EKG

More life

2009-05-15T10:08:00.002-04:00

The people have been blessing us immensely with food and hospitality. Mandy (right) and her sister-in-law Raishma came over and cooked for us one day some guyanese specialties- I forget the names of what they made, you'd have to ask Ellen because they're funky. But, the one was like a breaded mashed potato. Like bread stuffed with mashed potato and fried. It was good. The other was a banana bread-ish dough that you drop in oil and fry, so it kind of looks like doughnuts. Yummy.
Ellen and I enjoyed it.
Pastor Katryan took us out on Tuesday and we visited MANY places here. One place was the school he designed and was the architect for. It is a nursery school, so 4-7 year olds come here. They are the cutest things you ever saw, especially in their uniforms. They were shy at first, but once they warmed up to me and I went down on their level, they loved me.
I will miss beautiful scenes like this. I am soaking every chance I get to view God's beauty. I took this picture while sitting in the car waiting for Pastor Katryan as he was doing business with someone. I think coconut trees are one of my favorite things to look at. They are so relaxing and exotic looking...
Ellen with Shannon. I posted Shannon with me, so I figured You'd like to see Ellen with this adorable little girl. Off to the market to pick up some last gifts to bring home, then cleaning our house all day.
Home soon-4 days...if our flights all work out, which I'm doubtful. But that's ok.

Life

2009-05-14T14:04:00.004-04:00

We're wrapping up our time in Guyana, and many people here are responding with gifts and inviting us to spend some last time with them. Most of our time is booked from now until we leave here, and this doesn't allow much time to think about blogging....
We spent half of Wednesday with Mala, a lady from the Corriverton church, and the other half of the day with Emily and her daughter Shannon, who is in this picture with me. This little girl is so beautiful! We had a good time with both of these people, and it made me sad that we're leaving.
Jason, (the boy in the red shirt) is our next-door neighbor, and he had a birthday Tuesday that Ellen made a cake for and we celebrated with him. Ellen was teaching him and his cousin, Sarah how to play that pushing game where you stand with your feet together and have to push each other's hands and knock the other person over without falling or moving your own feet.
In the Hammock is Raishma, and Emily, Jason's mother and sister. We have so enjoyed spending time with this family, and go over there fairly often to eat, hang out, spend the night, etc. They are really kind to us, and are sending many things home with us. We had a bush cook there last night, and in this picture they are eating the cook-up. It was a very fun evening.
My last day of teaching was today, and I tested my students on the Geography we've been learning for the past month. They did really well on the quizzes! They had so many questions and didn't want me to leave today. They asked WHEN I'm coming back, not IF I'm coming back.
It's funny how you can spend only 4 months teaching students and get so close to them. Some of these kids have become special to me, and I will really miss them. I think they look up to me so much, and I try to be aware of my actions and how I am treating and dealing with people. I don't want to lead them astray.
Teaching was a good experience for me- I learned!! I think I got a little more strict than I used to be, and a little more no-nonsense, but today my students told me that they like me because I don't yell at them or hit them if they don't understand something, I explain it to them. They think I'm easy going and relaxed with them....whatever.
They asked me when I'm getting married, (they know Ellen's getting married) and when I said I don't know because I have no guy interests, they asked, "Well are you going to marry a white guy or a Guyanese"? I told them I'm going to marry the man that God without a doubt shoves in my face. He's got someone for me, but I guess I never really answered their question of whether or not he'd be guyanese...oh well.

Books Burned To Date

2009-05-08T11:03:00.002-04:00

697

Lots of Harlequins, anything sexual or containing language was discarded. Now we need some more books to go into those empty shelves. Some GOOD books for the Baptist Library.

Time to go assist with the teaching upstairs.

My Wednesday

2009-05-07T13:39:00.002-04:00

I went to bed at a decent hour Tuesday night, I knew I wanted to be up early.

I woke up at 5:45 and got up, read for a while, prayed, wrote a few letters, then had some breakfast before heading into town to renew the fitness for the truck at the police station. It had expired the week before, so is illegal to drive. A "fitness" is just a piece of paper certifying that your vehicle is fit to drive and works properly. (Once, when pulled over for a routine check I was asked to show him my fitness. I had thought he wanted me to show him that I was fit enough to drive.)

I left the house around 8:00, took a tapir to the station, arriving there at 8:10. I had enquired about renewing the fitness the week before and was told that Wednesdays and Fridays were the only available days and that I could be there by 8:00. I walked into the station and told the woman sitting there why I was there. She let me know that the guy who processed the papers I was needing didn't come until 10:00. I was a bit upset and told her of the week before and the man next to me verified my story, he must have been there when I'd been there last Thursday.

I took a tapir home and kept myself busy until 9:50 and headed back to the station, on another tapir. I arrived and there were about 10 people standing around the vehicle control place just waiting. The man still hadn't arrived. All the waiters-in-line looked so peaceful and complacent. I sat and waited with them for a while until an officer walked up to me and asked what I was there for. When I told him it was for my fitness he then let me know I had to have the vehicle with me (duh!). I told him it was already expired though and the only way to get it to the station would be illegally. He gave me that silent nod and bit of a smile. So I headed back home on a tapir. When I returned at 11:30 there were at least 20 people in the line and still no sign of the only officer who could do what we needed done. I asked them if they every became impatient or upset with the lack of responsibility and confusion that goes on in these kinds of establishments. One man said it is frustrating, but there's nothing to be done. I asked him if complaining helped. He told me to go ahead and give it a shot. I was a little peeved.

I asked the lady behind the desk (who doesn't seem to have anything to do) why the officer wasn't there. She wasn't sure. I asked if he could be called/if he had a phone number and if I could have the number. She didn't quite know how to take me and ended up saying something like "he's got a cell phone, but can't answer while driving". I was still mad so I responded, "can he pull over??" She let me know they'd try to contact him. I went back outside with the rest of the group. I wrote more letters. I was then called inside so that a head officer could explain the situation to me. It was the same story the lady had told me. They didn't know where he was, when he was actually coming, and were attempting to contact him. It was kind of sad though because the same respect would not have been paid to the other men all waiting outside. I saw what happened when a man just dared to step inside the office with his hat on. One of the women snapped at him saying something like "remove your hat when you walk in here and show respect! Wipe your feet too!!" I loved the man's response to her. He slowly took off the hat, then turned around to look at the mat-less floor behind him, turned back to her and just asked how he was supposed to wipe his feet with no mat. The scenario was interesting to observe.

After this the same officer who had kindly told me I needed my vehicle with me spotted me and asked if I'd brought it back. Since I had, he had me pull into the compound and he proceeded to check the fitness of the vehicle. That experience was just funny. What do you do when the man is telling you to turn on you "headlamps" and your "trafficators"?? I managed. Then, as he went to the rear of the vehicle he asked me to "mash the brakes". I did. No lights lit up. So, all of the waiting and running was for naught.

I asked Mrs. Katryan what to do and she sent me to an auto electrician to repair it. I went, he told me to come back at 2:00 so I did. He repaired the lights but he must have majorly messed up something else because on my way home the driving got worse and worse and it was like I was breaking all the time. It got so bad that by the end of my drive home I could only manage first gear without it completely stopping on me. I never did get that fitness.

I guess I'm posting about this to just show you some of the frustrating everyday life that people here have to go through all the time. It's no biggie if you happen to have to show up at the post office to receive a package and sit and wait for it for 2 hours. It almost seems normal and expected. The most interesting part to me is that most of the people don't bring anything to do to fill in the wasted waiting hours. There needs to be some changes around here, I just wonder who's going to do it and when it's going to be done!

I'm really anticipating coming home now. I'm savoring my last days here, but our lives have kind of just been a little crazy for the past week. I guess that's because we lost a lot of the normal routine when the Hunters left. We're just trying to figure out where to live, how to get places, and what to eat now! The people have been very good to us though. I'm so thankful for that. Just last night one of the members from the church invited us into her home. One thing she mentioned was that "if I had my daughter far away from home I would want someone to take care of her and love her, plus, we're sisters in Christ!" It was really fun for me to see that.

Okay, I should get going. I'm at the Centre right now working on typing up the book list for Seema. It's the list of all the raunchy books we burned. I'll let you know the count once I finish typing it up.

~Ellen~

Wrapping Up

2009-05-06T12:23:00.002-04:00

We have less than 2 weeks left.

It feels like it went from us having 3 months left to 2 weeks. The first 2 months were long, but after that time just seemed to fly. I'm trying to enjoy every moment....except the spider episode, and cherish the time here with the people. I have grown to love them so much, and will miss it here. Part of me wants to stay. I can do so much here! There is much work to be done, and the people respond really well to us here. I enjoy spending time with the church members.

We have been spending quite a bit of time with the members in their homes lately, and that has been good. I think they're all realizing we only have a couple weeks left. They have been so hospitable and friendly to us, I can't believe how kind they are and giving. They feed us SO MUCH! I think Ellen and I have both gained weight, but maybe not. It's hard to tell. She was wining about how she has flab on her stomach last night, then we worked out. I'm not sure if it all left yet or not though:)

We're eating lots of fruits and soaking up the papaya, pineapple, guava, bananas, and any other fruit that is native and fresh here! I will miss the market with all of the available fresh foods. We are singing quite a bit with people, teaching them our last few songs. Hard to think we're going home soon, but I'm glad- I would like to see my family again.

Scary

2009-05-06T12:09:00.003-04:00

Today I opened Ellen's suitcase top to check something, and the biggest spider I've ever seen in my entire life darted in a split second over her stuff. I had a scream inside of me, but it wouldn't come out. I curled my toes and tensed up, like I always to when I'm scared, and slowly backed away. The spider was black, and oh man, creepy. I thought fast: "Ellen's gone, I'm here in the house alone, I guess I could go over to the neighbors. I NEED SOMEONE TO TAKE CARE OF THIS SPIDER FOR ME!!!" Then I yelled at myself. Grow up, Katie. Kill it. nope. Not happening. This thing moves WAY too fast to hit it and kill it. Then I remembered the brilliant fish spray that kills "all creeping creatures and insects". I wonder if big black hairy spiders fall under that category. Anyway. I got the fish spray can. Walked over by Ellen's suitcase. held the can out. couldn't do it. I prayed, I know, silly. "GOD!!!! Please help me to not be scared of this spider, I know I'm way bigger than it, and I really need to kill it right now. Please make it die." Then I gathered all the courage God sent my way, and sprayed like the dickens. The spider darted so fast I hardly saw it, and was on the wall now. I stepped back, still curling my toes and tensed up. Then I went out of the porch room and just thought. Nothing too brilliant was coming to mind. I was still scared. I went back into the room and saw the spider dart from the wall to behind her carry-on suitcase. God sent more courage. I sprayed, sprayed, and sprayed, nearly the whole huge can of fish spray all over her carry-on suitcase and in the air and all over the room. I saw the spider crawl out a little from behind her carry-on, and that's the last I saw of it. I shut the door to the room, and got my things ready to go. Called Ellen on the phone and told her about it so she doesn't get killed when she gets home because I sure won't be there to tell her about it. Then I went to Mandy's next door and asked through the fence that separates out house if they've ever seen such a spider. They all got big eyes and said, oh no, don't mess with that spider, it could kill you or make you really sick if it bites you. You would have to stay in the hospital for a few weeks at least. Mandy said it's poisonous, but she's never seen one in her house before. Great. She asked me if I wanted her brother to come over and kill it. I said no, he wouldn't be able to catch it. I'm a dummy. I should have said yes. I'm terrified to sleep in that house now. I check the floor every step I take now. I pray the fish spray worked and I'll go home from the Centre to Ellen telling me she found it dead behind her suitcase. I won't sleep until I see it dead.

Pinata Busting Again

2009-04-30T19:24:00.001-04:00

For some reason the Pinata Busting post showed up after a previous post so people who are notified of new posts through certain methods won't know it's there. Pardon me for adding this blurb to direct you to the post and pictures below.
Cindy

Crusade, Teen Meetings, Black Bush

2009-04-28T00:40:00.003-04:00

Last week flew by, as we had 5 nights of Crusade at the different mission outreaches. We did Much singing, and God apparently blessed the words of our music to the people listening, because a number of people personally told me how much the songs were a blessing and encouragement to them. I am amazed how God can use our feeble voices and music to be an encouragement to his people.

We have held multiple teen meetings- 3 in the past 2 weeks, and they have drained and blessed us. I felt very happy to complete the last one Saturday, and with 50 kids showing up, there's much work for Ellen and I. It has been so good. I just pray that they see Christ in us, and want to know Him as well. We got real easy for this teen meeting(in the picture)- we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Ellen lead a bible lesson.

We went back to Black Bush with a family from church and stopped to see their relatives, who off course fed us. We had an enjoyable time, and going back into the bush was cool. There's lots of agriculture going on back there, that's where the farmers are because they grow the rice and all of the crops back there. Very simple lifestyle- I think it's not a bad idea:)

Pinata Busting

2009-04-27T04:08:00.003-04:00

These pictures are from a few weeks back when the kids came back to school after Easter break. The boys were the most excited about the demolition of the pinatas, with a little coaxing a couple of the girls joined in too. The kids worked long and hard to complete the pinatas and did a very good job decorating them. There were six total, a sun, man's head, basketball, hot air balloon, cats head, and rabbit head. My personal favorite was the yellow sun with red rays coming off of it. I should have had the presence of mind to take pictures of them all before they were busted, but that just didn't seem to cross my mind. Ah well. Showing off the candy they had scrambled to pick up. It was intense. Bryce and Owen, you would have been up against some pretty stiff competition had you been here to join in!

This is Akash holding the stick. He likes to make trouble, but is pretty sweet in general. Oh, that stick. I have a funny story about the stick.

The first kid who swung at the first pinata on the first day (we had two pinata busting days) was just blindfolded and told to "go". He took two steps in my direction (I was holding the rope for the pinata, approx. 6 feet away) and swung that stick as hard as he could. He missed the pinata completely but gave me a pretty good thwack on my forearm. It was bruised and there's still a lump on my bone where "the bai lash meh" (that's creolese speak, another common one would be "the bai knock meh"). I'm not sore anymore, just have a lump. I laughed so hard. I'm still not sure why it was so funny, I guess just the pure shock that I got smoked by the kid and completely unintentionally. It was fun-ny.

Another go at it. They swing hard. A couple hit the pole so hard the stick broke and we had to get a new one. It was a dangerous game, but very enjoyable.

Aqueena stepped right up there and took a swing, I was happy about that :-)

I think this is Avinash, but I'm not completely sure. Overall it was a really good time and they seemed to enjoy it all. I sure did!

He's still working...

2009-04-23T10:56:00.002-04:00

I am praising God for the fact that He still works and changes the hearts of people to love and serve Him. This Sunday an elderly man from Corriverton church asked to be baptized and to become a member of the church. He wants to fully live His life for Christ. I asked him on the ride to the Crusade what he would say if he was standing before God right now and had to account for his life, and he said "I would say I'm a sinner, and filthy. And Jesus paid for my sins." That rejoiced my heart. Also, a young woman in our church who is struggling with a marriage to a Muslim man has talked to Ellen and I extensively about her situation, and we just pray with her and read the bible with/to her. She is so receptive, and wants to be a godly woman in whatever she does with this situation. She keeps asking advice, and needs encouragement because he's tough to deal with. Anyway, on Sunday she went up after the service and told the church that she wants to rededicate her life to Christ and live for Him.

My heart is thanking God for the Hunter's ministry here and the fact that God uses us, sinners saved by grace, and changes hearts to love and serve Him!

Ladies Retreat

2009-04-19T00:57:00.005-04:00

We held a ladies retreat last Friday, Good Friday, and had about 35 ladies attend. The Lord definitely blessed Ellen and I and gave us the ability to speak and I pray that it was clear for the ladies. Many of them told us that they were so encouraged and had such a good time. We had a schedule:

Introduction Game

Ellen's lesson- Titus 2

Cooking, making Hummus, salsa fresca, Roti chips, guacamole, and pasta salad.

After we made the food, we ate the appetizer- the dips and roti chips, while Ellen and I gave a lesson on time management.

Ate lunch- pasta salad and punch

Katie's lesson- Proverbs 31

Discussion and recapping of the day

Start at the bottom and go up, because the pictures uploaded backwards once again.:) Cynthia and I were having a sweep-off, and I'm pretty sure I was beating her, but I guess her broom was falling apart, so she kinda had a disadvantage. She can kick my butt at sweeping though, because she grew up doing it and she just understands the most effective ways to do it.

After our little or big get togethers or meetings, there is lots of cleanup to do. I am learning slowly how to use a guyanese (indian) broom. They are made out of palm tree leaves.

Carla was teaching Ellen how to make the Matai.

Ellen learning how to make matai, kind of like a doughnutish thing. They are SO good. I was watching her skills.

I thought this picture was prime: It was a random picture someone took of us, but kind of represents typical life here- Ellen and I constantly coordinating things:) I'm not sure what Ellen's explaining to me, but I was listening!!!

The ladies during my Proverbs 31 lesson.

the roti chips, guacamole and hummus.

The Pasta salad that we made. It sure looks yummy.

Mrs. Hunter was in charge of the salsa fresca. She's demonstrating chopping cheese right here.

My group of ladies chopping things up for the pasta salad and at the far end of the table they are making the guacamole.

Ellen's group made Hummus, and in that pot is "channah" (chick peas). Ellen is instructing the ladies on what they are to do to make the hummus. Thing #1 is to smash up the channah. That was funny to watch:)

Doling out ingredients. We separated all of the ingredients that the different cooking groups needed for the particular item they were making. It ended up being pretty organized, which I was thankful for because cooking in small quarters with around 35 ladies is interesting! It went very well though, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and pitch in when they could.

The ladies attentively listening and laughing during Ellen's lesson. There must have been something funny, I just can't remember.

Ashmin is sitting to the farthest left, she's the deaf girl that loves Ellen. Shoco is sitting the farthest to the right. She is married to Terry, the pastor of Roadside, and she works at the Centre as well.

Ellen giving her lesson on Titus 2.

Ellen made Tea rings to serve to the ladies, and I was cutting one here. They were very pretty!

Pictures For Mom

2009-04-19T00:10:00.002-04:00

Here are some pictures for my mom. This is our dish "rack" that sprawls all over our counter. I thought you would appreciate this. Those are some hot peppers there on the counter as well.

Daddy- I thought of you when I saw these tractors/equipment. I don't know exactly what industry it's all being used for, maybe concrete?

I found a school bus in Guyana!!!
Mama, this is the big truck I was talking to you about tonight. These big vehicles drive around and pick up men to take them to the sugar fields to cut cane. The men just stand in here and hold onto the poles you can see on the sides. They cram them into there too.

Life

2009-04-13T21:58:00.003-04:00

The longer we're here, the faster time seems to fly, although I miss my family alot, there's so much that we're doing and to be doing that I find myself wishing there were 28 hours in a day so I could get some more sleep! We have 5 weeks left here, and we want to use them for God's glory. This upcoming week is pretty busy, tomorrow I have piano lessons/singing lessons most of the day. Thursday we're helping clean the #57 church building, then going around Corriverton passing out invitations to come to our Teen meeting Saturday. Friday we're holding a children's meeting in the morning with Flannel graph story, singing, games, and popcorn. Friday evening we'll spend time preparing for Saturday's Teen meeting, and then from 10:00a.m. -1:00p.m. on Saturday we'll have teenagers from the area come. Sunday we're having a Crusade at #57, and it will continue into Monday as well. There never seems to be a dull moment here. I struggle with finding alone time, but am happy to be busy. Last week we took a trip to New Amsterdam to get our drivers license renewed. We needed to do a little bit of shopping for some items you can't get in Skeldon where we live, so we stayed the afternoon. I needed to go to the post office to mail some letters, and they get there faster if mailed from New Amsterdam:) so we walked to the OTHER side of New Amsterdam to find the post office. Along the way, we met some boys and a tree. This tree looked like a great climbing tree to Ellen, and as we approached the tree with boys in it, she said, "That tree looks like a blast to climb, but those boys would probably scared and run away if I asked them if I could climb with them." I responded, "No they wouldn't." and then I proceeded to yell toward the boys, "Hey, do you guys care if she climbs the tree with you? She thinks it looks fun." The boys perked up and looked excited, while one boy said in a teasing manner, "You can climb my tree for a hundred dollars." Everyone laughed, and though it was a joke, Ellen did give the boy a hundred dollars for letting her climb up "His" public tree. Needless to say, we ended up spending about 45 minutes talking to the boys, learned their names, and the same boy who sold Ellen a climb up his tree got me a dead snake and sold it to me for a hundred dollars. It is poisonous, but very dead and dried. We actually learned quite a bit about poisonous snakes here, and those boys told us the tree they were climbing didn't have snakes in it, but the tree beside theirs did. They also said that you don't want to fall in the water beneath the tree because there's alligators in there.

The boy sitting on my lap sold me the dead snake. the boys names are: Omari, Keon, Shkeel, Kci, and Joshaun. They gave us a list of things you can buy with a hundred dollars:

lemonade white pudding

cracker black pudding

juice mint

jam slice egg ball

channa

This sign cracked me up. Notice how cheap it is.

A typical week's selection of fruit.

Mr. Hunter's birthday cake. We make cakes frequently, and decorate them with NO TIPS, no cake decorating supplies, simply plastic bags. I'm learning how you can be creative and come up with alternative ways to do things.

Native food...and thoughts

2009-04-07T01:35:00.003-04:00

The pictures are a little foggy, but here goes: The gate outside the President's house in Georgetown. That's his house.

I told Ellen to crouch and smile next to the crabs...or scorpion things that you eat...forgot their name. Anyway, they were selling them in a market in Georgetown. I wouldn't want one of them to detach themselves from the rest and get away!

This is how they sell rice here in some places. I think they have as many rice species as we have candy species!

Bananas! I love the Bananas here! The branch looking things sticking out from the banana bunches are the stems that are connected to the tree. They hack the whole thing off like that when they're close to ripe. These guys are selling bananas.

I was thinking tonight, and here's what I've got:

My being is perpetually amazed at the mercy and grace of God. I feel my heart overflowing with love and worship for who he is to me. The value my heart puts on knowing him surpasses all other. I find my greatest peace, joy, fulfillment, happiness, satisfaction, and strength in the depths of Christ's love toward me. Why or how he could decide to love me, I cannot tell, but this I know, Praise his Holy name!

I remember hearing others talk about similar things and it seemed to me to be empty, but pretty words, because I didn't comprehend or understand what those words meant. But Christ awakened my eyes to understand the knowledge, the workings out and feelings of those words, and I now have life! I see, I feel, I experience the love of Christ toward me in my unworthiness. I praise God for allowing me to see even this small portion of who He is, and for changing my heart's desires to love and serve Him with my life- there is no greater gift.

Move over!

2009-04-05T14:59:00.002-04:00

I have come to the conclusion that I don't believe I will ever again in my life complain about having to go to the back of our big 15 passenger van, or be squished next to someone in a vehicle again. After riding in numerous tapirs and buses, you get a real feel for "close proximity". I have had my things squashed as I sit on a small bench in a tapir with 5 other people on the bench! Also, I have ridden in a bus, on the 3rd bench back next to 3 big men and a woman and her child. I have had people (including a little old lady) sit on my lap a few times as well. They really pack you in here. A seat is a seat, and you be grateful that you can get in the vehicle and go! No more complaints from me on where I have to sit (I hope), ANY seat in my van back home is better than the seats I experience here.

So boys- don't you dare bicker about who goes back a bench. Be thankful you don't have to walk! I know when Mom tells you to stop fighting and be thankful you have a place to sit it doesn't really mean a whole lot and half the time you ignore her or simply don't grasp what that means. Well I do! So take it from me.

Kitchen happenings...

2009-04-02T16:42:00.003-04:00

So one night, we're in the kitchen, way past our bedtime, and I'm doing dishes at the kitchen sink. I'm kind of zoning in lala land, not much going on, when I hear "uh... cccaaan you" then I turn around and this is what I see. Apparently Ellen was making pancakes or something for the next morning, and she had gotten lazy and didn't want to get on the stool to put the flour back where it belongs on the TOP shelf in our kitchen, so she chucked the bag up there. I have done this a few times myself, because I also get lazy. But the VERY FULL and poorly secured bag landed half on/half off the shelf as you can see, and as she watched it she realized that the twisty tie was coming undone, and the flour was about to come out. She considered climbing up, but realized there was no time for that. So, she tried to catch it with her hands, which was partially successful, but didn't stop the snowfall of flour to dust many other things on the way down.

Notice the amount of flour in the bag in this picture compared to the last photo. It just kept coming...and coming...and coming.

There was flour EVERYWHERE, though she did catch a good chunk in her hands.

And then there's Katie. If you look closely at the bottom right hand side of the refrigerator, on the floor you will note scattered shards of glass. Katie had been cooking and trying to get a drink and who knows what else when we spotted a mouse in the dining room. I (this is Ellen now) laughed and wanted to catch it somehow, I love these sorts of challenges for some reason. Katie was in the kitchen exclaiming "just don't let it come in here". I think the mouse thought she was calling him. So, mouse in the kitchen with Katie resulted in her jumping onto the stool she had set her glass on to ensure that it didn't...ummm...bite her toes off? I'm still not sure what the fright was all about. She sat there for a good while until we convinced her that the mouse really had gone back into his hole and we were working on poisoning him.

Priscilla's birthday...late but funny

2009-04-01T14:58:00.003-04:00

I finally sat down for a little bit today and downloaded and reviewed pictures and found a couple of videos I had taken. This one really was funny to Katie and Dian especially and I find humor in it as well. I especially find humor in even hearing how Katie and I relate to each other in it, we kind of go back and forth like that a lot on an everyday basis. Look (or listen) specifically for the part where Katie says "Oh, you're recording?!?" after I finally obeyed her orders. The whole thing just sort of captures some of the ways we are around the girls at #57. Oh, and I'm not smart enough nor do I care to spend the time right now to learn the correct way to post a video without it coming up sideways. Please, bear with me and crane your neck--I did.

Sights

2009-03-29T19:36:00.003-04:00

Georgetown got to see us 3 times last week, twice for getting an extension to stay in the country purposes, and once for a U.S. Embassy meeting for U.S. Citizens. I'm ready stay away from Georgetown for awhile now, since it's about a 3 1/2 hour drive one way, not including the Spready's stop for dinner. Along our way through Georgetown, I took pictures of some things that I found amusing, interesting, sad, or beautiful. Here goes: Georgetown is bordered by this big long sea wall, and this is the view from the other side of the sea wall- the sea!

I thought this was slightly amusing...Ellen and I were walking down the sidewalk away from the post office, and we see this sight- in the middle of downtown Georgetown, a horse and cart tied to a post in a parking spot- notice the car parked next to it. yeah.

There is a child living in that little hut. I think it's a house.

Eating lunch at a nice restaurant. We waited and waited for Ellen:) She ate some of Mr. Hunter's soup as well. I think she's dissecting a piece of meat off of a bone right now, a little bit tedious of a thing to accomplish.

This is what the "cooking" side of the restaurant looked like- EXTREMELY clean!

In the restaurant, I saw this horse and cart go by on the road outside, and it was just funny, so I ran over to the window and snapped a picture. I think a bunch of people were staring at me like I was a crazy tourist or something, which I'm not, but you know, it was strange. I couldn't decide if that stuff he's carrying in the bed of his contraption is junk to be pitched, or if he's building something and it's the parts he needs....I guess I'll never know.

Teen Night

2009-03-26T13:13:00.007-04:00

Friday night we had a Teen Night here in Corriverton, including games, pizza, Facing the Giants, a quiz and discussion of the movie, and taking everyone home. We had a good time.

This one is from the pizza eating contest between Ellen, Buddy and Troy. Buddy won.

Them all going at it.

The group seeing who could abolish their pile fastest

Psychiatrist

Me in the midst of organizing everyone to get a ride home- that's rough to do with 40 kids! The movie seemed to be an overall sucess, many kids responded, though a few flat out didn't like it. But when the gospel is clearly presented, and there is changed being posed, some won't like it!

Some of the boys after the movie, Kevon and Rovendra are in the back.
Kevon personally thanked me today for the time we've spent with him, and for last Friday night. He is definitely thinking about the things we have presented, and he has shown mature interest, though he's only 15.

Ellen and I printed up a quiz for all of the kids to take, and this group got creative in how they were going to write the answers. Buddy, Cynthia, and Priscilla.

Quiz taking

We made pizza and Cinnamon sticks.

Getting ready to show the movie after everyone had eaten.

During the movie.

Thakur and Troy carrying out the pizza

We did a canoe, mountain, backpacking relay race with them at the beginning of the evening, and this group is building their mountain.

Introductions at the beginning of the evening. I told them each to say how they knew me, because that seemed like the best way of letting everyone know who they were.

The preparations beforehand took a lot of work! We made 17 pizzas, and we had Dian helping a great deal with that. Also, Ravinee and Trevor and Cynthia came over right after school, around 2:00, and helped the rest of the afternoon- I don't know what we would have done without all of the helpers!

Little Moments

2009-03-24T15:11:00.002-04:00

I was just sitting down next to Katie discussing today's and tomorrow's events when some of the afternoon program children (OVC) started to show up. Vashti came over to me and just leaned on my leg looking up at me smiling. She wanted my lap and then Mohadai, an older girl asked me to sing (this is a usual occurence) after I had finished singing "Love" for Vashti. Then Devon Daniels showed up, a young, always happy boy of probably 11 years. He walked right over to me, pinched my neck, put his hand on top of my head and gave me a kiss on the cheek and then asked how my day went. These children are going to be hard to just leave and I want to be able to love them well while I am here with them. Sometimes that's a hard thing because there's such a limited amount of things I can actually DO for them. I know Katie feels the same about some of this.

I had craft time with the remedial kids this morning. It went so well, especially in contrast with last week Tuesday! I'll have to take and post pictures of the beautiful pinatas these kids have designed. I still can't decide when we should bust them. Maybe I'll have them hold off until May so that we can do a Mexican themed holiday, and learn about it before hand and then do Cinco de Mayo. I'm still not certain on that though. I'm going to work in the library shortly and hopefully get a chunk of books thrown away again.

Katie and I will make another trip to Georgetown tomorrow to try and complete the extension of stay process we're currently going through. Monday didn't work to get all of the paperwork done and by the time we had the necessary papers, the other office was closed. It's a bit frustrating because our whole day is taken up with driving, walking around, and sitting, but it's necessary to obtain these papers! We'll be going to Georgetown again later this week for the US Embassy meeting which should be interesting to attend. That makes three trips to Georgetown in one week though, which seems crazy. The time is going by pretty quickly overall. We've already been here for over three months. I pray people's lives are really being effected! It's hard to measure our effectiveness. It's only Christ in us that makes us anything though :-)

Happenings

2009-03-23T22:57:00.003-04:00

We've been busy, especially last week with some get togethers. We did a Children's meeting on Monday, and spent all day cooking for it, then Tuesday we had a Ladie's meeting here in Corriverton, Thursday was Graduation for the EduCare students, and then Friday we held a Teen hang-out thingy. Start at the bottom to read about and view the pictures.

One of the students grabbed my camera and took this picture, and though it's not a very good picture, I guess it depicts normalcy here...these are the people we spend a good bit of time around at the Centre. We were actually posing for the photographer to take a picture, apparently James wasn't paying attention.

The Kellman brothers, Kevin and Kevon, with their parents.

Mark Rose, another one of the trouble-making boys who turned out to be a really more than decent guy. This boy has shown integrity and morals that are remarkable.

I love that smile!

James receiving his diploma

The crowd at Graduation

Right after Mr. Hunter talking about these boys, and how much it means to him and how happy he is to see the changes, the MC asked those boys that he was talking about to stand in the crowd. I only had time to capture these 2 students, but one of these boys is special to me, and to Ellen as well. Kevon Kellman is standing in the blue shirt, and he and his twin brother Kevin are such sweet, decent, mature-ish guys. They, according to Mr. Hunter, were trouble-making problems for the Centre when they first came, but have changed dramatically. I trust both of these boys very much, and they respond well to the bible, and discussion of what God would have us to live our lives according to. Praise God!

Mr. Hunter gave a "response" to his recognition, and he almost made me cry when he choked up regarding some of the students, and how far they've come. It's really amazing the changes that have taken place in some of these boys especially from the time they came to the Centre, to now. They are actually productive, "good" members of society rather than a trouble-making scare for everyone.

The Hunters got recognized throughout the ceremony, which goes to show how valuable they are here, and how much they've done and meant for the poeple at the Centre.

A Guyanese song sung by some of the Educare students.

Mrs. Indru's speech

The Educare graduates: Electrical and Garment making programs. Out of 56 students consisting of drop outs, 48 of them graduated. That's pretty impressive!

Ellen's stance during the very long speech.

Switching gears to Graduation, Mr. Hunter fixing one of the boy's tie before the service started.

This man is so helpful and willing to do ANYTHING. I love that about him, he really displays a servant's heart.

We had 28 children I think

Some of the boys on the front row...

the 5th boy down, right to left, is Dian's older son.

the 4th boy down, right to left, is Jason, our neighbor who is really fun.

Monday's Children's meeting

Children's meeting

2009-03-18T00:16:00.002-04:00

This week has been crazy- Ellen and I have had a lot of planning to do for various events.

Monday we had a children's meeting at 5:00 p.m. We got up in the morning and Ellen started boiling beans for "cook up" while I went to the Centre to straighten out some things as well as hand out invitations for our Teen night on Friday to the students. I ran one other errand, and got home around 11:00. Then Dian and a neighbor came over, and they helped us cook pretty much the rest of the day. We made 8 loaves of bread total, and a huge pot of cook up which consists of beans, rice, potatoes, green onions, garlic, carrots, corn, and spices. It turned out really good, *Good job Ellen!*

We had only planned on cooking with the other 2 ladies, but we ended up talking about life, and particularly these two ladies struggles with being married to unsaved husbands. Ellen and I just listened a lot, and then we got to open up the bible and read and pray with them. We all agreed that as believers, we need to follow what God has to say with how to deal with tough situations, because that's the only real way to glorify him. We spent a couple of hours in the afternoon talking and discussing God's will and way for women, and how a biblical woman should act/respond to her husband, even if he is unsaved. It was so good for me, though I PRAY I will never have to be married to an unsaved man. I was so excited that God took this day that was supposed to be cooking all day, and turned it into a cooking and fellowship day with sisters in Christ, encouraging one another.

Then we had the kids come and I did a lesson on the Syrophanecian (or however you spell it)woman who wants Jesus to heal her daughter, and when Jesus asks her why he should give the children's food to dogs, she says, even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master's table. We clearly presented to the kids that you are a FILTHY RAG in God's sight, and you have No righteousness outside of Christ. The kids seemed really attentive, and I was happy about that. I think we had around 30-35 kids, and after we fed them- oh boy did they ever get crazy. They were screaming and running around, yelling. It was nuts. We had to TRY to calm them down, but we ended up playing a Guyanese game called dog and bone with them before walking the kids home around 7:30. Overall it was good, and we are happy to have these opportunities to tell kids about our Lord.

We have a Teen night coming up on Friday, and we are expecting around 40, maybe more. We are going to have invited around 120 kids total, and it could get pretty big. We have been planning this for awhile, and are praying that God will use it to stir the hearts of some of these Teens. We plan to make American Pizza, and watch the movie "Facing the Giants" with the kids, (which I purchased at a shop in town for $200 Guyanese dollars, =$1 U.S.) give them a quiz from the quiz, and discuss some major themes, and then play games and have some music. Hopefully we'll get some good time of praying with them as well. They seem pretty reverent of prayer, which is good.

It is late, and I need sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day shopping for all of the ingredients we need for the food on Friday and then going to the Centre to work on the graduation song with the garment making girls for Thursday, and then helping Ellen with Pinatas that her class of 30 young kids is frustratingly not accomplishing very well. We need grace! We both are feeling stretched to our limits right now, and I am praying that we'll have a couple of hours in the afternoon to just spend reading and praying. There is so much going on, and we need the Spirit to work in and through us.

Thank you all so much for your prayers.

Pesky Bug

2009-03-13T15:07:00.002-04:00

So this morning I woke up late, and it was raining outside, the sound beautiful on our roof. I rolled over, and Ellen was still asleep, so I crawled out of bed, and headed out into the hallway, but I didn't feel quite oriented, and felt like I still needed to lay down, so I went into our porch room, which is all screened in and has a great breeze. I stretched out on my stomach on the floor and layed with my arms spread out, enjoying the breeze, the coolness, and my eyes being shut a few minutes longer. I praised God for the enjoyment I was able to have, and just as I was praying, something went CLUNK in my ear, and all of the sudden it was itching, and it felt like a hair was playing with my eardrum or something was dancing on top of it. I was coughing and banging my head on the ground to try to get whatever it was out, but it was not working. I wondered if it could be a loose piece of wax, but no, there's no way something like that could feel this painful and annoying. I was about at the point of wanting to rip my ear open to see what it was! So I went into our room, woke Ellen up in the process of turning the light on and getting the peroxide, and I told her what was going on, and how it felt like something was in my ear. Right before I put the peroxide in my ear, I scraped the inside of my ear with my finger, and out came a black bug, that had thought he was worthy to go into my ear and annoy the daylights out of me. So there went my peaceful morning! I peroxided my ear anyway in case he bit me or something. It hurt. Oh yeah, so the rain kept coming today- all day long, and I love it!

Crusade Messages

2009-03-11T10:03:00.002-04:00

I thought you all may be interested to see some of the content of what we've been hearing over the past weekend. I've been pretty blessed by much of it myself.

Friday night Pastor John spoke about four philisophical questions many people ask themselves...

1.Where did I come from?
God (Gen. 1:26-28)

2.What am I here for?
Originally to reflect God, we were to have dominion over everything. (Gen. 1:27-31) Your purpose on earth is to glorify and honor God and love Him.(Eccl.12:13-14and Mark 12:28-31)

3.What has gone wrong?
Sin is the problem. That's what has gone wrong. You were created to live, but you die. Why? Sin. “There is none righteous, no not one.”

4.Where am I going?
You're going to die. Only once. After death is judgment. (John 3:18-19, 1:11-14, 14:1-6)

Saturday Night he spoke from Ephesians 2:1-10...

1.What are we outside of Christ?
Dead men walking, controlled by Satan, children of wrath. (Eph. 2:1-3)

2.What did he do for those who have come to Christ?
Quickened us, Raised us up so we could love and serve Him, made us fit for Him. (Eph. 2:4-6)

3.Why did He do it?
The ultimate purpose of everything: for His glory. (Eph. 2:7-10)

Sunday evening he spoke from Ephesians chapter 1, titled "Seven Benefits of Being a Christian"..

If you've received Christ, here's what is yours:

1. You've been chosen to holiness and blamelessness! (Eph. 1:4)

2. He's adopted you, He's even predestinated that adoption!! You get to be part of His family. (Eph. 1:5)

3. You're accepted in the beloved. (Eph. 1:6)

4. You are redeemed through His blood, bought with a price. Grace is free, but it certainly is not cheap. (Eph. 1:7)

5. You have been made privy to all the plans of God. (Eph. 1:8-10)

6. You have been made an heir. (Eph. 1:11-12)

7. You have the presence of God living in you, or the Holy Spirit lives in you! (Eph. 1:13-14)

If you haven't believed in Christ, you are considered with the "children of wrath" (Eph. 2:3)

The last night of the Crusade (Monday night) Mr. Hunter spoke from Revelation 5, entitled "The Throne, the Book, and the Lamb"...

~ God the Father sits on the throne, clothed in majesty and holiness. (I had to pause and imagine a being actually CLOTHED in those things. It's too big and wonderful for me to grasp.) He is surrounded by angels who sing unceasingly and untiringly "holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty" (Rev. 4:8) This God can stand no imperfection. He is ineffably holy and unapproachable.

~ "The book" is the book of the consummation of the ages. It made John weep because noone was worthy to open the seals thereof. (5:4) The book could not be opened by great strength or superior intellect. Only worthiness. No one was worthy (5:3) Wait, there is one worthy! (5:5) He's the Root of David, not the branch this time. He's the Lion of the tribe of Judah. This One is worthy. Revelation 5:6 then reads "And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain". Lamb? Slain Lamb? What happened to the the Lion?

~ The Lamb is what John found. His sacrifice, his salvation. To John He was not a Lion. The Lion is reserved for those who are to be ultimately judged and condemned. The worthiness of this Lamb stands on two legs:

1. His intrinsic diety.

2. His perfect humanity.

He is absolutely worthy. God on the throne has been satisfied. Round about the throne a thunderous anthem went up declaring His worthiness. (5:12) He is worthy. If He's not the King in your heart, you have not deemed Him worthy. You will either face the Lion or the Lamb on judgment day.

I personally really enjoyed this message and thought it was a great note to end on. I was blessed by it and think quite a few others were as well.

I'm not sure I've done Mr. Hunter justice with these overviews, but I guess it's the perspective of one of the hearers. If you read anything that you find incorrect, I'd love to be corrected. I have much to learn about...well, a lot of things!

~Ellen

Sunday Crusade

2009-03-09T14:18:00.009-04:00

The Service Sunday night went very well, and I was very blessed by the preaching. Pastor Hunter preached on Ephesians 1, and the title was 7 benefits of being a Christian. There was a lot of special music, probably 10 total, and also congregational singing. I loved the spirit.

The people singing "His Banner Over Me Is Love"

Us singing "Who Am I"

Brother Terry with Pastor Steve(an employee from the Centre) and Troy.

The Hunter's special song.

Troy leading in the reading of God's word.

The #57 girl's group song, "Thy Mercy My God". They sang 2 part harmony for this one and did a very nice job- they have come such a long way!

The #68 Roadside Baptist special: Troy, Moti, Terry, Pastor John, Hemdath, and Andrew.

A girl from #68's special.

Emily from Corriverton sang "Word of God Speak", and I played it for her.

Ellen and I sang 3 specials that night, 2 with accompaniment and 1 accapella.

Us singing our closing song, "How Deep the Father's Love for Us".

Crusade

2009-03-07T20:46:00.009-04:00

These are some pictures from the Crusade tonight. It is going really well so far, we've had a good turnout and the messages have been simple, yet powerful, about humans, who they are, where they've headed, and what God has done for them and why. It is the gospel message so clear! I love listening to Mr. Hunter.

Emily and her daughter Shannon talking to Ellen. We spend a good bit of time with them. They are from Corriverton. Fat man is standing behind them- He is great! He sits and directs traffic when needed near the train tracks by the post office. Big buckets of cane and sugar get shipped from the factory across the road, and to the ocean to get put on a boat. They use the train to transport. Anyway. He has a little hut and sits there most days. We always wave at him, and if we walk by we talk to him. He came last night and tonight to the crusade, and I am very excited about that!

Talking afterwards...Terry is the guy in the white shirt in the middle. Cynthia is in the yellow top directly in the middle. Priscilla is in red directly behind her. Abigail is to the right in green, and Troy is on the very right in the tan shirt.

This is the "stage" where the services were conducted from.

Some members of the churches singing. Dian is towards the front sitting down holding her son, Isaac. Her other son is in the blue shirt sitting in the front.

We set up chairs on the concrete "driveway" at Ronald's house, one of the members at Roadside, and that is where we are holding the crusade. Some people stand at the road there in the back, and just listen.

This was the Corriverton ladies' special. Mrs. Hunter, me, Andrea (the piano player), Ellen, and Dian (our housekeeper).

Mr. Hunter leading the group in "My God is so BIG" before his message. I think he was at the "Strong and so mighty..." part.

Ellen and I singing "My Jesus Fair"

The Hunter's special song. (Moti and Hemdath behind)

The girls from #57's special song- "By Grace Alone". From left to right: Priscilla, me, Abigail, Cynthia, Ellen, Ravinee, Christina, and Sara.

The girls picked out my outfit because I told them I was bored with my selection of clothes (which is very lame because I have 14 shirts and skirts). This is what they came up with.

Anyway, the singing has gone well, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the preaching. Pray for tomorrow night as they expect more then. We so want God to work here, to change people's hearts as only he can do. We patiently wait on him, and have faith that he will not let our labours be in vain.

Please Pray!

2009-03-06T06:37:00.005-04:00

The Crusade is scheduled to begin tonight at six o'clock. I'm looking forward to it. It will be held at Ronald's house, one of the members from Roadside. Tonight and tomorrow night will be at his place. Sunday we'll go to Roadside and go under the tent. I'm looking forward to it, but really praying and wanting God to use this in people's lives here. I'd love to see people really stirred up, genuinely seeking to live for Him and love each other as we ought.

Can you join us specifically in prayer for this today and as you think of it this weekend? I would really appreciate it. If you enjoy praying for specifics, here are a few.

**Katie and I are to sing three specials, as well as leading and participating in a 6 or 7 others.
**Pastor Hunter is striving to prepare simple Gospel messages that will be easy to understand, yet impact the people.
**This is an evangelistic sort of a thing, so pray that we would know how to interact with the people who come from surrounding areas.
**Pray that it won't just be a formality and a showing up of people for some event, but that the Spirit really would work and move.
**Pray that travel to and from the Crusade would be safe and uneventful.

Hmm. That's all I can think of for specifics at the moment. Thank you so much!
.

Eating Cane

2009-03-06T06:16:00.005-04:00

Could there be a more appropriate follow up post than this? I can't think of one. This is the day Katie and I got first hand experience of what extraction of cane juice and left over bagasse and all that other stuff really means.

Step 1: try to rip the woody outside parts off with your teeth.

Step 2: when you fail, call Mr. Hunter to use his trusty machete to do the job

Step 3: bite hunks off and start sucking

Step 4: swallow the juice, spit out the sawdust

Step 5: repeat the process (if you even enjoyed it to begin with)

Katie was great. We laughed a lot this night.

"Sugar..uh uh uh uh uh uh uh, honey honey.."

2009-03-05T22:22:00.008-04:00

Back in February the electrical students from the Centre were scheduled to go on a field trip to the Sugar Estate, specifically the factory, especially to check out the electrical equipment. Extra chaperones were needed and the Centre thought we may enjoy the tour. They were right and I was more than happy to help out and get to learn a few things in the process. I'm going to do my best here to walk you through the process step by step. The pictures are almost exactly in the order of the way the tour was conducted, so they should follow the process fairly well. I was very intrigued by the entire process.

This is the group I helped watch. The boys were split into two groups: one group went with Katie and Terry on Wednesday, the other group went with myself and Hemdath on Friday. The guys really behaved themselves well. I didn't have to do too much chasing or correcting.

This is right before we entered. Basically a snapshot of the shell of the factory.

Employee parking. Guess they've figured out that bikes=good exercise and less air polution.

This picture shows the punts. The punts are those large, numbered barge looking things floating in the canal. The process reminds me of a water ride in some ways. The punts go into the fields (the canals are all connected in a network/grid that leads right back to the factory), are filled up with raw cane, the punts travel back to the factory and get dumped onto a feeding bed, then they move back out to the fields. In the fields there are somewhere around 2400 men cutting the cane with cutlasses. From there a tractor hauls it to the canal's edge and dumps the load into the punt. Unless it's been raining and it's too muddy that is. In that case the workers just carry bundles to the punt and fill it up.

This is a view of the feeding bed from underneath. You can see the chains that keep the cane moving, it's conveyor belt style. We walked directly underneath this. It was a good thing we had our hard hats on--one of the boys had a large piece of cane fall directly onto his head. This feeder dumps the raw cane into a cane carrier, which then starts feeding the cane into three sets of knives or blades which start to cut, rip, and shred the cane in order to extract everything.

These are the second and third sets of blades it travels through. Check out the left side of the picture, the wooden loong box is where the cane continues on. One interesting fact I learned is that 12 tons of raw cane yields about 1 ton of sugar.

This looked like a picture Dad or Uncle Marty (or anyone who has half a clue about that kind of stuff) might enjoy. It was the motor and shaft for the blades that chop up the cane. No safety restrictions in this place. It's pretty free in there...and dangerous for some I suppose. We lived, nobody was hurt.

The reason we even came.

Again, the boys learning a lot about their field of interest.

Okay, from the chopping up of the cane the small pieces go into mill #1 and eventually pass through 4 seperate mills. I think this is the third mill. Hot water is mixed with the cane to loosen the juices and separate the cane juice from the "bagasse" (left over saw dust stuff). The factory goes through 2000 tons of cane juice daily. Also, 94% of the cane juice is extracted from the bagasse in the end.

Another view of the mills, this is the fourth, obviously. Third directly behind it, etc.

This is just what I thought was a cool picture of some of the machinery.

After the juice is extracted and the bagasse cannot be used any further for sugar, it is dumped from the fourth mill onto another conveyor belt that proceeds to an elevator. The elevator sends it on its way to the furnaces. There are three furnaces with two shoots to feed bagasse into for each one. The furnace boils water and the plant is pretty much run on steam. I was able to peer into one of these furnaces. I'm glad I'm not going to hell.

Excess bagasse is obviously dumped here. It's saved for problem times when the company needs to keep operating, but has no new bagasse coming in to burn. There is a tractor lift I didn't take a picture of, but you get the idea. Pretty much a reverse back to the furnaces.

Back to the sweet stuff. The juice heads to these large drums to be clarified. Think mini swimming pool in your yard. Okay, not too mini. Interesting note: all signs in the factory are hand painted. I liked this sign especially. I encourage you to read through their checklist, I found it interesting. The limed juice is added to the mixture along with a settling agent (can't remember the name of it) to draw out impurities. I was told the juice is the heated to 320 degrees C.

And now testing the clarity of the juice.

Next step: evaporation process. And they keep on boiling it down and condensing, moving to three different huge drums for this process, until....
Pay dirt! This was awesome! See all that brown stuff? It's the chute of freshly produced brown sugar. Everyone got to taste it, as much as they wanted actually. Grandma, you would have loved the sanitation codes: dip hand in and take as much as you please. Didn't wash? Eh, it's okay. The vat this sugar is dumped into holds 80 tons of the sweet stuff.
This was a further step in the process. This company doesn't produce refined sugar or even very white sugar, but this spinning drum was removing molasses from some of the sugar. It was pretty cool to watch.
The group at the end of the tour.
This is the brand new factory that hasn't started production as of yet. The old one we got to tour is basically history. This one should be running soon, but there are some hang-ups with financing, etc. Apparently the one in charge of all of this is in some hot water with the new plant. I don't know details. Anyway, I hope this was as enjoyable for you to walk through in pictures as it was for me in person!

Priscilla's birthday and the weekend

2009-03-04T22:49:00.003-04:00

Last Friday we went to Priscilla's house for a belated birthday party, and we played games, talked, and just had a good time. Then we spent the night at her house so that the Hunters wouldn't have to pick us up. We actually enjoyed staying the night a lot, it let us really get to know them better. We took off Saturday morning and went to the market before returning home.

This is Sunday afternoon when Priscilla, me, and a group of people walked to the water plant where they purify water near Priscilla's house. This is Ellen and I the morning after we spent the night at Priscilla's. We looked rough.

Marty- this is me sleeping under the mosquito net with Priscilla. I didn't get 1 bite! Anthony got up pretty early and started snapping pictures of sleeping bodies...that child and my camera. They are like attached.

This is Shirley, Priscilla, Abigail, and Anthony's mom.

At Priscilla's belated birthday party, Abigail, Cynthia, Christina, and Ellen!

Drivers License

2009-03-04T22:07:00.003-04:00

Our last week has been packed with things to do, which is awesome! We are loving how much God is giving us to do and be a part of here. This week has gone exceptionally well, and we have humbled our hearts before God, and felt like dirt, and for some reason, he's blessing us and our efforts here and giving us great opportunities and times of sharing our faith with others.

We have a crusade coming up this weekend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. There is much work and preparation going into it, and we are begging God to work in some hearts- even our own, and change us for his glory. Ellen and I are heading up much of the special music, which has been time consuming but fun. I am playing piano for a few different things, and I need practice time! Ellen and I also need to get our final songs picked out that we will sing together along with working on all of the other songs that we are involved with doing with others. It is fun when God works in your life, and we have definitely seen that lately.

Monday we kind of felt like failures because we didn't proclaim the name of Christ as we ought. Yesterday and today God gave us amazing grace and allowed us to be bold in proclaiming our love for him and what he's done for us and who he is for us. People think we're crazy. Especially on the bus ride tonight when we had prayed for a bus to come and pick us up within the next 2 minutes (because we were pretty far out in a place that doesn't have buses all that often) and low and behold...exactly 2minutes, Ellen was counting, and a bus picks us up. We were on highs. We were so happy that God ANSWERS prayer. We have to pray in faith, and he is FAITHFUL! We felt like shouting "OUR GOD IS REAL" because we could feel him, see him, knew he was real.

We were so happy and singing on the bus, and the guy in front of us (along with many others on the bus) turned around and asked Ellen something like "did you have a good day?" and Ellen told him that she had an AWESOME day and that she loves God more than anything. He thought we were both a little coo-coo I think, and we just looked at each other and laughed that only we seemed to understand what the other one was experiencing about the person of God.

We went to New Amsterdam to get our drivers license again today because we went Monday, but the head police officer guy wasn't there to sign our papers because the President was coming through, so we had to go back today to get it all finished. So we officially have Guyanese permits to drive here! Ellen drove tonight, and I'll try it out tomorrow.

I am so happy that even though I can go through times when I don't feel like God is very near, if I keep seeking, keep reading, keep praying, he WILL be found. The joy and happiness that comes from a relationship with him is incredible- the most exciting thing I've ever experienced, and the funny thing is, it doesn't end. A great movie is really exciting, but there's an ending to it, and then you have to move back into real life. This ongoing exquisite relationship with my Creator, Jesus Christ, the maker of the Universe, I AM. Now that never ends, and it seems to get more pleasurable, more fulfilling, more engrossing. We serve such an amazing God. Tomorrow Ellen and I will be teaching singing at the Centre, and going out and inviting people to the Crusade, so pray that God will be glorified and that he will see fit to bring people, and change them.

We love everyone back home, and miss you all.

Beachey

2009-02-25T19:50:00.002-04:00

The first picture is Priscilla, and her sister Abigail, and their friend Cynthia. These girls are all form #57.

The second picture is Christina, Ravinee, me, and Abigail.

We had such a good time at the beach! I love these girls.

oops...I just realized this is under Ellen's login, but I'll publish it anyway. This is really Katie though:)

Republic Day

2009-02-25T00:51:00.004-04:00

We spent our Republic day at the beach with Moti and his family. Well, they were the original ones that invited us, and then like the whole church and other people showed up. It was an experience. It is beautiful at the ocean, and hopefully these pictures will depict some of that beauty. Brother Moti and his wife Gasmine. This was our "drop place" where everyone dropped their stuff.

I'm not exactly sure what was going on in this picture, Anthony (who you will see later in these pictures), a little guy who fractured his leg, and couldn't do anything but sit at the beach, took my camera and took most of these pictures.

But I THINK I was arguing the rules of the game with Raymond.

Us playing a game in the sand where you draw a big rectangle, and it ends up looking like a giant square 8 with filled in lines. Then you have 2 teams that try to get across without being tagged, and the "taggers" have to stay in the filled in lines that border the "8". Anyway, that probably didn't make sense. It was an ok game.

Moti and Gasmine, they're adorable.

Mr. Anthony, the fractured leg child that loves to play with my hair while we sing with the girls at his house on Sunday afternoons. He's kinda like one of my little brothers.

Us at the end of our round of the game (I can't remember what it was called).

Probably debating rules again.

Ellen, Dian and me with the coconut tree.

Beach

2009-02-24T02:19:00.005-04:00

We spent the day at the beach for the guyanese Republic Day, February 23rd. It was a blast. The beach is one of the prettiest things God made, especially with the coconut trees and the blue sky--wow. I enjoyed spending time with Moti's family, and others from the churches. We kind of had a "church" get-together, people from #57 and #68 came, and we brought Dian from our church. Dian and I excercising our stomachs, or trying. It was basically like skipping and having fun in the sand.

Ellen, Dian and I walking on the beach. The dirty ocean that we SWAM in is behind us...yum

This is a dead fish I found on the shore. There was only one on the whole beach that I saw, and I was amazed. I expected there to be more. I thought he was a shark, but I was told otherwise. He's just "a fish". Poor guy.

They have these garden things growing watermelons and such on the shore of the beach. They have little huts too, and fences all around it.

This is all of us trying to GET to the beach. There was lots of rain the day before, so there was flooding. Dian and Ravinee are to the left, Ellen standing watching the "getting across process" and a bunch of people from #57 on that one log. Then there's Ravinee's mom, Gasmine standing on the two logs. I didn't fall in!

Sunday Afternoons

2009-02-24T01:10:00.004-04:00

This is singing practice on Sunday afternoon. Ravinee is sitting to the left, Abigail (11), red shirt, braiding Ellen's hair while singing, Ellen, and on the right, Christina(16). This is poor little Anthony, Priscilla and Abigail's youngest brother. He fractured his leg from the knee to the ankle, and can't walk. He gets carried everywhere or else doesn't go. He's a bright spot in my day. Loves to play with my hair and give me new styles. I am just fine with that!

This is Christina (16) to the left, and Priscilla (15) to the right. Notice that Christina is using my bread knife to pretend she's stabbing Priscilla. These girls can be so silly sometimes, and I love them!

We spend most Sunday afternoons at the #57 village with the teenage girls there. We leave the #68 church service, and ride back with them all in the church bus. That is the bus that they cram 40 people into. It's a crazy ride:) We eat lunch with either Brother Moti's family, or Sister Shirley and her family. We then teach the girls singing for a couple hours, and then we catch a bus back to Line Path D, where we live, and teach singing at 4:30 to our church.

This past Sunday (February 22) Ellen and I split up and she went to Shirley's and I went to Moti's because our presence was wanted at both places. We decided we are not one unit, so we can split up. Then I walked down to Shirley's house with Ravinee so we could sing with everyone. This is Brother Moti's children, Raymond (19) and Ravinee (12).

This is Brother Moti and his wife Gasmine. (pronounced Jasmine) We kind of feel like they are our adopted family, Gasmine takes care of little things in life that our mom would help out with, like when we show up at her door drenching wet, and she goes and finds dry clothes for us to wear and feeds us, yeah, they're basically family.

This is me sitting on their railing. They have this sweet porch that just got finished being built, and it is so breezy up there. I am sitting on the railing (my favorite seat) that goes all around their porch.

Ravinee! She is such a sweet girl, and hangs around Ellen and I quite often. She takes piano lessons from us as well, and catches on pretty fast.

Gasmine preparing salad for lunch to go with the cook-up, which is rice, blackeyes, shallots (green onions) seasonings, beef chunks, and spicy pepper. It is yummy.

The emotion of Jesus

2009-02-22T00:00:00.003-04:00

I know many of you already know this, but I just wanted to let you know I read something today that I think is amazing and awesome. Sometimes I think of Jesus as being a serious, firm, no-nonsense, and unemotional person. But I found that He DOES have emotion, and I'm so happy.

Jesus loved 3 siblings named Mary, Martha, and Lazarus a lot.

When Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, he waited 2 days to go to see him because

"this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby."

When he came to the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, both sisters said the exact same thing when they saw Jesus,

"Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died."

Right after the second sister (Mary) says that to him, the bible says

"When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled."

2 verses later, Jesus wept.

This really affected Him, and he REALLY loved these people. I think it troubled and hurt Him to see these sisters so sad and upset. His compassion is great- I'm so thankful for it. I'm so happy the bible records this account.

If you want to read it for yourself, read John 11:1-46

What a Day!

2009-02-19T23:05:00.006-04:00

I have to let you in on my day Tuesday, because it was quite honestly awful. From the moment I woke up, I think I was just bound to fail fail fail. It started out LATE, and because of that, I was in a bit of a hurry. I ran down the stairs and tripped, throwing my stuff all over the floor which made me even later getting into the car with waiting people outside. I had planned to make oatmeal bread with my Remedial students, and I was going over the plans in my head. I realized I had left my vitamins on my dresser and forgotten to take them. No biggie, I can do that later I think to myself.

So I go back to planning the day- Go teach my Access class at 8:30-10:00, from 10:00-12:00 do the bread making, from 12:00-1:00 teach the garment making students their graduation song, from 1:00-1:30 eat lunch, 1:30-3:00 work the the library with Ellen on chucking old and bad books, 3:00 get on bus with Ellen to go to #57 to teach Ravinee and some other girls keyboarding lessons. Get there at 3:30, teach from 4:00-5:00, eat dinner, leave for the bible study at 5:30, bible study at 6:00, home around 8:15. Then detox and figure out tomorrow. There's my day going through my head while driving to the Centre at 8:15 a.m.

Then, the day happened. My access class went ok, we got much accomplished, and I was happy. I taught bread class, and the first hour went ok, though a little frustrating trying to teach 21 students how to make yeast bread! Then it just went downhill. Apparently, someone had sprayed cleaner in the oven, and no-one had told me, and I didn't know. So I bake the first batch of rolls, and it takes 45 minutes before they're done. Then the next ones are over risen, so I punch them all down and re-shape them. Wait for them to rise, and bake. They burn, and are only in the oven 20 minutes. The third one was a loaf pan, and it took an hour, the fourth one was a loaf pan as well, 45 minutes, and the fifth batch are burnt as well, and only in the oven 15 minutes! By this time, I have missed my singing with the girls, 12:00 has long come and gone, in fact, I didn't eat lunch or work in the library because it is now 4:00 and we need to be going to Ravinee's. It's not even like I ended up with good bread for all of that day. I was ticked.

We're late to teach lessons, my whole day just went down the drain with bread that BURNED because of a stupid oven that doesn't work right, and finally we get on a bus. Now, it is pouring rain outside, and has been for about an hour. I am carrying my purse, Ellen's gold bag that I borrow to put all of my teaching books, papers, and anything to deal with the Centre in. Oh- and a waterproof market bag full of all of the pans and ingredients from today's failure. So we're driving along, and I'm trying to get a better attitude because it's bad, and I'm watching for Ravinee's house so I can tell the bus driver where to let us off. I'm sitting in the front bench, right NEXT to the driver. You remember that it is raining, right? So the windows are all fogged up, and on top of that, my glasses are fogged up, double fog. So I can't see really well. Well. I see a water tower, which is (I thought) before Ravinee's house. I start watching for Ravinee's house, and don't see it where it was the last time I came. It has seemed like we've been driving a long time, so I say "I think here" to the driver. He stops the bus. It is pouring rain. Ellen doesn't think it looks right, but I know we've been driving forever. So we get out. And start walking backwards, because I promise Ellen I saw a water tower.

Well, I saw one alright, but it's the water tower in village #52, not 57. So we walk. It's pouring rain. There's no buses or Tapirs, and everyone is in their homes. We are getting drenched. I can't see where I'm walking because I now have fog AND rain all over my glasses, and hair too, none of which I can wipe because my hands are full with my bags, one in each hand.

We walk probably 20 minutes and some guys asked us toward the end of our 20 minute pouring rain walk if we want to come under their shelter(the bottom of their house), and we look down at ourselves, and look up, and Ellen says, "What's the point, we're already soaked." I was literally DRIPPING from the my skin to the top of my clothes. I felt like I'd gone swimming. Finally, a bus comes, and thankfully, decides to pick us dripping wet mops off of the street. They clear a bench for us in a somewhat full bus, because no-one wants to sit next to us. We tell them 57, and we laugh as we are driving. We are a sight.

We pass Ravinee's house again, because no-one can see out the windows because they're fogged, and I see the water-tower of 57, and tell them to let us off. We start walking the other way, toward Ravinee's house, and it probably took us 5 minutes to get there. While walking, I was so shocked and slightly baffled at my predicament, that I looked up and out-loud asked God if he thought this was funny. I then stupidly let him know that I did not think it was funny, like he didn't already know that. We laughed and kept walking as people stared at us like we were crazy people.

We get to Ravinee's, and her and her mom, Gasmine get us all new clothes to put on, and I taught the girl who came over for a piano lesson, a 5 minutes lesson before she has to leave. Wow.

Then Wednesday started off with a bang, me walking down the stairs on my way out the door to head to the Centre, and I'm carrying my purse, and the $80 boombox we just bought last weekend (in the box). Well, the box decides to collapse, and I'm only on the 12th step out of at least 22. So the boombox flies out of the bottom of the box, and crashes down the 10 other steep steps, and lands with a hard crash at the bottom. I am in utter shock, and all I can think to shout is "OH MY GOODNESS!" "OH MY GOODNESS!" "OH DEAR ELLEN,,," My heart was crushed. I felt like a complete and total failure. Then when I got to the Centre, I saw the huge crack on top of the boombox. I plugged it in- nothing. Yeah, that just confirmed my being a failure. It's ruined, and unless by some miraculous happening Terry can fix it...

While driving to the Centre, the song "trust and obey" was going through my mind. Then when I read my bible at the Centre, it was talking about how these earthly things profit little, actually, it was in John, and Jesus was talking about how things are simply means. They aren't that important. I think that was supposed to make me feel a little better. I'm still not sure if it did. I tripped down a flight of stairs at the tour of the Sugar Estate, and didn't severely hurt myself. Then if it hadn't been for one of my students yelling "MISS!" and grabbing my head and shoving it down, I would have cleared my head off on a beam that I was walking right into and didn't see. Oh boy.

Praise God today didn't have any such predicaments. I have come to learn that we have to praise him in the storms because He is who He is, no matter where I am. That's hard.

I praised Him today for keeping me from half killing myself or anyone else.

I'll praise Him tomorrow even if I find myself in some other crazy predicament.

Centre

2009-02-19T22:39:00.003-04:00

Sorry for not answering your questions for so long Aunt Cindy!! It's been on my to do list for awhile, just haven't had the time.

The students at the Centre come from many places- all of the villages around #68. Some of them live an hour away, and they travel that one way every day. Many of the students are drop-outs from the public schools, or just students that couldn't function right there. In Guyana, the school system is pretty strict, and there is no program set up for students that are slower learners or that just learn differently. It seems the way to teach here is to write it on the chalk board and have them copy down the information. While this is very effective for some, others are left out. So some of these students simply didn't make it into high school (didn't test high enough to go on) so they are coming for the Remedial program which is reading, writing, math, global studies, arts and crafts, singing, and general topics.

The EduCare students are the garment making girls, and the electrical boys. They are students that are coming to the Centre to learn a trade. That is it. Now, we incorporate other things into their learning, such as computer classes, and bible classes, but their primary focus is their trade. I have asked many of these students why they aren't in public school, and some of them said they finished, others simply didn't test high enough, and they were no longer allowed to continue on. This seems fairly common here, and these students are not stupid or lacking intelligence, so I'm not sure why they fail. It may be that they were not applying themselves, and weren't studying, but I'm not sure. Regardless, they are learning a trade.

We have the CXC students that come in the afternoon from 3-5, and these are public school students (secondary students, like high school age) who are coming to get extra help for the CXC exam, which is somewhat like our ACT or SAT. These students go over any and everything that might be on the exam. They need to finish this exam to pass secondary school, and possibly enter university.

Finally, there are the OVC children, who come in the afternoon from 3-5 as well. These are children who are Orphans and Vulnerable Children. We play games with them, do a craft activity, feed them, show them a movie, draw pictures, and feed them a meal. This is an after school program for them as well.

At the Centre, Ellen and I do a wide variety of things.

Some of the things I do include:
Teach Microsoft Access class to the Centre's computer instructors
Work on updating/creating a web site for the Centre
Teach arts and crafts with the 14-17 year old Remedial class
Teach Singing to the 14-17 year old Remedial class
Teach singing to the EduCare students (electrical and garment making)
Do activities with the OVC students (make posters)
Teach random classes when a teacher is absent unexpectedly. I usually teach the Bible.
Head up projects like doing skits, teaching students to make a nice dinner for staff, etc.
Teach "counseling" class 2 times a month to Remedial students
Teach staff-improvement class

Some of the things Ellen does:
Teach arts and crafts with the younger Remedial Class
Teach singing with the younger Remedial Class
Teach singing to the EduCare students (electrical and garment making)
Do activities with the OVC students
Teach random classes when a teacher is absent unexpectedly.
Head up projects like the skits, cooking classes, etc.
Teach "counseling" class 2 times a month to Remedial students
Teach staff-improvement class
Re-arrange the office
Work on chucking old library books
helping teach the younger Remedial class

We spend a lot of time working together, and that's good- it's how we like it.

The Remedial students pay tuition, and I believe the other programs are funded. There is more information (not recently updated, but information none-the-less) regarding this on the school's website- geocities.com/rbbcentre

I hope that answered your questions, if you have any more, shoot them at me, and I'll try to answer them as best I can!

Beautiful

2009-02-16T23:26:00.003-04:00

What does the word beautiful mean? I think spending the evening walking around the neighborhood with a bunch of kids that adore you, after you just spent a couple hours teaching them flannel graph stories, singing, and playing games with them is a pretty good start. Then, to top it off, because these kids want to show their love for you in a tangible way, they pick you a bouquet of all of these gorgeous flowers they have here in Guyana, just because they know you think they are beautiful. There's a whole lot of beauty in that.

Valentine's Day

2009-02-16T23:06:00.003-04:00

I spent the best Valentine's Day I think I've ever had with 2 great friends of mine, Ellen and

Dian. We shopped ALL day long. We started at about 8:30, and got dressed up kind of cute (red, white, pink) and then headed off for the Market. We came home to drop all of our bags of groceries off at the house, and then caught another Tapir to go to the Market to just browse. You

see, every time we go to the Market, we always have an agenda, a list, and usually a pretty long one at that. So we perused the Market and had a great time enjoying each other. Afterwards, we hit the peak of the day by going to Church's Chicken, which is a fast food ish place near the Market. It reminded Ellen and I of home so much it's scary. The place was clean, the atmosphere was good, and the food was even better! We all had chicken sandwiches with french fries, and a Pepsi, and then we split this amazing strawberry cheesecake to end an amazing experience. While we were waiting for our food to get done (which took around 20 minutes because they do things right), there was a guy selling jewelry that came into the restaurant off of the street and started trying to sell us jewelry while we're sitting at a table. Then, he started telling us about his life, and how he's a good person, and good people die early, and wicked people live longer, and he's been married to a few rich girls, and everyone should have children young, (he basically started telling me that I needed to have children) that it is a good thing, and boy did

he just go on and on for the longest time. Ellen was going back at him and conversing pretty good with him, but I was kinda trying to stay out of it. The best part, was right before he got kicked out by the lady who was working at Church's. He had been telling us how you couldn't trust the bible because it was written by men and they are people just like you and me, so it wasn't to be believed, and it wasn't true. We all emphatically disagreed with him, but Dian REALLY spoke up and made it clear to him that the bible WAS true and it WAS the word of God. GO DIAN!!!

So, here are some pictures of our lovely time at Church's. We laughed, fellowshiped, dealt with a crazy man, and enjoyed EVERY bite of that amazing chicken sandwich. It might quite possibly be the best thing I have ever eaten in my life. I lie not.

The tower of garbage...oh yeah.

Little Blessings

2009-02-16T14:10:00.002-04:00

I typed that previous post, pressed the publish button and it went to some error page. I went back to see if it saved the post and the screen was blank. My heart kind of sunk. I didn't have time to sit and re-type, and I was frustrated because it looked like it was just a half hour (or more) wasted. Then I gave it up to God and thanked Him anyway. I went downstairs and was discussing plans for this afternoon with Katie and I mentioned the brief frustration I had had. She just said something like "oh, that happens to me all the time, just do (x, y, z)". I came back up and tried doing whatever she said and I feel like I just experienced God's smile. I love that feeling.

I miss you all

2009-02-16T13:01:00.002-04:00

I know this blog is to tell you all about what goes on here in Guyana. Part of life here involves missing people at home. I love what we're doing, I would not choose to remove myself from these surroundings prematurely and I'm excited to continue and finish the present course. Buuut, being away endears those I love to me all the more.

I miss Daniel all the time. I get to marry him in August though, so I'm pretty excited about that. That sentence is really weak. I can't really put in words how happy and excited (along with a ton of other emotions) I am for that day. Yet I'm happy that day is over six months away at the same time. He's been such an encouragement to me while I've been here, I'm amazed at his love for me, and I love seeing (or hearing of) him seeking God for strength. The stories of what God is doing in Eau Claire (through Eau Claire Gospel Centre, the members, pastor Dan, and Daniel) is so inspiring and encouraging to me. Oh Daniel, I miss you. Thank you for loving me 3,000 miles away. You have been so good for me, even while I've been here, you probably can't know how thankful I am for you. I'm seeing how powerful human love really can be through loving you. It's awesome. God is awesome. He made it all.

I miss my mom. I miss her wisdom, strength, love, our chats and fellowship, and just watching her do. She's an amazing woman and I want to be like her in so many ways. It's good for me to think back and really reflect on why I love people and miss them. I miss her a lot. I guess it's good for us, Mom, my being away that is. I will be moving three months after my return. Those will be a precious three months and I'm happy I'll have them with you and all my family.

Dad, I miss you! I was so excited to hear your voice the other night. Thank you for taking time to talk to me, e-mail, even write a real letter. It's so good for me, thank you for challenging me the way you did the other night on skype. I don't even know if you realized that I felt challenged. I love you so much.

Let's see...who else do I miss. I guess I'll just do some names at this point, if I did a short paragraph for every person I miss this thing would go way too long and I wouldn't be accomplishing my work that is cut out for me here! This list won't have any order, don't be offended if you're not first, or even if you're not on the list. Daniel, Dana, Chet, Nicole, Troy, Shane, Bryce, Owen, Lisa, Gabe, (did I mention Daniel?), Papa, Grandma, Mary, Uncle Marty, Aunt Kelly, Wendy, Light, Mendo, Priscilla, Marty, ummm...Daniel, Aunt Pat, Zachary, Uncle Kevin, Whitney, David, Mark, Sean, Brett, Joey, Jamie, Seth, Kent, Neil, Kirk, Lauren, DANIEL. I know there are more people, especially people I can think of that I know I would probably be missing if we had a deeper relationship. I am excited for the prospect of establishing some of those relationships upon my return and even somewhat while I'm here in Guyana. I especially think of people in Eau Claire through that last sentence. These people I specifically think of are Kevin and Anna, Keith and Amanda, Katie, Mom Kleven, Micah, Maria, Josiah, Adam, Pastor Dan and his family, the Andersons, Amanda, the other Amanda, and maybe there's even another Amanda?, all of the children!, and so many other people who I have faces but forgotten names! I think there's a Ruby...but I can't quite remember. Anyway, I've spent enough time on this post now.

You all know now, in one not-so-personal blog post, I love you!

"For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1:8

Centre Part 2

2009-02-11T13:07:00.005-04:00

By the way, everything posted upside down, so if you want, start at the bottom and work your way up. Thanks! Sorry.

Oh these faces are so precious to me as well. These are some of the OVC children (orphans, and vulnerable children) and they come from very sad situations. The boy that is laughing asked me yesterday if when I go back to the states, when I come back, if I can bring him a bite of chocolate. He wants to taste chocolate from the states. These children LOVE it when Ellen and I play with them, and love attention. This is Anisia, James, and Thakur. Thakur is holding the big stack of valentines from the class. They will give them out on Friday.

Thakur and Rebecca, who is one of the staff at the Centre. She works in the office doing accounting. This is Rovendra and me.

This is my "adopted" boy from the remedial class, his name is Rovendra. He reminds me so much of Brett. I told him to show me his valentine and smile, and he only did one of those things as you can see.

This is Ellen helping one of the boys figure out what he's doing with his valentine.

This is the arts and crafts class we taught together on Tuesday as well. The boy looking right at the camera on the left is Carlos, a boy that loves Ellen (me too, but I don't see him as much) and ALWAYS wants to share his snack when they have a snack break.

James is sitting down to the right of Carlos, and Hemdath is in the green with a tie. James asked Hemdath to help him make me a valentine, but he doesn't want me to know. He asked me what kind of valentine I like and kept covering it when I would walk over to help one of the other students at the table. I love these kids.

This was our joint arts and crafts class on Tuesday. Ellen and I decided to join our remedial classes so that everyone could make valentines together. We are having a valentine party on Friday, and joining the classes again for that. This is the Educare sewing program. They do all of their sewing in this room, and the lady in the green is one of their instructors. They are currently making purple dresses for Graduation, which is on March 19th.

These are some of the sewing/garment making girls looking at patterns. The one sitting down looking at the book is Nataley, the one who has talked with me quite a bit, and expressed interest in the gospel. She has been coming to the #69 mission service.

This is the Educare Electrical program, instructed by Brother Terry. He also is the pastor at Roadside Baptist Church.

Here is a shot from farther back of the class. There are a lot of boys in this program. They range in age from 14-18.

Centre

2009-02-10T19:30:00.007-04:00

This smile is one that both Ellen and I love. Vickey was in Ellen's remedial class, and got moved up into mine. He is a somewhat quiet boy, until you start talking to him, then he opens up. He is very artistic, and such a nice guy.

These are some of my students.

The guy in the front is Rovendra.

He's my friend who reminds me

of Brett so much.

Devendra is to the far left who

is laughing. Ronica is right behind Rovendra, and in Rovendra's row,

the 2nd boy to the last, his name

is Shaun. They are fun kids.

This is my group of remedial students. They are being taught by the guy in the green shirt, Andrew, in the front. Ellen's class is directly behind that green chalk board, so their teacher is using the other side of the chalk board to teach them.

This picture was trying to depict and capture the upstairs classrooms that are divided by that net/wood gate thingy. It is by no means sound-proof, so when I'm ranting about how God hates lying, pretty much any of the kids can hear, and many times they listen from the classrooms on the other side. Sometimes it is really annoying because the noise level is so high. This is again, Ellen's remedial class.

This is one of the remedial classes, the one that Ellen usually helps with. They have recently had quite a few more students added, so the class size has grown to over 20.

This is the hallway/stairs that you go through heading upstairs where all of the remedial classes are held. The upstairs is the "schoolroom". To the right of this picture is the library, you can see the doorway, and to the left would be the computer lab.

This is the library. Ellen and I are supposed to be doing a bit of work in here getting rid of a bunch of books, but we haven't gotten started on that yet. The table in the middle-right of the picture is where some people will "hang out" after class, studying, typing, reading, etc.

Varcia is teaching the electrical boys computer class here.

This is another view from the computer room. Can you find Ellen? She's using the one computer that we're allowed to use there that has internet that works somewhat fast. The others are very unreliable and slow. p.s. my waterbottle is on the table. With my purse, and other items. That has kind of become my "dump station" where I drop off all of the items I am not currently using.

This is the computer room at the Centre, this shelf is where they store all of their supplies. Varcia is wearing the green, and is in charge of all of the supplies. She teaches computer classes as well.

This is Anisia with Ellen after Thakur got off the Tapir. She is a very sweet girl and is the one that asked me to tell her what I know about Jesus. I posted about the questions my students asked me that touched me in an assignment I gave them, and hers was the last.

These boys are also from the Centre and were in the Tapir. Their names are from left to right, Clinton and Winston. Clinton is in my Remedial class, and Winston is an electrical student.
Clinton is a very good cricket player and we learned on the Tapir ride that he plays every day Monday through Friday for 2 hours on an organized team. He is a very sweet boy. Winston loves to play basketball at the Centre with the boys after class.

This is me with Ms. Parboty in the same Tapir. She is one of the Remedial teachers. She teaches the class that I teach and work with sometimes. They are the older remedial kids. p.s. sorry I look sick- I was. I had a fever and was dizzy and aching. p.p.s. see my ring? uh huh. It's been keeping them away.

These are two of the students from the Centre that we happened to catch a tapir home with. Their names are Anesia (pronounced Anisa) and Thakur. I have talked about Thakur in the past.

AAAHHHH!! AUNT CINDY can you please help with the formatting of this post? I don't understand what's going on, and I don't have time to sit and figure it out. Thanks!

Feeling better

2009-02-10T14:09:00.003-04:00

I am doing really well today and Katie has pretty much been herself too. Yesterday she really didn't look too good. We got home and she decided to "take a nap" around 4:30. That nap lasted approximately 14 hours. I think we were both hit with some sort of virus, and it's pretty much subsiding. There are still some minor digestion problems for me, larger digestion problems for Katie, but not nearly as bad as it was. I'm trying to eat the right things that won't aggravate my stomach, and Katie and I started taking some things to cleanse our digestive tracts.

I appreciate those who have been concerned for us and praying. Now if we could just get back to actually doing and feeling productive, I'd be grateful. We did have craft time with the remedial students today (we made valentines) and it was enjoyable. We also have other things to plan and study for for the remainder of the week and into next week/month.

I don't have much else to update on, life doesn't feel too spectacular right now, I guess. I'm happy Christ can use us in our weakness and frailties as well as when we really feel strong and capable.

Oh, I do have some good news! I'm pretty sure my lice is eradicated, so for that I'm extremely thankful. It really wasn't terribly difficult to get rid of. My mom had some pretty swell advice though.

Time to carry on with the rest of my afternoon. I need to go make up some posters and do some other studying with Katie for our classes later this week.

You never know what you'll find in a bush..

2009-02-08T23:42:00.003-04:00

While at a birthday party, Ellen noticed a spider that was living in one of the bushes. When she told me to come look at it, I thought it was a toy, but apparently, it's real. This is the other side of the "masked spider" (as I named it)

It looks like it has a monster face! Let's just say I zoomed in to 16 to take this picture, so I was nowhere near it.

Sick

2009-02-07T23:24:00.007-04:00

Well, it's been a while since I've blogged, but I haven't had anything worth saying lately, so I decided to stay off.

However, I would like to request prayer tonight because Ellen is not doing well. She went on a two-day fast, and ever since then she has not been herself. She feels really weird and sick, and is so tired. I'm hoping it is her body's way of cleaning everything out from her fast, but tonight she was acting really weird and said her brain wasn't feeling normal. I felt her, and I think she has a fever, so I'm not sure what's going on, it may just be a virus, but if you all could pray for her, I would appreciate it. She might stay home from church tomorrow so she can sleep, because she's exhausted. She has no energy, and sleep might help that.

Also, we went somewhere today and ate food and both of us have stomach pain and diarrhea from it. The joys of life here:) I know this should pass, as it has in the past.

Thank you so much for the prayers lifted up on our behalves. God is taking care of us, and protecting us from so many things we probably don't even know about. We continue to be busy and don't seem to have enough time to get everything done. I guess we create some of the things to do, like tonight I just spent and hour decorating a cake for Moti, because it was his birthday today. Oh well, I think our extra things allow us to develop closer relationships with the people here.

We have had some great times talking with students at the Centre about their souls, and two in particular are very interested. Their names are Natalie and
Thakur. Thakur has come to church the past two Sundays, and told Ellen and I this past Friday that he will see us Sunday at church. He shows an unusual interest whenever we talk about the Bible, or being a Christian.

Natalie has gone through some "normal" teenager struggles with boyfriends, friends, and family. I have talked with her and dealt with many of the school related issues with her and the other involved people, and each time we end up talking about how the only way to solve all of these problems is through a relationship with Jesus Christ, and her heart being at peace with him. She has been coming to our mission services for two weeks, and she continues to discuss her concerns with me. Thursday night I sat and talked to her after the mission service for probably 20 minutes just reading through John 1. I explained it verse by verse, because she is overwhelmed with the words and doesn't understand many of the phrases. She was attentive the whole time, and I am praying God is working in her heart.

These are just a couple of the people that we deal with here. There are believers that we have been able to fellowship with as well, such as Dian, who is our housekeeper. She loves to spend time around us because we are believers. None of her family are Christians, and she seems to thrive off of spending time with Ellen and I. We are growing to love her dearly, and want to bring her home with us(She's a HARD worker). She goes to market with us on Saturdays, and we spend time talking about many things, she kind of watches out for us, and lets us know the right way to do things here.

I hope you all have a wonderful day tomorrow, I am so looking forward to worshiping our King with the other believers here. There is something about going into the house of God (which is simply a place where believers gather!) and worshipping Him with your whole heart. He's so worthy of our praise, honour, and devotion.
.

The Wharf

2009-02-02T11:33:00.007-04:00

These pictures are from January 14th. Andrew, a young barber in the church at Roadside, took Katie, myself, and his mother to the wharf this Wednesday morning to see the fish being brought in. He picked us up around 5:30 that morning. It was really enjoyable and we hung around there for about an hour and a half, just observing and talking

1
This is taken across the river from the wharf. The morning was beautiful, especially the sunrise.

2
This is the side of the river where all of the action was taking place, the actual wharf.

3

Here is Katie with Andrew and his mother. Behind them are the many boats and the structure with the red roof (or "zinc") is where most of the nets were stored.

4
These nets are pretty cool. They reminded me of our being fishers of men and brought to mind the different accounts the four gospels record that deal with nets, fishing, fish, etc. The nets (I am told) are about a mile long and are left out in the water for a span something like 4-8 hours and then are drug in.

5 This is the unloading process. The fish are all stored in the icebox, the blue box behind the pile of fish. While they are out at sea, they just gut the fish and throw them into the box until they arrive. The guys were cool about having their pictures taken, which was nice!

6
From the boat the fish are all piled onto the docks under the roof, like this. The guy in charge of selling the fish (in this case he's the guy in the blue jean shorts) just stands there and hollers his price until someone takes it. Parts of it reminded me of an auction. Those ladies are buying and I'm pretty sure they are some of the ones who work in the market and chop them up with those huge machetes (I'm still not used to calling them cutlasses).

7
This is Troy, a random man we met. The fish he's got here are called menari. I'm not sure about technical names for things or spellings with these things, I just wrote them down how they sounded.

8

Here is Katie with a pile of the fish one of the customers picked up. The kinds of fish on this table are carass and snapper. The snapper are the large orange-ish ones in the picture, I think the rest are the carass.

9

This is me with some interesting fish. The large one was called "coffer", I'm not sure what the one in the middle is, and the one with the feelers is called a Gilbacker and is a very expensive one (I was told it was around $8000...that's $40 USD).

10 And they're off...

Stagnant

2009-01-30T22:30:00.011-04:00

With all of the hustle and bustle of life here; going to the Centre, planning a bunch of big events/activities, going to Market to get groceries, walking to the post office, planning to have company over, church activities, singing, teaching singing, teaching English, getting to know Guyanese people, cooking, eating, dealing with lice, and whatever else may come along, it is sometimes difficult to make personal time to spend with God. Even when we try, it seems we get interrupted, and sometimes, it's by someone asking, "What are you reading about?" or "Why do you read your Bible all the time?" (a false concept) which leads into an opportunity to tell them about the God we serve and the Bible we follow.

Lately we have both been feeling a little stagnant, a little on the lifeless side. Kinda like we're not on fire for God, just lukewarm. This is partly because of what is going on in our lives, and how much is going out, but also it is because we need to completely focus on Christ and not have our minds wandering in the clouds. Sometimes I feel like this is all fake, and that we're just here in a dream. Its like I am missing my "real life", but I'm not. I really am living this part of my life in Guyana. Please pray that I will be able to better focus on that, and that God will draw me closer to himself, and burn a fire in me that others will see more clearly.

This is Ellen now. Double post.
To let you know what inspired this post. Katie and I were just sitting on the bed wondering aloud about the events of tomorrow, what has transpired today, about all of our frustrations over time wasted, about our frustrations that we waste so much time talking about the frustrations. I looked at her and just said "I feel like I'm in a spiritual drought". She knew exactly what I meant right away. We get too busy with everything that is going on and then we just sit around and talk about all the things that are going on.

We need to be better stewards of our time! Every minute is a minute used for something. Every thought, action, motive, word, deed is to be subject to Christ, who lives in us. We need to draw so much closer to Him! It's almost like we have these mental barriers sometimes too. Like five free minutes can't be used to read or pray because that's not the proper amount of "God allotment" at one time. Or I feel like I'm not in a place where I'm "spiritual" enough or in the perfect frame of mind for reading or praying. Even meditation and memorization is difficult. We could do that while we walk through the market even, or as we're on a tapir.

I'm so happy we are going through this together though. We stopped belly-aching and started praying as we discussed how we felt about all of this. We need to pray more. We need the desire, the Spirit to fill us. Completely.

It's a struggle, it's a fight. But it's so worth it. I love it.
.

Men Trouble

2009-01-29T15:00:00.005-04:00

When I came to Guyana, I was warned that the men would be a problem, but I didn't realize just what that meant. The longer I am here and the more Ellen and I do things on our own, the more comments are made, and interesting situations are encountered. Almost all of these situations are from complete strangers and happen on our random excursions.

Ellen is engaged so whenever there's trouble, she just lets them know about her man, but I have no such safety net to fall back on. As soon as she mentions Daniel they seem to lay off, but then they find out I am not engaged or married and are suddenly quite attentive. This happened on the bus with a man and he was just being inappropriate and made me very uncomfortable. I was completely angry and just very upset about the whole situation, mostly because I felt like I was an item for men's perusal and there was nothing I could do about it. The first "Katie tears" fell in Guyana. I was pretty shaken up. Ellen tried to console me and then proceeded to lecture me on how to slap inappropriate men. Ellen decided that we needed to go to the Silver store and buy me a ring, and that I am to tell people that I am married. We're not quite sure if this is a lie, but, we figured I am married to Christ in a sense (or betrothed) and I do have a wedding coming up in August (Ellen's). Also, we decided we could carry around pictures of someone back home (even if it was our brothers or friends) and show people pictures so they would lay off. Hopefully this will take care of the men problem, and I have a very pretty ring on my left ring finger:)

Us.

2009-01-26T23:15:00.004-04:00

These pictures always upload backwards, but here goes.

This is me sitting on the steps inside our house in the morning, trying to get my mind all-together and remember everything I need to take with me that day- Ellen and I have to remind each other of what we have to do or else we forget something. So, I was talking through my checklist to Ellen, though she may not have been listening, its just the fact that I could say it out loud to someone that helps me

Mornings are not particularly my high point of the day, I am not a very chipper individual until a little later in the day. I'm getting much better though.

We found this picture rather humerous, and thought some of you may as well. We have been sleeping downstairs in our livingroom rather often lately, because of sleepovers, then because of bedbugs in our bed, and now because of lice. This was Saturday morning, and We had some girls from #57 spending the night, and they woke up before us, (big surprise, right?) and decided to grab Ellen's camera and take a picture. We are zonked much of the time, and sleep is such a beautiful thing!

This is us going to the market. We carry those bags with us to put all of our items in, and everyone here has those bags. They cost $200, and are very handy. The market is straight ahead, past those semis. There are fruit and vegetable stands straight ahead, and then if you go to the right at the fruit and vegetable stands, you enter the market. I would say the entire market is about the size of WalMart, but much more crammed with stuff.

Oh boy. This was a fun evening. One of the ladies we work with at the Centre wanted to give us some "cherries" (they don't taste like cherries I'm used to eating, bing, etc., they are more tart, and a little like an apple taste) from her tree at home, so we picked them up. The next day, we realized that they were already fermenting, so we decided to make juice out of them. We took the cherries, and smashed them into a collender, and had the very pulpy juice left in the bowl underneath. Then we proceeded to drink it. We felt silly for smashing up cherries, but that was the best way to use them before they were wine, so we did!

This is a crazy picture, but I wanted Ellen to take it. There are NO hills in Guyana. It is completely flat. This "hill" of sand looked like something my brothers would love to play on, so I jumped on top of it. Too bad none of them were there to play King of the Hill with me.

Ellen, Christina, Cynthia, and I were on a walk, going to meet the bus to go to #57, and we had made dinner for Beerbal and Faniza, so we were carrying the food to take to them. We got many strange looks, as people here typically don't carry around pots and bowls full of food. I am coming to see that we are strange in many ways:)

Faces with the Names

2009-01-26T20:08:00.005-04:00

This is us leaving Salomi's birthday party, and the guy in the front is Troy. Troy is one of our escorts, and one of the guys in the church training to be a pastor.

This is Ellen and our friend from the Corriverton church, Ashmond. She is deaf, and mostly mute. She only makes noises. It is surprising how well we can communicate with her, through body language and writing things down. She has taken a special liking to Ellen.

This is Ellen yesterday with Sister Shirley. They were at a Hindu wedding, which Ellen says is just strange.

These are some of the girls from #57 that we spend time with. From left to right, Ellen, Cynthia, me, and Christina. They are really sweet girls, and we have enjoyed getting to know them.

This is Brother Terry, who is the pastor of Roadside Baptist Church, and Hemdath, one of the guys in the church who is training to be a pastor, and also one of our escorts. They are the electrical teachers at the Centre as well.

We will continue to take pictures of the people here so you can see what they look like!
I hope you enjoy.

Transportation

2009-01-26T19:43:00.005-04:00

Aside from the Hunters....we take buses and tapirs.

This picture was taken while riding to #57 from Roadside Sunday morning. Hemdath is wearing the yellow shirt, and Raymond is in the black shirt, smiling, (Moti's son who is in college at Georgetown), and the rest of the people are church members.

Ellen and my first experience on a bus....(we thought we were going to die...death grip on seat in front of us, holding onto one another)

This is the view in front of us on the death grip bus.

This is a Tapir. We expected them to be much more primitive, (we were told they were pretty much pickup trucks with a railing to hold onto) but they're actually fairly nice. There are 2 benches that go along either side of the back two windows, and a pole that goes along the top in the middle to hold onto.

Some more Tapirs.

Helping Hands

2009-01-26T18:41:00.005-04:00

This is Beerbal and Faniza, and Salomi and Angeli.

This picture was taken at Salomi's birthday party back in December, around Christmas time.

This was also at Salomi's 2nd birthday party. Kirshan is the Beerbal's son, and is 6 years old.

Last Monday, Ellen and I spent the day at Beerbal and Faniza's house helping out by taking care of their 6 children because she was in bad condition, and needed to be taken to the hospital by Mr. Hunter. Here are some pictures that we took while we went through our day:
AAAGHHHH! It put this at the bottom of my post. Grr... (moved by the mystery editor)

Me trying to cook in their kitchen, which is exactly what you see, while watching little girls. I was making soup on a gas stove thing, that was definitely interesting. I have never seen one of those things before. I had to have the oldest girl, Shaneeza, how to light the burners and show me how to work them...:)

These are all of the kids in the process of killing these bees that were in their bedroom. They are called malibunters, and Ellen headed up the killing bees process while I cooked. they are pumped because they have some bees in the bucket. I would hear random screaming, and Ellen yelling, and I would be like, "What is going on?" Then I would hear Ellen urgently yell "Where's the scissors??" or "Get the bucket!!!" "They're flying, DUCK! AAAAAAHHHHH!!" "There's one, there's another. GET THE SPOON!" She was running around smashing them with a metal spoon to paralyze them, and the kids followed with the scissors to slice them in half. She also had soapy water in the blue bucket which was placed over their hives. Salomi was the only one stung. Figures. It was a dead one too. In the meantime, I was yelling "You kids get in here, don't go in there, I don't want anyone getting hurt because I don't have a car, and there's no hospital to take you to!" Nobody seemed to be listening. Then I would be like, "You guys better not hurt yourseves!" Wow. That was an event.

Ellen washing clothes....

Ellen smiling at me while washing clothes.....

The dishwashing sink area.

Shaneeza (8), and Salomi (2)

Me and the girls.
Angeli (4), Sanika (3), me, Salomi (2), and Shaneeza (8)

Bedbugs and Lice

2009-01-26T12:08:00.004-04:00

I just scratched my head. I looked under my fingernail and something squirmed. Yay. I had plans for my day, but now it looks like lice removal time. Praise the Lord! There must be something good to come from this. I prayed for my pride to be abased. God has some interesting ways of answering.

Katie and Mrs. Hunter have had trouble with bed bugs. Life here is interesting.

Guess you could pray for my lice too (and that Katie doesn't have it...we haven't thoroughly checked her yet).

Thanks!

Neil, she tried!

2009-01-26T10:51:00.006-04:00

This post is a response to Seth (I think) wanting to hear the cebu story from someone other than Katie.

Saturday afternoon Katie, Dian, Christina, Priscilla, and I took off down the main road for a nice walk, pretty much for exercise and enjoyment of each others' company as we waited for brother Moti to pick us up in the bus and take us to the #57 youth mission meeting. We met a cebu.

Katie has had somewhat of an obsession with cebus since our arrival, which I share to a much lesser degree. This obsession has a few roots. She and I both first really became acquainted with cebus through Silly Songs with Larry on Veggie Tales, the part of the story where Larry came out and sang a silly song about cebus.

While researching Guyana I came across the animals in Guyana and the website I was reading on spoke of cebus wandering the streets of Corriverton. I relayed this delightful news to Katie who in turn told all of her little brothers that she would get to meet cebus when she went to Guyana (even though none of them appear to be sick, sad, or mute). Neil (Katie's 6 year old brother) responded with excitement and wanted Katie to get a picture with one, even riding one if she could. Note: even riding one. If you click on an older post you will find a picture of Katie with a cebu a few weeks ago.

Well...Saturday came and there we were strolling along. Even strolling isn't exactly proper terminology. People here don't really walk, or even hardly stroll. They like to mosey, saunter, poke along. Our normal pace is their power walk. So, I was moseying with Christina and Dian who just couldn't keep pace with Katie and Priscilla who were at a moderate stroll.

They were about 100 feet ahead of us and Katie spotted a cebu in the ditch, munching on grass. It was a large tan she cebu, had the nice curved horns, and looked quite friendly. Katie decided maybe this was the one she was meant to perch on for a photo. As she approached and started to reach out for the cebu, she (the cebu) turned, looked at Katie and decided to let her know what was up. She wasn't in the mood to be messed with by a white girl.

Next thing we saw and heard was Katie waving her arms and running into the road, then realizing that she could be schmucked by a tapir driving by and reverted to running toward us as she was hollering and calling out something like "oh dear! my goodness...ahhhh". She ran and hid behind me, while all the other girls cowered as well.

It's just a cow was my thought, ignore it and keep walking past it, it'll leave us alone. I walked bravely on ahead, ignoring it...until I got up next to it and it decided it was my turn. It didn't approach me with the same tenacity though, and I just had to kind of shuffle around her as she realized I wasn't seeking to ride her, much less touch her. The other girls had had it. They saw Katie flipping out, me sidestepping her, and they made a bee line for the other side of the road.

The funniest part about the whole experience was probably the audience. Katie had a tapir slow down for her, a bicyclist commented as he pedalled by and every neighbour and their brother seemed to be outside just lounging and observing whatever there was to observe. We all had a pretty good laugh and I'm quite certain Katie learned that riding a cebu will be no easy feat. It probably will not be one she attempts again either.

And that's the end of the cebu story.

When you pray for us...

2009-01-26T09:19:00.004-04:00

The computer has been fixed! I am really excited about this little detail that makes a big impact on everyone in our house.

Everything here has been going. Not always really well, but going nonetheless. I'm really enjoying the experience. There are many ups and downs, but the Lord has been good throughout. Sometimes I find myself wondering what even caused me to want to come here, I reflect on my purpose here and what I'm to do next and it just overwhelms me. More and more I find myself needing to look to and cast all my cares on my wonderful Saviour. I am so thankful He cares for us!

Tomorrow marks six weeks for us. It seems like it's been forever in some ways, but then it feels so transient at other times. It is difficult to deal with the different religions (namely Hinduism and Islam). Katie and I have both had conversations with quite a few people in these religions and the self-righteousness is so hard to get past. If they can't see their sin, there is no need as far as they can see for a Saviour. I guess that isn't the most accurate way to phrase it though. Most of them definitely do see their sin, but they rely on their own righteousness to get them to heaven and to justify them before the Perfect Judge. I wish I were better with words, with the Word. I want to show them so much of all the love that Christ has, the beauty that is found in Him alone, the awesome intimacy and love and joy and peace felt from a personal relationship with Him.

We need so much prayer. Prayer for God to open people's eyes and hearts to the Gospel. Prayer for strength and boldness and joy to present the Gospel. Prayer for communicating and dealing even with the professing Christians. Prayer for boldness to speak out against sin, especially that which is blatantly wrong. We need understanding and effective communication with the people here. I sometimes try to stretch myself and become all things to all men, but sometimes it just doesn't work. I can only be one place at one time and I wish I could just divide myself between so many things and people.

We also need prayer for endurance! I sometimes do just wish I could crawl in a hole and hide from situations or responsibilities. I don't like that feeling and know it's just my own selfishness that makes me feel that way. I'm being stretched and put in positions that are outside of my comfort zone and it's really good for me. Sometimes being moldable and praying that God will shape you as He sees fit is painful. It's a really good pain though. Pray that we would decrease and that He would increase in every aspect of our lives.

Living in Guyana has given me a better sense of how my life needs to be. I have been more focused since being here on trying to tell more people about Christ. I love that, but it has made me realize that my life needs to be this way all the time. I need to show His love through my life regardless of my living situation and location. I have found it pretty easy to get into spiritual conversations here, partly because people seem more open, but mostly because I have sought it. I want this in my life when I return also, it's who I am, I want to live it more.

Computer Problems

2009-01-24T17:22:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, in this age of computers and easy communication we forget how dependent we are on computer chips and electricity and satelites and fiber optics and other things I don't even comprehend. We take for granted that what we want to know we should be able to find out RIGHT NOW. And that is just how I felt when I hadn't heard from Ellen and Katie for a week. I have a whole new appreciation for the early missionaries and their families whose letters took months to get to their destination.

Ellen was able to send me a very short email explaining the situation and I am posting an exerpt here for all of you who are interested in and praying for the girls.

I wish I could write you more often. I wish I could blog. I wish our computer hadn't crashed!! Last Thursday night ( ed. note--Jan. 15) it just freaked out and decided to stop working. I'm on a computer at the centre right now and actually need to get off soon, time here at the Centre is really, really limited and the computers are old and slow. I just wanted to let you know about the breakdown in communication. Maybe you could let others know too? Our computer is going to Georgetown tomorrow, maybe it will be fixable. If not, I'm not sure what's going to happen. I could talk on the phone, but it's so expensive. Just know everything here is going so well. Just continue to pray, we need prayer! So many things here are spur of the moment, requiring quick thinking and good reactions from us. We have had a few people ask us how to be saved, it's cool. Time to go help Christina with homework....it's tough math, you could pray that way too :D

I love you!

Ellen

Teaching Moments

2009-01-16T11:23:00.002-04:00

I have to share what I'm experiencing as a teacher, so I can let you in on my feelings.

After teaching a "counseling" class to the Remedial students (Math, English, Social Studies, etc.) on wisdom, and taking counsel from God's word (1 Peter 1-6), I asked my students to write a question to me in their book about anything. It could be a question about a problem they are having at home, about me and my life, about something from the bible they don't understand, etc. I collected their books, and wrote answers to them in their books.
Here are some of questions:

Do you love Guyana?

What is it like in a USA?

Why did you come to Guyana?

Did you like it in Guyana or the place that you came from.

and my favorites...

I want to know if God make people sleep at night or you sleep by yourself.

Question?
Can u teach me what u no about Jesus Chrish our Lord?

Pleace

Thank you

(yes or no)

These are some of the moments that make my heart burst and praise God. I thought you would like to share some of my enjoyment and pleasure in teaching, and the opportunities God gives to share about himself with these children. Thank you for the prayers.

Tomayto or Tomahto?

2009-01-14T15:00:00.003-04:00

We were talking about the different ways Guyanese express things, as opposed to what we're used to. Christina, a girl from #57 says that another way to say...

"chill out" = "Humble yourself!"

"What's up?"= "What's da latest?"

"She has an hourglass figure" = "She have a shape like a coca-cola bottle"

"You're ticking me off" = "Don't disgust me" or "Don't fatigue me"

"What did he do?" = "What he did?"

So, there's some of the great sayings we get to hear out and about!

Purchasing meat

2009-01-12T20:33:00.003-04:00

So In Guyana, meat is purchased in much different a manner than what you're used to...let me explain: In the market, there is a meat section, with tables of meat like this, sitting out, flies buzzing all around. Though this vendor seems to be pretty sanitary.

This guy has some of his meat hanging up to display. This past Saturday, we saw 2 cow heads, freshly detached from their bodies, laying on one of the ends of the tables. It was rather disgusting.

This lady is selling fish and beef. They chop it up right there in front of you on that board in front of her. She's actually cutting up a fish right now.

This lady is selling all types of fish...yummy.

And to end on a more appetising note, here is a fruits and vegetables vendor. These are all in the market, a BIG building, probably as big as walmart, CRAMMED full of stuff.

There's a look at how we purchase meat here.

Tapiers and Buses

2009-01-12T20:08:00.002-04:00

So, I finally got to ride in a Tapier and Bus all in 2 days!

Saturday morning, we went over to Emily's house (a 26 year old lady in our church), and spent the day with her and her daughter, Shannon, who happens to be adorable, and I want to bring home with me! We went to the market, which is right by their house, and we looked at a lot of clothing shops. Then we bought some shrimp and some vegetables, and Emily cooked some concoction with shrimp and Okra, and we put it over rice, and then tomatoes and cucumbers. It was pretty good, but I got really sick after eating it, again. I seem to get sick all of the time here. Anyways, so around 2:00, Mrs. Hunter called me and asked if I had forgotten about something, and apparently there was a misunderstanding between Hemdath and myself, and he thought I was teaching him English, so he was at our house, around 3 miles away from Emily's. So he came to get me from Emily's so we could go back to our house and have an english lesson before the Pastor's class at 3:00. This, was my first experience on a Tapier.

So, we walk out to the road, and I say, "Are we supposed to just stand here, or is there a designated place to go for the Tapier to pick us up?", Hemdath smiles and says "yes" (He's a man of few words, unlike me) After about 2 minutes, a Tapier stops, because Hemdath put his hand out, kind of like waving at someone by your waist. I get in and whack my head on the top because there's about 3 feet of space between the floor and the ceiling, and then when you keep going, there's still only 3 feet, so you continue to scrunch your body while trying to sit down. Luckily, there were only 3 other people in the Tapier, because I've seen 10-12 people in Tapiers before. Anyway, so I finally sit down, and he gets in and sits down, and the driver jerks us as he speeds up rather, shall we say, rapidly. I go flying into Hemdath, because I didn't know you were supposed to hold onto anything, so Hemdath tells me to hold onto this bar thing that goes all the way across the top of the Tapier. So I did. Then I realize that all the windows are way low, about 1 1/2 feet off the floor, so I duck WAY down, so I can see out the window as we're flying down the road. Meanwhile, the guys on the Tapier are a little fascinated with the fact that I'm white, and are trying to talk to me. I'm overwhelmed with the whole experience, and don't understand what they're saying anyway, so I look at Hemdath. He proceeds to interpret, and I slowly have a conversation. They want to know if I like the Tapier, and Hemdath laughs as he tries to explain that question to me, (its obvious to him that I'm not too big of a fan) and I tell them they drive like crazy people. The guys bust out laughing. After a few minutes, we arrive at our road, and I try to get out, whacking my head again on the ceiling. Then we uneventfully walked to our house.

2nd experience:

The next day, Sunday, we went to Sister Shirley's house after church to teach some of the teenage girls singing. Afterwards, Hemdath always takes us home. Last week, someone offered us a ride, and they took us the whole way home (about 3o minutes) because they were going that way anyway. This time, we caught a bus. Ellen and I climbed in, and went to the very back row. The vehicle had around 8 people, which again, was a small amount of people. This was probably because this bus travels so far away, and the time of day we were traveling, was not a busy time. Ellen and I could not sit up completely straight because we hit our head on the top of the vehicle, so for the first 10 minutes we sat very slouched. The bus driver for some reason thought we needed to get to Skeldon very fast, so he drove so fast Ellen looked down, and I hid my face behind her, because I was seriously concerned that we were going to have an accident. They had to be going 100 mph, but they have kilometers, so I don't really know how fast it was. Hemdath laughed at us, but it was not funny. We stopped a few times to let people off, and zoomed off again- they drive like maniacs, and if there was something in the road, I'm not sure they would stop, they swerve. Thankfully, that was a safe trip, and they took us all the way our stop once more. They have a driver of the vehicle, and then they have another guy who sits in the back with the passengers, and collects money and directs. So the guy that was directing in the bus was staring at us, probably because of our skin once again, and trying to talk to us about going to the beach or something, but I couldn't quite understand him, so once again, Hemdath interpreted, but I didn't really feel like talking to this guy alot, because he was making gestures about women we were passing on the road. So there's my 2 experiences of public transportation.

Hope that wasn't boring, sorry no pictures yet!

The Important Buildings of Guyana

2009-01-08T14:27:00.003-04:00

I was just plain shocked at some of these. There are some extremely nice, beautiful private homes and buildings. I don't know exactly what to think about the apparent lack of concern.

This police station is directly across from our house/church. There is some humor in this to me. I feel like I should feel safe since we have this so close, but I've not seen it occupied yet (though I'm not outside much), and it appears to be very old and run down. I've heard the inside is much better, so that's a plus.

This is the post office in Skeldon, the town/village right next to us. The blue vehicle is what we drive most often. (I still find myself forgetting that the driver gets in on the right side. When I ride shotgun I find myself looking for a steering wheel to rest my arm on.) Anyway, back to the post office. The faded paint reads "SKELDON POST & TELEGRAPH OFFICE". Our p.o. box's location is just in front of our vehicle's front end. There's that window, then about 25 boxes. If you walk inside the door and turn, you can see who has mail for yourself. There's a padlocked cage around it, but you can still see all the mail. During the day, when the post office is open, the doors and gates are left wide open, making it nice and breezy. The flooring inside is wooden planks, some uneven. To send letters/packages/whatever, you approach the "window" (small slot opening below a fence/cage of sorts) and pass your item underneath. I think they just look at it to determine the price, probably feel the weight and thickness too. A thicker regular letter cost me $200 GD (is that correct for "Guyanese dollars"?) and a thinner regular letter cost me $80 GD. When I handed the woman my three letters, she looked at them and handed them back with correct postage in the lick and stick kind of stamps. I haven't used one of those in a really long time. It was cool. I kind of like this building, it's fun for me to just observe the differences.

This just made me realize how practical a hospital really is. I think my favourite part of this picture is the sign "stray animals will be impounded". I'm guessing that means shot.

This is right next to hospital, actually it's an extension of it. The building you see in the picture above is the building on the right in this picture. If you look closely, you might be able to read the signage on the light blue building. It's the x-ray department.

This last picture is just to give you a little taste of the Centre and Roadside, the other church. On the right side of this picture you can see the sanctuary of the church, upstairs. Look closely on that wall under the window, those are the times of services, etc. The pastor of this church right now is Terry, with help from Mr. Hunter. Preaching here rotates between those two and brother Moti.

Below the sanctuary is (as far as I've seen) a double for classes for the Centre, and a nursery of sorts for the church. The children's area in the basement is very nice and looks like it would be fun if I was a child. The kitchen and cooking area is below the sanctuary as well, around the building to the right. I'll have to post pictures of them cooking a large meal on their open fires. It's really cool. They do have two gas stoves, but when cooking in mass amounts, the cook is handy with a huge kettle/bowl thing and regulates the fire herself. It's impressive.

The large tent thing you see covers a large open area where the children all stand at attention during the "morning exercises" (during this time they have a devotion, sing the anthem, and recite something...maybe a pledge?). This large area is also used for a couple of other things: OVC (Orphaned and Vulnerable Children) which runs from 3-5 four days a week and youth group every Friday with Troy where we usually play basketball and other games after hearing a short lesson.

I want to say some things about the OVC group. I've had some time with the kids already. The first day (Monday) I was with them didn't go so smoothly. I just didn't understand them and some didn't seem to really care whether I was there or not. I need more compassion for them. They do a class time and sometimes have crafts, songs, or games. Next week I'll be doing some food art with the kids. I'm looking forward to it, but they are a tough group. Think of the name of the group, and you may understand why. Katie and I played games with them on Tuesday and we really enjoyed the time. The older ones really enjoy hangman, but don't really get too in to expressing themselves with songs or anything else that draws too much attention. They are always fed a meal when they come, it's part of the program. I really wish I could be more involved in some of their lives and really help. I do realize there is only so much that can be done though, I am only here for five months (closer to four now) and some ideas are just unrealistic and impractical.

Back to the picture. The two windows on the building, under the tent, are from the office part of the Centre. The window on the left is Miss Indru's office. The library, computer room, and one classroom are on this level. Upstairs to the right is a large classroom with dividers, creating four separate classrooms. That's where I've spent some time this week with one of the remedial groups of kids. They're really cool and really want to learn. I love helping out there. I'm singing with them sometime next week. Okay, I need to move on. There's so much I could say about the building. Oh, I do want to mention though, on the bottom level there is also an electrical classroom and sewing classroom. All the sewing machines are pedal machines. It's cool to watch them work.

I need to go put something together for us for dinner now. I hope all of this is helpful and you experience a little more of our lives through it.

The Hunters' Perspective

2009-01-07T01:49:00.002-04:00

Sometimes a third person's point of view helps you get a better overall picture of a situation so I thought you'd enjoy reading some of the Hunters' perspectives of having Ellen and Katie with them.

We here in Guyana had a joint service between the three major groups New Year's eve: #57 Baptist Mission, Roadside Baptist Church and the Corriverton Baptist Church hosted by Corriverton Baptist. The evening was one of our high points in our time here. The service was well attended. We sang and had 3 specials through the evening. Two from Ellen White and Katie Matthews from Rhinelander, Wisconsin. I spoke from Acts 1:9-11 on the duty of Christians to be witnesses until Jesus returns. Some seemed greatly moved by the message of God's Word. We also had some speak of what they wanted the Lord to do in the New Year as well as some special prayer requests, all of which we then carried to the Lord in prayer. After that we all went downstairs for a typically American meal of spaghetti, home-made dinner rolls, cookies and watermelon. Katie and Ellen worked all day with the help from friends to prepare it. Most really enjoyed the meal. We played games until the New Year and then we took many of the folks home which gave us more opportunities to speak of Christ's power to forgive and give strength to live for His glory. I could hardly ask for a better New Year's Eve. Katie and Ellen are proving to be a real hit with the people and a great help to Kathy and I. Everyone loves them although they make quite a stir in the market; two very tall, very white girls.
........
Kathy says the girls have taken Guyana by storm and are ambitious and enthusiastic in their desire to serve the Lord any way possible while they are here. They have a real heart for seeing souls saved and being as busy as they can be.

If you have an additional interest in the work of the Katryans and Hunters and would like to receive their full newsletters please post a comment and we will let you know how we can get that to you.

Cindy White

2009-01-02T19:22:00.004-04:00

This was Christmas Day spent with the Singhs. We had a very good time talking with them and ate some really good food. We also had opportunities to talk with them about spiritual things, and a relationship with Christ, which was good. NEIL- this is me with a cebu! I'm sorry, I didn't get on him, hopefully before I leave Guyana, I will get on a cebu and Ellen can take a picture, but this one didn't seem tame enough, and we had just gotten home from church, so I was dressed too nice. This was a mama, and she had 3 babies with her.

This is Ravini- she's the girl that I teach piano to. She's also Moti's daughter. I so enjoy her.

This is a panoramic picture of the church in Corriverton, also our home. The truck is the church's, and we take that thing and pile people in for special events or church. They can fit SO MANY people into vehicles here, its crazy! We live in the right side of this building, so the white part. There are gates around everyone's homes here, and they lock everything because of the dangers of theft.

This is Diane! She's our housekeeper, and also a member of the church. She is such a sweet, genuine lady, and I love her! The coconut she is chopping came from her tree, and she had her husband get it down for me because I was fascinated by them. Drinking coconut "water" as they call it, is not what I had expected, but I do like it.

Today we went to town. Actually, in Guyana, there is one big long road that makes up the country. Everything revolves around this road. So, all the stores and gas stations, etc, are on this road. So we drove to the bank, and stopped at a couple stores, got our keyboard repaired, and ate lunch at Yang's. I was struck once again, by the animals that are everywhere here. There are dogs running around everywhere I look, and if I stick my hand out the window, I can nearly touch a cow or a cebu sometimes. One time we were coming home from a youth meeting at night, and there was a herd of 5 cows in the middle of the road, 3 of them were sitting down. So, we put on our flashers, and went into the other lane to get around them. This is a normal occurrence here. By the way, the dogs here are pretty ugly, not like the ones back home. And they are not celebrated- you will never see a dog in someone's house here. Yes!

I spent around 3 hours practicing piano today in the church (the church is connected to our house), we got our keyboard fixed, so I can now play without the entire keyboard freaking out and making loud buzzing noises and then shutting off. While I was playing, our housekeeper, Diane, came in and started singing with me- she LOVES music, and loves to sing hymns.

Earlier today, I asked Diane what Guyanese think of a woman marrying a man that is shorter than herself. She screwed up her face and said NO! O BOY, NO! She said here in Guyana, if a woman marries a man shorter than herself, they say "she could eat soup on his head." So I gathered, that that's weird here.

I spent time getting Hemdath's lesson ready today, and reading the bible, we never know when we're going to be asked to speak, and I want to have some study done and ready to go in case. Please pray that I would have wisdom as they want me to teach Access to the faculty at Roadside Skills Training Center. I feel very incapable, I've hardly touched Access since graduation in May, and I need God to help me! Also we had an awesome chance to talk with 2 women from the Corriverton church on New Year's Eve while taking them home, and I am so excited. Their names are Emily and Meena, and they were expressing how difficult it is for them to feel like they can express their sin, and that they feel so unworthy, and like God can't really forgive them. Emily is especially burdened about her soul, and as Pastor John preached on the 2nd coming of Christ that night, she was telling us that she's not really sure where she will go, and that scares her. There is much confusion in the minds of people here, and I think they have a very legalistic view of Christianity- if I go to church, abstain from sex, wear the right clothes, and don't drink alcohol, I will go to heaven. They think that once you are a christian, you live perfectly, and so they feel they will never be a christian because they mess up all the time. Pray that we will continue to have opportunities to share Christ with these women especially and that God will continue to stir their hearts.

So there's another day's experiences in Guyana.

Posting in Pictures

2009-01-01T13:59:00.004-04:00

So, I wanted the pictures in a different order (the bottom one on top, so on) but...they take forever to download and I don't know how to re-order them. Anyway, if you want the chronological effect, start at the bottom of this post!

(Moderator's note: The girls have let me have access to this blog to help out when they are crunched for computer time. Therefore, I'm putting these in reverse order for Ellen. Cindy aka Keithslady.)

This is one of the first pictures I took in Guyana. I didn't have the presence of mind to pull out my camera upon arrival, so this is the first picture I have of Guyana. This is taken in Nigel's, one of the largest supermarkets in Georgetown (it was still small to me). I just had to capture the hilarity of a "Special" to my foreign eyes. ONLY $2,395. The exchange rate took a little while to get used to, but I've got it down pat now. It's good for my rusty math skills :)

Georgetown was nothing like I expected it to be. Even getting off of the airplane was an experience. Actually, back that up, the entire journey down was an experience. It was quite interesting to go from Rhinelander (all typical Americans on board) to Minneapolis (once again, typical Americans) to Ft. Lauderdale. Ft. Lauderdale was interesting. We had to get our tickets since we had an airline change. Finding that was interesting, we were misdirected a couple of times, but finally found "Caribbean Airlines". We were the only white people to be found in that line. That was strange. Then we got on our flight later on, once again, two of the very few caucasions. Disembarking was cool. There were coconut trees, the sound of steel drum bands, and a big "Merry Christmas" sign over the tunnel that led into the airport. We had no trouble getting through customs, or getting our passports stamped. God was very good to us with all of that. Georgetown=biggest city. In my mind that meant it must be the best city to represent Guyana. The place was crazy. We walked through the streets in part of the city, ate breakfast, tried to find a bathroom. We finally found the public restroom after being led on a wild goose chase by a man who said he'd guide us there for a small fee. The public restroom was astonishing. After paying your $20, you could go inside the cardboard-floored building with vile odors, then use their toilet. I didn't get to fully experience it. I glanced inside and decided I could wait.

This is taken from the ferry as we left Region 5. Everyone refers to the ferry as "The Stelling" (see the sign). We got off the ferry at New Amsterdam, about an hour and 45 minute drive from Corriverton. The ferry has just lost most of its business though as the bridge that was being built across this river has finally opened up. Note the water. I wasn't tempted to dive in, despite the heat.

This shows the church and the house in one shot. The stairs lead to the main sanctuary. We have services below though, in the room directly below because one of the women in the church has heart complications and shouldn't use the steps. The window you see on the white part of the building, the right hand side of the picture, is the room I'm sitting in as I type :~) That's the house. The bedrooms are both upstairs, as is the computer room, study, and both bathrooms. Downstairs has a living room (which is rarely used), entryway, dining room, and kitchen. It's fairly small, but really we don't need any more space than we have. Plus..."love grows best in little houses, few walls to separate". You can hear just about everything everyone says no matter where they are. Okay, so that's a bit of a stretch. The windows all are open all the time, with screening and bars, and you can easily hear conversations taking place in the kitchen from the bedroom. Another strange thing about Guyana: all of the windows on everybody's houses are barred. All of them. I don't think I've seen one unbarred yet.

This is our beautiful bed. The room is pretty small, but we definitely manage. It was kind of different for me to walk into a room, bed made, no comforter. We wouldn't end up using it anyway.

This is the view from our bed, everytime we lie down at night. This is Guyana's version of air conditioning, actually, we have it pretty good. We enjoy having some air movement, especially on the 85 degree nights. I must say the mint green walls were a bit disconcerting at the beginning.

Anyway, that's just a snapshot of that day for you. I need to go. It's pretty late here and I want to be up at a decent time tomorrow. I will post more pictures (hopefully in the right order), but, like I said, they take a while to download and I can only seem to do five at a time.

New Year's or Old Year's Eve

2008-12-30T17:49:00.003-04:00

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

2008-12-25T11:38:00.007-04:00

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

2008-12-23T22:26:00.011-04:00

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!