Hey everyone, sorry its been so long. I have been entertaining the very difficult creature that my mother is:) She did however make me aware of the fact that people probably still want to know what is going on. I only have to say that there hasnt been too much going on. I rode into Georgetown with Tom and Abi. It was a very short ride. Although I did have to wake up at 3 in the morning to get her, I think she hates me lol. She was supposed to have to wait for me, but I was the one doing the waiting. I stood outside the secured area for about 45 minutes. For all of you who know me at all, you know I am not very patient. So every white person I saw coming around the corner I thought was her, it wasnt. Finally the right white girl came around! To make a long story short, she is here and I am so happy to see my mom again.
Since then we have done lots of service and that has been about it. See out here we dont have much in the way of entertainment. So she has done a lot of reading. I took her into Skeldon one day to go and shop. It was a lot of fun. She isnt used to being in a market like this. We did lots of shopping and she figured out some of the Guyanese fruits that are delicious. Her first meeting was a true Guyana experience, the power went out about halfway through. In normal Guyanese fashion we continued the meeting as though we started in total darkness. It is very unusual for us Americans to not get all flustered when the power goes out and you cant see or hear what is going on.
Oh here is a good story for the end of this blog, Im sorry its so short there is just nothing all the exciting going on. But anyway... My mom was downstairs with my roomate Dana and they were getting dinner ready. All of a sudden my mom screams and takes off her jacket, hands it to Dana who has no idea what is going on, and procedes to start an examination of herself. At this point she tells Dana that the jacket she handed her had a spider on it only moments ago and she has no idea where it is now. That is when Dana screamed and threw the jacket on the floor:) It was sooooo funny, she doesnt like bugs too much is what I have learned.
Oh and to top it off this morning we had no power. It wasnt a regular blackout, this one was just our house and the front house. A guy driving a truck backed into the power pole, and caused it to spark. Thankfully we have electricity now, we dont like going without power all day. So I will be home in a week and a few days. I will be going into Georgetown on Monday with my mom and Dana:) It will be fun. Ok talk to you all later!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Berbice Special Day Assembly
Hey everyone, sorry its been so long. We are starting to wrap up our trip and getting things all setup for our new roomate! But I will get back to that later. So nothing really happened in between the Memorial and the assembly so I will just hit the fastforward button on my storytelling to this last weekend.
Sunday was our special day in New Amsterdam, we got up early and rode in with Tom and Michelle Sanches. We were some of the first people to arrive and quickly found the ASL section. It was a very large section of the auditorium right in the front on the right hand side. The assembly itself was held at a school in New Amsterdam with people filling every room possible. The attendance for morning session was 972 with 27 deaf in attendance. The afternoon attendance was 1,001 with 28 deaf in attendance. Another great highlight for this assembly was the 5 baptized including our new deaf sister:)
I know many of you havent had your special day yet but I thought I would include one or two points that I really enjoyed from the assembly. Actually I will just put in one from the Bethel Branch overseer, his name is Brother Hinds. He was talking about how prayer and Bible reading are linked. He said when we pray we are talking to Jehovah asking him for his holy spirit, but how do we get a response? He said that our Bible reading is when Jehovah talks to us through his word. Then he asked which is more important? Is it more important for Jehovah to listen to us, or for us to listen to Jehovah? Then he said the more we read the Bible the more we want to pray and continue that relationship with Jehovah. I really enjoyed that point, I havent ever heard it explained that way until now.
Another highlight was my roomate Dana was interviewed! She didnt fall off the stage or anything. She was sitting literally on the edge of the stage, its a tiny stage. So anywho after the assembly we helped with the cleaning. I got stuck with the disgusting job of cleaning the bathrooms...surprisingly it was much worse in the womens restroom than the mens. But I will spare you all the details.
After the cleaning was done we headed over to Ramon and Kali Buddens house for a gathering with a bunch of needgreaters from all over the place. They had lots of chinese food and then we played a game. Have any of you played would you rather? Well they changed it into Bible scenarios and made most everyone play. I went up against Abi. I was Abigail, and she was Rachel. I lost, I had the husband with a drinking problem and therefore nobody wanted to be me:)
After that they interviewed a couple from Skeldon named Ryan and Torrie. They are from Canada and will be going home soon. It is very interesting to learn about the other people down here and what they went through to make it possible to do this. There are some amazing people down here. After that it was time to leave, and we had a new addition to our group. We have our new roomate Amy here with us now. So we are starting to take her around the territory and get her used to the studies so she doesnt feel too lost or overwhelmed while she is here. Also we are getting ready for my moms arrival:) Next Tuesday she will be here and I will be dragging her around the coast as much as possible. Ok until later!
Sunday was our special day in New Amsterdam, we got up early and rode in with Tom and Michelle Sanches. We were some of the first people to arrive and quickly found the ASL section. It was a very large section of the auditorium right in the front on the right hand side. The assembly itself was held at a school in New Amsterdam with people filling every room possible. The attendance for morning session was 972 with 27 deaf in attendance. The afternoon attendance was 1,001 with 28 deaf in attendance. Another great highlight for this assembly was the 5 baptized including our new deaf sister:)
I know many of you havent had your special day yet but I thought I would include one or two points that I really enjoyed from the assembly. Actually I will just put in one from the Bethel Branch overseer, his name is Brother Hinds. He was talking about how prayer and Bible reading are linked. He said when we pray we are talking to Jehovah asking him for his holy spirit, but how do we get a response? He said that our Bible reading is when Jehovah talks to us through his word. Then he asked which is more important? Is it more important for Jehovah to listen to us, or for us to listen to Jehovah? Then he said the more we read the Bible the more we want to pray and continue that relationship with Jehovah. I really enjoyed that point, I havent ever heard it explained that way until now.
Another highlight was my roomate Dana was interviewed! She didnt fall off the stage or anything. She was sitting literally on the edge of the stage, its a tiny stage. So anywho after the assembly we helped with the cleaning. I got stuck with the disgusting job of cleaning the bathrooms...surprisingly it was much worse in the womens restroom than the mens. But I will spare you all the details.
After the cleaning was done we headed over to Ramon and Kali Buddens house for a gathering with a bunch of needgreaters from all over the place. They had lots of chinese food and then we played a game. Have any of you played would you rather? Well they changed it into Bible scenarios and made most everyone play. I went up against Abi. I was Abigail, and she was Rachel. I lost, I had the husband with a drinking problem and therefore nobody wanted to be me:)
After that they interviewed a couple from Skeldon named Ryan and Torrie. They are from Canada and will be going home soon. It is very interesting to learn about the other people down here and what they went through to make it possible to do this. There are some amazing people down here. After that it was time to leave, and we had a new addition to our group. We have our new roomate Amy here with us now. So we are starting to take her around the territory and get her used to the studies so she doesnt feel too lost or overwhelmed while she is here. Also we are getting ready for my moms arrival:) Next Tuesday she will be here and I will be dragging her around the coast as much as possible. Ok until later!
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Guyanese Memorial
Hey everyone, this has been such a crazy week! We spent a week before the Memorial visiting all of our studies explaining how important it is to go to the Memorial as well as how important it is to not eat the bread or drink the wine:) There were some funny conversations but we wont go into that right now. So in addition to all that explaining we also arranged with all the families for pickup times and also got a few relatives to join us. We knew it was going to be a night to remember.
So I will start from the bus ordeal. We had arranged for the man to pick us up at 4. He called at 3:45 to say he would pick us up now, after about 5 minutes of Abi trying to explain that no we wanted to be picked up at 4 he finally understood. So he arrived at 4:10 instead, but that is Guyana for you! Fortunately for us all of our studies and their families were ready to go in their appointed spots, I was so proud. The Guyanese are normally late for everything, so we were shocked.
Ok so after being dropped off and getting settled in for the Memorial, that is where the fun began:) All of us have at least 1 study in English, a few are relatives of the deaf we study with. One girl named Radda who is studying with Dana is the sister of Sono, a young boy we have been talking to since I arrived here. Radda has 2 kids, one is 2 years old and the other is 6 months old. To start off with the opening prayer we found out these kids know exactly when prayers happen and they decided to cry during each of them. Yes both of them cried during every prayer. I am deciding if I should talk about things in order or if it should be according to the Bible study itself....I think by the studies themselves is best:)
Ok to continue on Radda there is a lot to tell. Ok so after Dana took one of the kids in the back with her, there was one left. He is a holy terror. He started hitting his mom, at which she started laughing. So he continued for 5 minutes, also throwing things on the ground and screaming when nobody gave it back. So I hid the cloth is was throwing on the floor, so he moved on. After a good while his mom looks back at me, at which point I gave her the look of she needs to control her child. She tried, and failed miserably. What she didnt fail at was making him scream more, he has got that down. To end the whole Radda experience I must end with the best part. So its a sign Memorial and they didnt make the announcement to turn off your cell phones, and we didnt think to tell them to turn phones off. Yea, hers went off. I should thrown in this little tidbit, we were in the front row. Her phone loudly played the birthday song. Not only did it play that, she proceeded to answer it and have a conversation during the talk. Dana tried to get her to stop, it didnt work. However it does make for a good story.
Now lets see...who else? Well we had many that were well behaved, so I will shortly list those. Sono, Pearol, Natalie, Niasia for the most part, and Annette. But lets talk about Niasia. She only did one thing really. She and Natalie decided that right before the prayer for the bread they had to go to the bathroom. I thought seriously about grabbing her and making her sit back down, but figured that would make too much of a scene. Thankfully she came back to her seat in time to pass the bread. Otherwise she was well behaved.
Hmm..how about Andrea's cousin Abianna that came. Well she decided that instead of staying in one seat through the whole meeting she would hop around. Once again it was a matter of causing too much distraction if I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her outside. Although I thought seriously about it. Then there was the issue in the bus. She had been acting up all night and I was done dealing with her nicely. I gave her one warning when she was causing trouble with the other girls back there. So when I turned around and noticed she was crawling on the floor trying to go under the seats I decided I had enough. So I told her in a loud voice that she was to sit in her seat like a normal human being or I would get back there and make her do so. I never saw a kid move so fast in my life. The funny part of that was Abi's reaction, she said I sounded really mean and she thought she should straighten up too:) Abianna was good after that.
Oh heres a note on Pearol. She came with her hearing cousin who is now studying with Abi. Before the Memorial started I went over to talk to her about how everything was going to happen. I explained to her that we dont eat the bread or drink the wine. Pearol saw me talking to her and became concerned that I didnt explain it properly. So she told me what to do in these words," eat drink no bad, Jehovah he think bad." We were all so proud that we finally got through to some of them! Especially this one considering recently Dana confused her to the point that she thought she shouldn't be Jehovah's friend anymore. Also now I am pretty sure she thinks getting married is bad, that or she really doesnt want to get married.
So last but certainly not least is Rebecca. She is one of my favorite studies. Her and her son and his girlfriend/wife came. I say girlfriend/wife because it changes everytime I see them, funny enough is the fact that her name changes from Paulette to Esther depending on the day as well:) So before the Memorial it was explained to the whole family that we dont eat the bread and we dont drink the wine. Rebecca was very serious about staying far away from that. So at Memorial brother Ramon Budden was getting to their row and he handed the plate of bread to her son Jacob. He grabbed the plate but Esther and Rebecca refused to touch the plate at all. At which point Abi quickly took it away from Jacob as opposed to them having a discussion about this in the middle of them trying to pass the bread. However the looks on the faces of the brothers that were passing th bread were priceless. After watching the brothers who had passed the bread at the front of the hall pass it among themselves, the girls understood and successfully passed the wine.
So that is all the craziness that happened here, needless to say we were exhausted after that. In fact I still am exhausted from this past week, but it was definelty rewarding to see 104 in attendance and among them were 57 deaf! In our group including ourselves we had 18, 7 of which were deaf. I hope you all were as entertained as I was by the happenings from Memorial. However I was amused after it was over, it felt like I was babysitting. Well that is all for now, I have 17 days until my mom gets here and 35 days until I leave for home. So I will see you guys soon! This is going to be a busy month. We have specail day in Berbice and special talk in New Amsterdam. Amy will be here soon, my mom is coming, and then I am leaving. At least the time will go by really quickly!
So I will start from the bus ordeal. We had arranged for the man to pick us up at 4. He called at 3:45 to say he would pick us up now, after about 5 minutes of Abi trying to explain that no we wanted to be picked up at 4 he finally understood. So he arrived at 4:10 instead, but that is Guyana for you! Fortunately for us all of our studies and their families were ready to go in their appointed spots, I was so proud. The Guyanese are normally late for everything, so we were shocked.
Ok so after being dropped off and getting settled in for the Memorial, that is where the fun began:) All of us have at least 1 study in English, a few are relatives of the deaf we study with. One girl named Radda who is studying with Dana is the sister of Sono, a young boy we have been talking to since I arrived here. Radda has 2 kids, one is 2 years old and the other is 6 months old. To start off with the opening prayer we found out these kids know exactly when prayers happen and they decided to cry during each of them. Yes both of them cried during every prayer. I am deciding if I should talk about things in order or if it should be according to the Bible study itself....I think by the studies themselves is best:)
Ok to continue on Radda there is a lot to tell. Ok so after Dana took one of the kids in the back with her, there was one left. He is a holy terror. He started hitting his mom, at which she started laughing. So he continued for 5 minutes, also throwing things on the ground and screaming when nobody gave it back. So I hid the cloth is was throwing on the floor, so he moved on. After a good while his mom looks back at me, at which point I gave her the look of she needs to control her child. She tried, and failed miserably. What she didnt fail at was making him scream more, he has got that down. To end the whole Radda experience I must end with the best part. So its a sign Memorial and they didnt make the announcement to turn off your cell phones, and we didnt think to tell them to turn phones off. Yea, hers went off. I should thrown in this little tidbit, we were in the front row. Her phone loudly played the birthday song. Not only did it play that, she proceeded to answer it and have a conversation during the talk. Dana tried to get her to stop, it didnt work. However it does make for a good story.
Now lets see...who else? Well we had many that were well behaved, so I will shortly list those. Sono, Pearol, Natalie, Niasia for the most part, and Annette. But lets talk about Niasia. She only did one thing really. She and Natalie decided that right before the prayer for the bread they had to go to the bathroom. I thought seriously about grabbing her and making her sit back down, but figured that would make too much of a scene. Thankfully she came back to her seat in time to pass the bread. Otherwise she was well behaved.
Hmm..how about Andrea's cousin Abianna that came. Well she decided that instead of staying in one seat through the whole meeting she would hop around. Once again it was a matter of causing too much distraction if I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her outside. Although I thought seriously about it. Then there was the issue in the bus. She had been acting up all night and I was done dealing with her nicely. I gave her one warning when she was causing trouble with the other girls back there. So when I turned around and noticed she was crawling on the floor trying to go under the seats I decided I had enough. So I told her in a loud voice that she was to sit in her seat like a normal human being or I would get back there and make her do so. I never saw a kid move so fast in my life. The funny part of that was Abi's reaction, she said I sounded really mean and she thought she should straighten up too:) Abianna was good after that.
Oh heres a note on Pearol. She came with her hearing cousin who is now studying with Abi. Before the Memorial started I went over to talk to her about how everything was going to happen. I explained to her that we dont eat the bread or drink the wine. Pearol saw me talking to her and became concerned that I didnt explain it properly. So she told me what to do in these words," eat drink no bad, Jehovah he think bad." We were all so proud that we finally got through to some of them! Especially this one considering recently Dana confused her to the point that she thought she shouldn't be Jehovah's friend anymore. Also now I am pretty sure she thinks getting married is bad, that or she really doesnt want to get married.
So last but certainly not least is Rebecca. She is one of my favorite studies. Her and her son and his girlfriend/wife came. I say girlfriend/wife because it changes everytime I see them, funny enough is the fact that her name changes from Paulette to Esther depending on the day as well:) So before the Memorial it was explained to the whole family that we dont eat the bread and we dont drink the wine. Rebecca was very serious about staying far away from that. So at Memorial brother Ramon Budden was getting to their row and he handed the plate of bread to her son Jacob. He grabbed the plate but Esther and Rebecca refused to touch the plate at all. At which point Abi quickly took it away from Jacob as opposed to them having a discussion about this in the middle of them trying to pass the bread. However the looks on the faces of the brothers that were passing th bread were priceless. After watching the brothers who had passed the bread at the front of the hall pass it among themselves, the girls understood and successfully passed the wine.
So that is all the craziness that happened here, needless to say we were exhausted after that. In fact I still am exhausted from this past week, but it was definelty rewarding to see 104 in attendance and among them were 57 deaf! In our group including ourselves we had 18, 7 of which were deaf. I hope you all were as entertained as I was by the happenings from Memorial. However I was amused after it was over, it felt like I was babysitting. Well that is all for now, I have 17 days until my mom gets here and 35 days until I leave for home. So I will see you guys soon! This is going to be a busy month. We have specail day in Berbice and special talk in New Amsterdam. Amy will be here soon, my mom is coming, and then I am leaving. At least the time will go by really quickly!
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