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!