More Guyana Life

This week has kind of been a blur...sort of. We taught Seminary Monday, Thursday and Friday but on Wednesday we went to pick up a returned missionary from the airport. She was coming from Australia. She is a darling and is the sister of our first seminary student Shaneeza. Her name is Sally. Her mission President was Peter Vidmar, you know the Olympic gold medal champion! Pretty cool! Unfortunately, her luggage did not come with her so we hoped it would be found and we could drive out to the airport another day and pick it up. Fortunately, the airport is not as bad a drive as Georgetown is.
Friday I spent most of the day with my angel friend Molly. She is such a great example of having Peace in Christ. I love to be around her and hear about her life and see how she became the way she is. I want to be like her so much! We gathered about 2 dozen eggs from her chickens, I picked up "curio" it's a plant I will explain with pictures. I also picked up passion fruit for her as well. When I say "picked up" it's cause you have to wait for these fruits to fall from the trees to use them. Then we made passion, papaya fruit juice. Heavenly yummy! I also helped her to de-bean some bora beans which means remove the beans like you remove peas from the pods. She had prepared some curried chicken with roti for lunch and then we went on some visits. We walked everywhere which was pleasant. We went to seven different homes and had a sweet prayer in every one. We always ask if there is something special we can pray for for them. It's very sweet and we can feel Heavenly Father sending His love to them. We always invite them to come to church which I sure hope they do.
Saturday we had a day long Seminary training in Georgetown. We picked up Rona, one of the other seminary teachers and Sally, because her luggage was found and needed to be picked up and she may help out with Seminary so she agreed to join us at the training. We met our other teacher, Tera at the church. We had to leave at 6:30 am to get to the airport and then the training by 10 am.
I'm not going to write about the crazy maniac drivers...... or that we saw a pedestrian get hit and carried limp off the road...... or that at least a hundred cars came at us head on going 80 mph.......oh, wait, I wasn't going to write about that....
 It was a good training and I think the ladies enjoyed it. They fed us lunch and we had some good gospel discussions. Seminary is a different animal here than in Utah of course. Utah members have it pretty easy and convenient with the schools even allowing for time outside of class to take Seminary. You can't be a wimp (Weakly Interacting Massive Particle) if you want to be faithful and active in the church outside of Utah and especially here in Guyana. We are proud of these people for being willing to teach and proud of our students who attend even though it is quite a sacrifice for them. This is a good time to put in that strong quote by Joseph Smith
 “A religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation; for, from the first existence of man, the faith necessary unto the enjoyment of life and salvation never could be obtained without the sacrifice of all earthly things. It was through this sacrifice, and this only, that God has ordained that men should enjoy eternal life.”
These dear people truly have to sacrifice a great deal of their culture to be true followers of Christ. Actually, all of us need to abandon any part of our culture or traditions that are not in harmony with the culture of God. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for the new revelation on the home centered/church supported learning. With the bulk of the instruction and learning done by individuals and in our families, it removes the "Utah Church" from the equation and brings everyone in the world on the same plane. None of us can sit on the fence and expect to keep growing and progressing no matter where we live.
We had an interesting conversation with a fellow member here this week. Most of his family, his wife and children, have moved to the states for a better life. He is a farmer and needs to get his home secured before he can join them. He was telling us that an average Linden, Guyanese person makes $4000.00 GYD a day which is $20 USD which equals $5,000 USD per year. I need to add here that gas is more expensive and food is the same as in the States and somethings a bit more because they have to be imported. He is planning on working construction in the states and has been told he will make $100 USD per day which equals to $20,000 per year which is basically below the poverty line. So, in summery, he will be trading one poverty level for another poverty level but will feel like he is so much better off and even wealthy. That is the blessing of the United States of America. Holy Cow! How come we were given so many blessings from birth! Born in the USA and in the Church! We have so much to give back!
This morning I decided to do a scientific experiment on the crowing of roosters. I was curious if they had a pattern or frequency as to how often they crowed. So, at 4 am my subject rooster was willing to participate with gusto. Our window was opened for a nice breeze and he was just outside below it. It was a perfect set up for the experiment. He crowed and I counted 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and he crowed again so I began again 1,2, 3.....again he crowed at 10! I thought, we have a definite pattern here. He crowed every 10 seconds for four times....then I counted to 22 a couple times and then several minutes went by with silence....I don't how long that break was cause I was just dozing off to sleep again, remember, I said it was 4 AM... when here comes his crow waking me up. So, I go back to counting and he's back to crowing every 10 seconds, then a couple 22's and another long space, long enough for me to doze off.....and then COCK A DOODLE DOO!!! I'm back counting to 10....I decided that roosters don't really have any rhyme or reason to their crowing and it's just a cruel way of tormenting people who are light sleepers and crazy enough to think they can make any sense of the nature of  a rooster and his very annoying and obnoxious crowing in the wee hours of the morning. Don't try this at home, but then, I don't think there are many of you who are reading this that even have a rooster available to conduct this experiment.  It's of no use and really no fun and you wake up rather grumpy and feeling like fried chicken sounds really good for breakfast!

When we were coming home from church today we saw a guy walking down the street with this monkey so we stopped and asked if we could get a picture of him and his monkey, who we found out is named Jack. He said yes but did one better and let Jack climb on me to get the picture!

 We see men carrying around their birds in cages all over and we asked a few people why and one said it was to let them get some fresh air, kind of like you take your pet for a walk...but the real reason is these are song birds and they are brought to competitions to see who has the best song.

 This is Joseph, a member in our branch and also Sally's father

 This is Sally. Meeting her at the airport

 In the past month, Dave has repaired or remade 7 bikes. This is Robert, a recent baptized member whose bike was pretty bad so Dave bought a new frame, tires etc. to get this bike working for him. This is his store. He has taken the Self Reliance Classes and he just opened his business. He is selling plants which he grows at his farm and then re-pots to sell. We hope he does so well!

 This is called Whitey. You open up the pod as shown and then you pop one of these white spongy seeds in your mouth and suck on it until it separates from the seed and then spit the seed out.

 It's really quite sweet and feels kind of like a gummy bear...sort of. Pretty fun!

 This is the sorrel fruit

 You peel it apart and remove the large seed you see here

 Then you boil them and add some sugar

 Then is turns into this beautiful deep red delicious drink. 

This drink is special for holidays and celebrations

 This is the flower of the Sorrel plant

 This is how it grows. You can see the fruit flower. 

This was given to us by Robert who grows them on his farm. Quite a treat!

 I was reading on our couch and heard a noise behind me. I thought maybe it was just the breeze blowing the curtains and then it happened again. Dave was walking by and he said "you know you have a lizard right by your head?" I of course jumped up and the lizard went behind the couch. We successfully got it to go back outside on it's own with a little coaching. You may not be able to tell from the picture but it's about six inches long. I'm so glad it didn't jump on me! I may have peed my pants!

 There is a strong influence of East India here in Guyana. This is a home or temple...not sure..

on the road to Georgetown.

 This is another site on the way to Georgetown, actually almost in Georgetown. This home or building has a junk pile on top of it. It may be a parts store. You see how close the car is next to us as we are driving. We could give "high fives" to each other if we weren't going so fast.

 This is another shot of it. The white line you see is the side of the road line. That's how close things are to the road and cabs will stop completely on the road to pick up passengers, even on one lane highways which causes you to always swerve over to on coming traffic and cars pass you on either the left or right side of the road. You know someone is coming up to pass you cause they give you two beep beeps on the horn, meaning...don't do anything cause I'm passing you. Whoops! I wasn't going to write about the traffic....sorry...can you tell it's a very stressful and traumatic thing for me? 

This is a Kiskadee bird. You can't see it very well and we will get another picture, but it's breast is a bright yellow. It's so fun to see. There are also lime green birds and light blue birds. They are hard to get in pictures because they fly away too fast.