Feeling better

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..

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

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

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

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

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.

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:)