Time to Say Goodbye

Hi everybody!

First of all, we are ever so sorry for the delay of this blog post. Things have been prettttty mental since we last posted. Where do we start? Its been a real whirlwind of a weekend getting back just in time for the convention. And what a convention it was!! I think we were all blown away by it. Jehovah is so wonderful to us, isn't he? 

We feel that even more so after the trip that we have had. One of the hardest things to do is put your feelings into words...it just does not do it justice! But we felt we must say that all four of us feel strongly that these three months have changed our relationship with Jehovah in a way that we could not have imagined. When you are completely out of your comfort zone, you have no choice but to rely on Jehovah entirely. Doing this has shown us that you can accomplish anything if you make sacrifices for Jehovah. He never ever let us down on this trip. So our resolve is to continue pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone, so that we will have more opportunities to rely on Jehovah and see his strength towards us.  

Here are a few photos of the last few days of our trip....

Our final bus journey to our final meeting! 

And what a busy meeting we had!

Here we are with some of our wonderful friends. We have spent many a hilarious boat day with some of these girls, they are the best!

This is Jerusha, a pioneer who moved in at the same time as us.

Molly looked after Vashtein's study whilst her conductor was away, and helped her to prepare her first ever talk on the school. She is ever so lovely!

Sister Ali, who lives alone, as her husband died and her children live in Venezuela. She works five days a week but manages to regular pioneer, doing her ministry in the evenings and weekends. She gives the very best hugs!

Renae and her mum, Viola, who pioneers and drives her own boat!

Carlyn, who has been in the truth only five years and pioneers with three young children. One of her sons is Josh, who did the bible reading (see other blog)

Brother and Sister Marks. They are as fantastic as their smiles show they are :) 

Sister Gilly, (see previous blogs!) who is probably the best teacher we know. She has taught us many things!

Renatte, who got baptised at the convention recently! Her husband is not in the truth , but she does a grand job of bringing her two young boys to the meetings.

Cassidy and Krystal.

Daisy and Naomi studied with these two girls, who regularly come to the meetings with their little brother. Since we Have come back, we heard that their mum came to the meeting on sunday and asked to start her study again! So now they all are studying and attending the meetings as a family. 

So it was a lovely last meeting. It was hard to say goodbye to them all as they have become a part of our lives now. Its not easy to stay in touch as we would like to either, because not very many have the internet. But we know that the memories we have made with them will last forever :) 

We left Charity really early Saturday morning, and got on the speed boat as you can see below...

We had a ridiculous amount of luggage! But we managed it all by ourselves, being practically Guyanese now!

We stayed in New York with Michelle and Brandon (the couple we met in Charity) which was a real treat. They knew what it was like to come back from Guyana and crave every kind of food you haven't had for three months. So they had prepared a feast for us! We cannot explain to you how good it was to have a warm shower and a duvet!

                                                
                                                   Even in our jet lagged form, we managed to find some of the best pastries we have tasted...


                                
                           ....and bagels! You can't go to New York and not try a bagel!

Our last meal together in New York. 

The flight home was brilliant because they were international delegates on it coming for the Twickenham international convention. It was really exciting! When we got off the plane, there were loads of brothers with banners welcoming the delegates! What an experience :) 

So that draws us to the end of our trip. We hope you have enjoyed reading about it as much as we have enjoyed writing about it. How wonderful it will be in Paradise when we can all travel and visit our brothers and sisters to our hearts content, and bump into each other along the way! Keep your eyes out for our brothers and sisters in Charity that you have read about. They are the loveliest people and they will have many wonderful experiences to tell you. 

So....until next time....

Lots of love,

The girls x

Jehovah-Jireh

So here we are nearly at the end of our journey. And what a journey it has been! We fly to New York on Saturday, and spend a couple of days with Michelle and Brandon (see earlier blogs) our lovely new friends that we met here. Can't wait to catch up with them! Then we arrive back in England on Tuesday. So when we see you at the convention that weekend, we might not be quite with it... Please blame the jet lag!

Our lovely studies who fed us lunch :) 

The title of our blog, Jehovah-Jireh, means 'Jehovah Provides' or 'Jehovah Sees To It', and this really 

reflects not only the past three months, but particularly the last few days. Being the typical 

blondes/afro that you know we are, we accidentally forgot to assess our kitty money earlier, so we 

had somewhat of a revelation when we counted out what we had left for our last week in Guyana...let's just say tight! There is no bank for two hours so we don't have access to anymore funds. It reached a real low when we were all sat round the kitchen table rationing eggs and brain storming meal ideas to eat with rice. Isn't it true though, that it's times like these when you really see Jehovah's hand in matters. 

We will just list a few things that have happened since our budget count on Thursday.....

• We even had to work out our bus money but I think we have only got two bus journeys since Thursday as brothers and sisters have been passing just at the right time and offered us lifts. It has even given us bonus treat money to buy rocky road ingredients (a real essential here!!)

• Amy went outside to pick a mango from our tree, and unfortunately there were none. Literally five minutes later, her study popped round with a huge bag of mangoes and loads of other treats.
• We were so so hungry and there was nowhere to get any lunch, we were toying with the idea of cancelling our last study to go home and get food, but we thought wed power through with Jehovah's help. When we got there, the study only went and prepared us lunch!!
• We have been invited out for tea twice this week, plus we really wanted an avocado but didn't manage to get one, then a brother just randomly gave us two HUGE avocados, enough to feed us several times!
• One day, it was 10.30am and we had a whole day of studies and walking in the intense heat, and the prospect of it seemed a bit overwhelming. Anyway, we managed to do it and finished at 7, later than we anticipated! Jehovah gives the tired one power!

So as you can see, Jehovah really does provide when you need it the most.

Here is some more of our week:

We had a fab trip to the lakes with our lovely next door neighbour and their family, and our studies :)

The new jw.org sign outside our hall, exciting times!

Usually we are on the river on Tuesdays but when we arrived at the dock we found there was only us 'novices' and no one who could really drive the boat. But rather than be deterred, brother Paresram said to us we will just walk down the river side instead- where there's a will! We had a brilliant day showing many people who barely get reached the Bible Study videos and the campaign leaflet. 

Here's Amy and Daisy braving the very wobbly bridge, probably the worst one we have seen so far. Amy and Daisy have a bit of a thrill factor when it comes to things like this. They would rather try it and fall in than not try it at all! 

Here are two little girls who really enjoyed the video. They told us afterwards that they remembered us coming to visit their school a few weeks ago! 

It has been a lovely privilege for us all to help out on the school whilst we've been here. It's been a great way to get to know the sisters better.

Here is the lovely Joelle. She will be following in her mum's footsteps, a future pioneer in the making :) 

This is Andre. Daisy and Naomi study with his two sisters, and Andre had his own little study with Amy for the first time this week. Andre, and his sisters who are 14 and 15, come to the meetings all by themselves. The oldest girl has just asked to go on the school.

Finally, look what we found in Charity! You have to look quite closely at the sign above the door.....

Thank you so much once more for taking the time to read and keeping up with our adventures. We are going to do one more blog post before we leave so you can meet some of the wonderful brothers  and sisters in our hall. So keep checking :):) 

A Beginner's Guide: Speaking Guyanese

So here we are in our last month of being in Guyana. Where has the time gone?! We arrive home on the Tuesday before our convention, so we look forward to seeing you all there and catching up with you all. We hope the campaign is going well for you! Day one of our campaign consisted of a full on thunder storm so we weren't able to get out.

We realised shortly after coming to Guyana that coming to an English speaking country doesn't necessarily mean speaking English as we know it! We started off not getting much of what people say, as their accent is strong and they talk so quickly, but we are becoming better at it now! We are almost there now with speaking fluent Guyanese.  Here are a few examples....

Don't be fooled by the words 'just now' they are not quite of the same meaning as we are used to. So

if we are to hear the words 'just now' we expect to see the fulfilment of those words straight away,
right? Like if you ask for a bag of flour and somebody says 'I will get it for you just now', we expect
to have the bag of flour in our hands right away. Not so in Guyana, we can replace the words 'just
now', for 'in a while' or 'later on'. For example when asking how far away we were from a place, the reply was 'just now', on becoming Guyana savvy we questioned the answer further, it turns out our destination was over an hour away!

'Me no see she' .... A Guyanese alternative to 'I haven't seen her!'

We don't use 'him' or 'her' over here, instead 'he' and 'she' are used.

E.g. 'She got some bread for him' would be 'She got some bread for he'

Confusing eh?

Colewego (coh-leh-we-go)

This basically means 'come on, let's go!' It is often said very fast!

'Gaffing' is another word for talking. We all like to have a good old gaff don't we! We find that a lot of people use 'and so' at the end of their sentences too, which we quite enjoy and are trying to use ourselves.

So if a person is slightly overweight, they have no problem with labelling him fat. They are no longer

 called by their name, but nicknamed 'fat boy' or 'white girl'', depending on what feature stands out the most! They also like to ask us if we've ever been fat. After we had come back from our holiday in Baganara, we were labelled 'robust'....which we are going to take as a compliment! 

Unfortunately, the name 'fat boy' sticks for life, until you lose a bit of weight. Then you are 'fiiiiiiiiiine boy!' which means skinny! 

Also, when you ask how someone is, many people reply 'trying, trying' which to us means 'I'm alright thanks'. 

So we've mentioned in some of our previous blogs a bit about the special pioneer couple in our hall, 

David and Gilly. They have a wealth of experience, they have been all over the country as circuit overseers, taking pioneer schools, head of construction and chairman for the conventions etc etc, so as you can imagine, we are eager to learn from them! 

We went round to their house for tea the other night, and had a brilliant time hearing some of their amazing stories- one of which we'd like to share with you. . . 

So before they were married Sister Gilly served as a pioneer in the deep interior of Guyana,a place called Baramita, which is extremely remote with very basic living conditions. This is a picture of her in the home made shower that the brothers made for her. Notice the big smile on her face that is never missing! 

This is the kind of territory they were used to doing. Brother David came as the circuit overseer to Baramita, and that's where he met Sister Gilly, living on her own in the jungle conducting 120 studies. She lived in a home very similar to the one on this picture. So no walls, no door, no bedroom. She slept in the kitchen...the same place that the meetings were conducted at. Brother David always took a box of dry snacks on his visits because some of the food deep into the jungle was not good, let's just say!

Many times, the brothers would cook bush meat for him, but before eating, 'they had to remove the rank from the meat because it was so bad'. Needless to say it wasn't pleasant. They said that the joy far outweighed any of the challenges however.

Before Sister Gilly arrived at Baramita, the tribe had no English, no clothes, no civilisation basically. This amazing sister, with Jehovah's help, civilised the whole tribe, making clothes for them,  teaching them how to speak, read and write English, learning their language herself, and then teaching them the truth. She used to hold language classes. She even staying up late at night to translate the literature into their mother tongue with a native girl's help. 

This is Brother David giving the co talk.

Here is Sister Gilly on the way to Baramita. On that little boat, she had her bed, her food and her clothes...her essentials ready for the jungle. She spent three and a half years there, some of the hardest but best times of her life. At one point, she lived on bitter greens (karela...which is this gross stuff we drink pounded up with water for parasite prevention) and she used to collect the very tiny bit of rain water on a piece of tin on her roof and tilt it, so that it slowly dripped into her cup, providing the only water she would drink for that day. How she managed to live over three years in those conditions comes down only to Jehovah! She has brought well over 40 people into the truth over her time. She is the most amazing story teller and often has us absolutely captivated.

They have now been in Charity for about 9 months, and their zeal and love for Jehovah and the brothers continues to shine! They are forever hard working despite some severe health problems. It has been such a joy to work along with them and learn from them. Sometimes we literally take out 

our notebook just so we don't forget everything they say.

We also recommend that you go in the 2005 yearbook which is about Guyana, and check out Brother Frederick McAlman's life story. He is a stalwart elder in our hall who is just brilliant. 

We hope you've enjoyed reading a few of the experiences as much as we have enjoyed listening to them. It really is an eye opener to see the lengths brothers and sisters go in order to spread the good news throughout Guyana!