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!

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