Jumping in!

Holy Cow!  Where am I and what am I doing? Weds. we flew to Trinidad and spent the night with the Williams. Very nice people. We then flew into Guyana on Thursday starting at 4:30 am. We drove on the other side of the rode for 2 hours dodging humans, motorcycles etc. We were taken to our apartment which is right in the heart of a local area, so we are living just like the locals. We do have a washer but no dryer so we will be hanging our clothes out to dry. We went to the market and bought some food to take "home" with us. We bought a pineapple from a stand and it's the sweetest thing I've ever tasted. It's been a challenge to get our phone to work and we are still waiting for internet. 

The day after we got here in Guyana, Saturday, we were invited by the missionaries to come to a baptism of three young girls, two converts and one eight year old. What a treat! The missionary next to Dave is so darling and so bright! I loved him right from the start. He will be leaving to serve a mission to Africa in Dec. he has been waiting for his visa. The girl next to me and to my right were baptized. This is of course the church where we meet. There really is so much to write but I don't have the time to do it right now.

We live just next door to here. Our apartment is on the second floor which is good to keep all the bugs away. Our neighbors chickens are a very good alarm at 5:30 am. We haven't got our clothes line out yet but we will be drying our clothes outside as well...

This other neighbor is doing her wash so I'm guessing she doesn't have a washer like we do. Aren't those leaves huge?

This is the water system that is church wide through out the world for countries with out clean water. At church today as they were passing out the sacrament water I became alarmed for a minute wondering where this water came from, will this water make me sick? The church building doesn't have a working filtering system. As this thought went through my mind another thought overpowered that one. This water is pure, this water will never make you sick. This water only heals. It was such a tender message from Heavenly Father that I found myself weeping and feeling so much love from Him.

The town where we live is not on the coast but two hours inland of Guyana and by a river. It really is so pretty! This is a member's yard where we had the service before the baptism.

This is the river where the three young girls were baptized.

This is the group. We met with some really sweet ladies and the branch President.

After the baptism, we were involved in a branch activity which was carnival games. 
The children are beautiful but very unruly. There are not many parents involved with their children here, or I guess to be fair, I don't see families together but children sitting by themselves. The little girl fifth over from the left dressed in white is named Tiffany. She had no family there. Today at church she came by herself having to pay a taxi cab to get to church. She sat down by me and opened a package of cookies and offered me one. What a sweetheart! She asked Dave to confirm her. She and I are pretty "tight" already. 

Since we don't have internet at our apartment we stayed at the church after the carnival. The branch Pres. asked us to teach early morning seminary 6:30 to 7:30 starting Monday and also be over the YSA which there are 159! 
It gets dark here at 6pm and we had never driven"home" yet so we headed there. This town is divided by that river so we have to cross a toll bridge every time. We were able to get back to our area but then we got totally lost. We didn't have google maps but were given a printed map with no street names, plus we didn't even know the address or street name where we lived. We had only been driven there twice by the other senior couple before they left us the car and went back to their place two hours away. When we were moving in a local man stopped by and asked us if he could wash our car.  As we were lost and driving around these very dark narrow dangerous streets that there is hardly room for one car let alone two and very deep ditches on either side, plus Dave was just learning how to drive on the other side of the rode...it was quite a tense situation. We came up to a place and the wash man came into view in the light. I'm still amazed I recognized him...although, he had to recognize us...the only white people living among them aimlessly driving around the streets...anyway, we stopped and I told him we were didn't know where we lived and he jumped in our car and took us to our home. We were a couple of streets over too far. Praise the Lord!

 This is an experience I can't even begin to explain all of it to you. We feel like royalty with this people. They love us with out even knowing us. They are very easy to love! We found out we were speaking in church after the rest hymn!
I decided to go to primary today and ended up teaching the music and the lesson! Really crazy town. No order or organization. The nursery children are just added to the primary. The Primary Pres. just doesn't come and the counselor left because she wasn't feeling well. I find the people hard to understand and I have to asked several times to speak slowly so I can understand them.  I hope my ears get adjusted soon because I hate not being able to understand what they say.