Another world

It's been weird to think we just had Thanksgiving and we are in 80 degrees! They do hang lots of Christmas lights here so hopefully that will help to remind me of the season.
We got impatient with our internet situation. We have one church phone that has a 2G internet plan. We looked on it for other internet sources and went knocking on doors. We found the one that looked like the strongest connection and asked them if we could pay them to use their internet. They agreed and we now have access to WiFi in our apartment!  Yay!  I know the Prophet encourages us to disconnect but the internet is my only source to my children right now so it's been upsetting to me not to have that.
We took another walk around this little town last night. The people and children are most friendly! We are hoping to make ourselves familiar so perhaps we may start some conversations about the gospel.

Here are some lovely pictures of flowers. 

What a Week!

Tomorrow marks a week for us here in Guyana. To be totally honest...it feels more like a month. With intermittent non potable water, sand everywhere like we're living on the beach, very limited internet use, trying to learn where and how to buy food and prepare it. Seeing how much work needs to be done here as far as the Church goes....it's a bit overwhelming. The people and the missionaries are the best of it all though. I am very happy and feel joy in the work, it is just such extreme major adjustments to our living. 
  As I was praying this morning I asked Heavenly Father to help me not to be grumpy with all of these adjustments. Then my reading took me to Alma 26 where Ammon is talking about all that has gone on with their mission to the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's, I could totally relate in a way I never could have with out these experiences. I have just put in the phrases that spoke to me.   
The  Lord comforted me, and said: "Go amongst thy brethren,  and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success."
We have come, and been forth amongst them; and we have been (are trying to be) patient in our sufferings, and we have suffered every(not every, but a lot of) privation;  And we have entered into their houses and taught them, and we have taught them in their streets; yea, and we have taught them upon their hills;(we live on a hill) Yea, blessed is the name of my God, who has been mindful of this people,  I say, blessed be the name of my God, who has been mindful of us, wanderers in a strange land. Now my brethren, we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever. Amen.
I thought that was very significant to read about thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Day! 
Yesterday, we got to take a sister missionary from our branch to the airport here in Guyana, two hours away. We took Shaq and the missionary's mom with us to help with directions. All went well and we headed home. As we were coming down the road we were motioned over by a policeman. We were coming towards them and they said they pointed the speed gun at us and we were speeding. Shaq said "no, this is not right! They are corrupt and just wanting to get money" They wrote Dave out a ticket. He told me later that wearing this Name tag over our hearts caused him to behave differently than he would have. He would have argued and defended himself but he just took it and said he would pay it. We continued home and Shag said "we need to take care of this" So he took us to another member's store who is very influential in the community. As we talked with her she told us that this particular police officer is very power hungry and that she has had dealings with her. The Sister member called the police chief and he came to the store and just took the ticket away and so we didn't have to worry about it anymore. It was quite a disturbing event and it's unnerving to think that we could be stopped and fined at anytime. We were so grateful that Shag has been our guardian angel. 
Today we went to George Town to have Thanksgiving dinner with the other senior couples and Elders in this large area...it's a two hour drive from our place. It was a yummy dinner and fun to see some more Armies of Helaman!.   

Two missionaries headed for Barbados from Guyana.
The brother in the purple is Shaq.

This is Dave with the police

Interesting way to transport fish. Look how huge they are! 

Lots and lots of houses have these piles of white sand in their front yards. They use it to build put on their homes. They call Linden the sand box because of how much sand is everywhere and gets everywhere. 

This is a floating bridge we had to take across the river to get to La Grange where our Thanksgiving dinner was held.

This is the church building in La Grange. Very lovely!

The senior couples here in George Town. 

Elder O'Dair, Elder Bohne, Elder Weeks, 

Sister O'Dair, Sister Bohne, Sister Weeks

Elders playing on the church grounds. 

Everyone shared what they were grateful for before we ate. 

Elder Weeks taking our missionaries out to the bank. The one in the front Elder Bramdeo and Elder Dapat.  Love these guys!

Guyana life

We are getting educated quite quickly here...at least I hope we are learning quickly. Yesterday evening the branch had a gathering for a family that was moving, the Sookams. The older sister Serena has been serving as the young women's president, she is 18 years old. It was her two sisters that were baptized on Saturday. They called it a Thanksgiving dinner. It was supposed to start at 5 pm so many people were here then. By 7 pm the guest of honor, Serena still wasn't there and she was bringing all the food! We did bring a cake to contribute. While we were waiting some of the younger young women were chatting with me and they said they wish they had light skin like me. I said "oh no, your dark skin is so beautiful!" they said that all colors of clothing looks better on light skin. Interesting perspective. The little ones fought over sitting by me and snuggled into me as we listened to the program after Serena finally got there close to 7:30. That's the Guyanese way we are told.

Monday we taught our first early morning seminary class and we had one student, Shaneeza, show up. She is sooo darling, I can't even express it. It was a great discussion. We did some shopping after class then went back to our apartment, which is a piece of cake now! The water only comes on from 6 to 8 am then from 2 to 4 pm and then again from 6 to 8 pm. I decided I would do some laundry while the water was on and I was home. I got it all hung up and brought most of it inside after an hour or so outside. I left most of the kitchen towels outside to dry for the evening. Wouldn't you guess that it rained like cats and dogs most of the night! Pretty funny!

 All the fresh produce is sold in little shacks along the road.We bought a huge sweet potato at the market and boiled it up. I cooked up some rice without a rice cooker to have for later....Dave made his veggie chili. and we had a delicious dinner. We only have one tank of gas for the stove and the oven so I have to be efficient with my cooking with it.

So did you get all that?  Water off and on. Cooking with limited gas supply. Hanging laundry out to dry. No fast convenient, pre-made anything, although they do have canned beans. Hallelujah!  I'm hoping to find a crock pot so I can cook with that more often and not use up the gas.

Yesterday afternoon, we took a walk around our neighborhood. It really is like living in a rain forest. The people are very friendly and ask us about our badges. They always ask if we like it here in Guyana. They love their country and are very proud to live here.

Today, Tuesday we had our first district meeting with the Elders. We Skyped with the Elders in Suriname. It was awe inspiring to sit in a room and have these young 19/20 year olds preside, teach and challenge each other with out any other supervising adult there. We were just the newbies and invited to participate. Truly, We have an army of Helaman with every missionary district in the world.  So proud of these valiant followers of Christ!

After the meeting we met up with a newly baptized member Shaq. He directed us so we could go and visit some members, two who are supposed to be teaching seminary and others who were baptized but don't come to church anymore. These people are so beautiful in their features. We drove over roads that would never be considered roads in the mountains let alone in the towns. It was great to get to meet these members and tell them we miss them and invite them to come to church again. Most of them say "yes" they will come so we shall see and be very joyful when they do! They are a happy people living in what we would consider extreme poverty. No inside plumbing and some structures that look like they would blow over with a gentle gust of wind. It would be life changing for everyone in middle class America to witness how these lovely people live.

 The girl on the left is our one seminary student Shaneeza. Isn't she adorable? The other gal is darling too! The brother in the middle is Shaquelle, our guide to visit the members.

 Dave's yummy chili! 

 Yes, we brought a Bosch so Dave could make his bread! Dave is so glad his mom taught him how to cook when he was young!

 This is a sign along the rode where we walked.

 This is an example of the denseness of the area

 Two little boys sitting all by themselves...

 There are many goats and cows that wander everywhere.

 This is our street. These houses seem much larger and better constructed although there is no inside plumbing for them. We actually have two bathrooms and our neighbors have an out house and a little shack for showering. We are the third house on the right but in the back upper half.

 This is my first batch of laundry hanging out to dry.

 This is a bread fruit just out side of our deck. We are waiting for it to ripen.

 This is our shower. We turn the switch on the right on when we want a little warm water....never hot but it's acceptable.  Only senior couples get this perk.

  It's hard to see but there are all different kinds of dwellings. 

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.