent at the missions and churches.

Let me clarify for you. The "missions" I am speaking of are separate services at different villages in Berbice, the region we're in. From New Amsterdam (our side of the ferry we had to take) the villages are numbered. Immediately following New Amsterdam is #1 and so on. We are at #80, more commonly referred to as Line Path. The distance between each village is 16 rods. I think someone told me how long a rod was, but I have forgotten. So, back to the missions. The purpose of the mission works is to reach out to people in the neighborhoods of the members of the churches at Corriverton and Roadside. It's kind of like Wednesday evening services held each day of the week in different people's homes (or under their homes).

Monday evenings we travel to Village #77, the home of Dahlin and Mala Sookoo, members of Corriverton Baptist. He's the only deacon at this church. Last Monday they were the only ones present besides us. It felt more like a Bible study.

Tuesday evenings we go to Village #57, the home of the late brother Sunny. He died a week before our arrival. A new church building is almost finished a short distance from the house we're meeting in. Brother Moti-Lael will be the pastor there when it is finished. He is sort of the assistant pastor at Roadside right now. Right now they just call it "#57 Baptist Mission". There are quite a few people who come regularly to this mission. I have enjoyed the time spent here.

Wednesday evenings we spend here at the Corriverton Baptist Church. Attendance is pretty fluctuant it seems. People seem to shy away from commitment. There are 18 members (so I've heard), but have yet to see them all, especially at the same time. Wednesdays are pretty sparse. I realize some of these observations are still being molded though. I've only been here for nine days.

Thursday evening we attend the #69 Mission which Troy, a younger single guy heads up. I really enjoyed that last week, but we may not have it tonight as it has been raining relentlessly and shows no signs of stopping.
Friday night Katie and I are supposed to go to Roadside to help out with the youth program Troy heads up. Last week when we went we played basketball, took a break where we prayed together and read over Psalm 1, then went back to some more basketball.

Saturday night there is a youth program at #57 which Katie and I were asked to lead this Saturday. I enjoy the youth and they seem to respond fairly well to our efforts to communicate with and get to know them.

Sunday we go to the morning service here in Corriverton at 8:45, travel to Roadside at 10:30, then come back and relax at home until 4:30 here in Corriverton where we have singing practice for half an hour before the service. Katie and I have been asked to take over that responsibility.

We have a couple of scheduled times to do some teaching with kids. There are two scheduled for next week Tuesday and other villages are pending. We're supposed to have about 1 1/2 to 2 hours worth of teaching/singing/games prepared for the kids. I'm really looking forward to it.

Yesterday we attended the birthday party of Beerbal and Faneeza's baby Salomi. They are, or will be members at #57 Baptist Mission. I thought of it as a party similar to one we might attend in the States. Here they pretty much treat all of those types of celebrations as a service. Katie and I hadn't brought our Bibles, weren't prepared to sing the special song that we sung, and just ended up being surprised by the "party". They fed us afterward, the typical Guyanese meal (from what I've seen so far). It consisted of steamed white rice, curried chicken (their chicken is crazy...not deboned or well prepared, it's just hacked up and you eat around random bones and other extras), curried beef and pork (again, lots of bones and other unexpected surprises), roti (similar to a tortilla, some Guyanese use it to pick up the other food and eat with it), and split pea stuff dumped over everything (usually called dahl). It tastes pretty good, but that's like the third time I've eaten that exact meal. Ah well. After eating they often pass out these little brown paper bags with some sort of "dessert" in them. They have had some interesting things in those little brown bags. It's pretty fun though. I love trying all of the new things and the experience is just completely different from anything I'm used to. Oh yeah, as far as drinks go...they usually just have tap water made into kool-aid, but yesterday they had soda for everyone. It's all glass bottles with the bottlecaps which they call "corks". The terminology for different things here is pretty funny to learn too.

Let's see...

Chill out = Rest yo' presha (rest your pressure)

Review = Revise

She's hot = She's sweet

Thin = Fine

Unofficial chiropractor = Crack-up man

They're pretty open people, not easily offended. It's great. There's a large man here who everyone calls "fat man". We asked him how he felt about it. He just acknowledged it as a fact and isn't bothered a bit by the nickname. I like the fact that they don't mince words.

That's all I've got for now. I want to go get some reading done before we head over to Raymond and Andrea's house for a Christmas dinner. It will probably be more Americanized since they have lived in the States for some time before. I'll try to get some pictures up on here sometime soon. Thanks for taking time to read my ramblings!

December 15--Departure

On December 15 at 7 AM on a very windy, frigid morning the families of Ellen and Katie gathered at the airport to say good-bye for a season (actually two seasons, winter and spring). The temperature was well below zero and the windchill caused frostbite in minutes (just ask Bryce). Months of planning and packing were over and, ready or not (and there was some "not") the girls were heading to Guyana.

At first, everyone put on brave and happy faces, if not always quite awake.

Daniel had planned to say a private good-bye and then head home to work. We're still trying to figure out if he REALLY thought that field was part of the parking lot. Was he just "accidentally" stuck and delayed? Whatever the case, he was able to savor an extra 40 minutes with Ellen while he waited for a few of the bigger brothers to show up and push his truck out.

The moms had to get special last moment pictures, then the whole families (minus a few who were out of town), and finally the time drew nigh and the sister moments became precious and overflowing with tears.








Finally, the girls were on board and our forlorn group could only watch the plane taxi away from us while we were left to our tissues and the biting wind. Knowing that God's love is more than enough to hold us up and to cover our girls was comfort that exceeded even the dismal scene awaiting us outside the airport doors.


Godspeed girls!