Guyana 2010 Circuit Assembly

This has been a great two weeks. This past weekend, we had the Circuit Assembly. The weekend before, we had a big circuit Pioneer Meeting (unfortunately, my camera was dead, so no pictures. I do plan to get some pictures from others who were there, but I haven't yet).

It was an amazing experience. All the pioneers in this half of the country all congregated in one Kingdom Hall.
Very claustrophobic.

This was among the better pioneer meetings I've attended, and not simply because it was my first out-of-country one (okay, that was one of the major factors though...). The main reason I really enjoyed it is because it was obvious that every speaker put lots of work into their part. The illustrations, the experiences, everything. It was clear to everyone there how much effort was put into preparing this meeting.

For instance: One of our elders, Linel Brown, is a substitute Circuit Overseer. He was already assigned a part when it turned out the regular CO (Shannon Rainey) wasn't going to be able to make it, and he had TWO talks. This left Linel with three talks to prepare. If it were me, I'd probably only be able to make one of them sound halfway decent. With Brother Brown's, each one was better than the previous.
One example, an illustration he used: When you pass someone on the road, you say "Good Morning". When someone brings you food, you say "Thank You". When you're leaving somewhere, you say "Goodbye". But does this mean you actually communicated with these people? Do you have a personal relationship with them?
The same is true of prayers. Even if you pray every day, it doesn't necessarily mean you are establishing a good relationship with Jehovah. You need to keep examining whether you are actually communicating in your prayers.

One more thing I especially enjoyed about the meeting: The singing. These people set a new record for the loudest singing inside a Kingdom Hall I've ever heard.
North Athens has a LOT of work to do.

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CIRCUIT ASSEMBLY
The assembly was held in a town called New Amsterdam, not too far from where I live. The only problem though, is it was in a school. It was one big room that's normally divided by partitions into smaller classrooms. This means for the cleaning day, we had to remove the partitions, take out all the chairs and desks (and find a way to mark with room they came from), clean the place, then bring in our own chairs. Yep. We had to bring in over 900 chairs, collected from various Kingdom Halls.

Now for some various shots of the place....

That long upper walkway, on the inside, is the big room where the assembly was held.

And on the inside....

Throw in a few more people....

On Sunday, Tom Sanches had a talk that needed two demonstrations. One demonstration was of a good family that did things together, and tried their best to serve Jehovah.
The other demonstration was of a family that pursued their own interests and never spent time with each other. That particular demonstration called for an obnoxious, technology obsessed teenager.
Guess who Brudda Sanches calls for that?

And now for the rest of the "Bad Example Family"!

Mom and Dad (Don and Jodi)

Better shot of Dad.

My sister (Airmika.... I have no clue how to actually spell it)

Then Micaiah was my older brother.

That about wraps it up for the assembly. But AFTER the assembly....

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NEED GREATER PARTY!

After the Circuit Assembly, there was a party for all the need-greaters, missionaries, special pioneers, etc. This was quite an interesting event, one that was over much too soon. I wish I had more time to talk about this, but I'll have to make do.

The party was held at the home of Ramon and Kaylie Buddin (yes, there was a typo in the blog entry about them coming for our circuit visit. I named her as Martha. I have no idea how I managed that).

As it got started getting dark, they interviewed some of the longest-serving people in our region, Todd and Barbara Hollenbeck, missionaries from Canada. Afterward, there was popular demand for an interview Ramon and Kaylie themselves, since they're about to be leaving.

The guy in between them is Todd Hollenbeck. There was a power outage for a while, and this is right after it came back on, so he's taking the lantern down from behind Ramon.

Aaaaaaand that's all I've got.