Q & A

I've had several questions asked, through blog comments and through e-mails, so I thought I'd use this as a chance to answer those questions. First up:

How Do You Get to the Meetings?

Mini-Buses. Since most people in the country don't have personal cars, a huge throng of buses have popped up. Sadly, because there's so many of these, there's usually competition between the drivers as they try to pick up a passenger. In some places they'll literally grab you and throw you on their bus. That's primarily just in the capital, so it's not something I have to deal with a lot.

Usually the fare for one of these is 50 cents U.S, so it's fairly cheap to get a ride. Speaking of 50 cents, that brings us to the next question.

What Is the Currency?

They use the Guyana dollar, which is actually a very weak currency. The current rate is approximately $200 Guyana dollars (GYD) to $1 U.S.

The largest bill is the $1,000 GYD. So really, a five dollar bill is the largest.
Try paying one month rent in $5. That makes for a large stack of money.

Who Put the Bomp in the Bomp-ba-bomp-ba-bomp?

-Barry Mann. It is a Doo-Wop style hit song from 1961 co-written (with Gerry Goffin) and recorded by Barry Mann. He was backed up by The Halos^[1], who had previously backed up Curtis Lee on the song "Pretty Little Angel Eyes". The song was originally released as a single on the ABC-Paramount label

The Past Week...

This week has proved to be very interesting. First up:

Hopetown/Paradise Congregation Pioneer Meeting
The Hopetown congregation is now up to 13 regular pioneers (woo-hoo!). However, our neighboring congregation, Paradise, has only 4. So when it came time for our congregation pioneer meeting, we had a joint meeting with us and Paradise.

The following Sunday, Micaiah was giving the Public Talk in their congregation. But before I get to that....

More White People!
The pioneer meeting was on Wednesday. Friday we went into the capital, Georgetown, to pick up not one, but two new brothers. One was Levi Schultz, who's Micaiah's cousin.

See the resemblance?

The other is named Sage. I'm unsure about the spelling of the last name, but it's pronounced "Lam-row" (I think it's spelled like Lamreaux or something French-ish. Odd since he's from Tennessee.)

He's usually a lot happier than this. Maybe I had something in my teeth when I took this picture.


They came Friday night/Saturday morning, and then they went with us to Paradise on Sunday. It's a small congregation (about forty publishers) but they have a great Kingdom Hall.

And Now For Some Really Fun Stuff
We did two things this week that were fun enough they deserve a blog entry. First was a congregation party on the beach. Directions to the beach/Atlantic Ocean from where we are: Turn left, and walk for three minutes.

A variety of things that we did there:
Played cricket (sadly, I have learned how to play cricket)
Played a popular Guyana game called "Dog and Bone" (it involves running, tackling, and pain. A lot like American Football.)
Learned how to Wave Surf (that was fun)

And we did this...

Another recent event: We went over into Rosignol (the bordering congregation on the OTHER side) to have dinner with a need-greater couple named Travis and Kristen. Come to think of it, I don't know their last names.

Is it just me, or is this a recurring problem?

A picture of them from the Circuit Assembly. They're the two on the right. The guy on the left is Mark, and he used to be in Hopetown, but that's a story for another time.

That's all I have for this time. However, I'd like to leave you with an inspiring picture:

A Typical Day

For reasons that take waaay too long to explain, I don't have any pictures to share with you.

On Sunday morning when I woke up, I decided I was just going to record what happened on that day and use that as my blog post. Fortunately, the day turned out very well!

Woke up around 7:30, went into the living room, plopped in the hammock we have hanging there, and remembered I had forgotten to study the Watchtower the previous night. So I spent about forty minutes going over that, and then ate breakfast (which Micaiah had made while I was studying).'

From there, went to the hall for the meeting. I don't recall the name of the speaker, but his theme was "Decisions You Face" (there was more to the name than that, but I forget)

Following the meeting is what has turned out to be the best part of the week: Sunday afternoon field service! We meet in a little covered area behind the Kingdom Hall to have the meeting. After field service, me and Dan (who it turns out has a last name! Something like Grazier....) went to see some return visits we had. For a while, it was very uneventful, until we got to ther last two calls of the day.

The first was Dan's, and we didn't actually get his call home. Instead, we got his Dad. Apparently, he's a Hindu, so we spent about a half hour talking to him about the Bible. During which he gave us things from his garden to eat while talking (the Papaya was the best, but the cucumber was good too)

After that call we saw some ominous rain clouds gathering, so we considered high-tailing it out. But then I remembered a call I had gotten just a few days before that was down the road so we went ahead and went to the call.

Good thing we did!

I had only talked to this man once before. We was busy, so I left him with the "Life In a Peaceful New World" tract, and asked "What do we need to do to be there in that world?"

When I returned, he had a torrent of questions for us, mostly regarding how the tract talked about Paradise earth, while preachers always refer to going to heaven.

After about one full hour of this, he says "You know what, I'm kind of busy right now. Maybe what you guys need to do is come over here sometime, spend about an hour, and explain the Bible to me."

Ummmm.... okay!

Then I made the mistake of saying "When would work for you? I have a very open schedule."
The time he picks: One hour before our meeting Thursday night.

So now we get to see if me and Dan manage to pull this off.


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In recent news, we have yet another need-greater coming to Hopetown on Friday: His name's Levi,a dn he's Micaiah Young's older cousin. This will actually be his third visit (I think. Maybe just second), and he'll likely stay about a month.

And he's bringing us a projector!


And that's all that I can think of in recent news. Next time I hope to have pictures.