Saturday, March 20, 2010

Preaching Trip to Nappi

Once again everyone, sorry that I am so slow at posting about our trip to Lethem, we have been trying to get all caught up here. We are starting to wind down our trip so we are working really hard to get things in order for the sister that is coming down next month. That way she wont have a bunch of extra work to do after arriving here. Ok so something that I have always wanted to do was village preaching. On this trip I was able to accomplish that goal twice! This is a description of our first trip out to a little village named Nappi.

So we headed to the Kingdom Hall Monday morning to go and get on a bus to head out for our first village preaching trip. Once we arrived we were greeted by the branch overseer Brother Hinds, and his wife. Also there were a few locals and then some people who had come from Georgetown for the assembly. Then our leader was brother Paul Donlan, I talked about his family a little in the previous blog entry. Also in attendance was Micaiah, I have talked about him before too. He is young brother from Hopetown who goes on the preaching trips with Tom. After a nice meeting for service Paul tells us that he is taking brother and sister Hinds with him to another village and he is putting us on the bus under the care of Micaiah. Good for all of you to understand that Hopetown isnt near Lethem, but we trusted that Micaiah would take care of us.

So we all piled into the bus and took off on our first adventure. It was about an hour ride in and very bumpy. I would compare it to driving a four-wheeler up a steep hill with way too much weight on the back.... I enjoyed it, the other sisters didnt have the same experience. I think it must be the way I was raised:) So once we reached the village our first order of business was to find the Too Shou or the village council. It is protocol to ask permission to preach in little villages such as that, it is to show respect for them as well as protection for you. If you enter the village without permission and have something stolen from you, the village council wont do anything to help you. But if you have asked permission and made yourself known, then they will do what they can to help you. Many of you may be asking what a Too Shou is, well it is like a chief. They are leaders of the villages. It is really interesting to learn that there are some places that are still run that way.

After a long search, we finally were able to meet a member of the council and we were given permission to go and work the territory. Micaiah split us all into groups of twos and were given assignments and directions to meet back at the center of the village once we were done. So they dropped off myself and Dana at the beginning of the village and we were off on our own. Maybe not the best idea in the world, lol.

I wont go into the long details of everything that happened but I think its important for everyone to know that literally every person that we spoke to listened and had us in for at least 30 minutes. Some were much longer than that. We went to 6 houses and we were in the territory for 5 hours altogether. The people there are so humble and wanting to learn. They love to have you read to them from the Bible, many have quite a bit of knowledge of the Bible but dont know what to do with it. One experience that really impressed me was a woman who has two young daughters. The second she saw us coming she set up her bench and asked us to sit so she could talk with us. We had a long discussion with her, and it ended with her asking us to bring her a Bible. So after explaining to her that we were just visiting the area we told her that there will be a brother coming every week into that village and we would make a note for him to bring her a Bible and come and talk to her if that is what she wanted. She immeadiately accepted and was so grateful that someone would be coming back to see her.

That was my favorite experience on that day. So after a long day of service we all met back at the center of town which is where the school is located. We arrived there just as school was letting out, so a bunch of kids came running over to us to see what we were doing. So we gave them all tracts and took a picture of them all holding them up. It was quite the experience for us. Once all the kids left the last of our group showed up and we piled back into the bus for yet another crazy ride.

When we arrived back at the hotel we all changed and went for a BBQ at the Takatu River. We caught a taxi with Desiree down to the river because it is a long walk and it is really hot in Lethem. We had a fire down by the river and ate good food. It was nice being with new people and being able to hear their stories of how they learned the truth. Its always very encouraging, and sometimes you learn things you didnt know about people you thought you knew very well. When we all were getting ready to go back to our hotel a brother offered for us to get into his car to go home. It was going to be 9 people in this car. Three would have to go and sit in the very back of the car. Guess which three were volunteered to do so? If you guessed the three sign sisters, you guessed right. We have a picture because it was too funny. Abi was sitting with her feet over the roll bar hanging out by Michelles head. I will post it as soon as I can, we arent able to get pictures up because our internet is so slow. So in the next entry I will talk about our second preaching trip to Kumu.

No comments:

Post a Comment