Suriname/Branch Tour/Orealla/Siparuta/etc

Wow. This past week has been hectic. As I stated in the last post, we went over into Suriname, just to take a vacation. One of the highlights of the trip, we all agreed, was this:

Oops. What I mean is, THIS was the highlight of the trip.

The Suriname Branch Office! The Branch there is fairly small, though it's bigger than the Guyana branch.

Also, Suriname is smaller than Guyana, but they have to do a lot more work. For instance:

These are the frequently used languages in field service in the capital of Suriname. Dutch, Portugese, English, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Sranan Tongo, and some other language whose name escapes me.

The day after the branch tour, we wanted to find a Kingdom Hall nearby and go to a meeting. There was only meeting that night in walking distance, and it wasn't English. Instead, it was a Sranan Tongo congregation. Still, we went anyway.

Me and Micaiah went (Levi and sage were pooped out...), but we showed up pretty late. Student talk 3 was almost over. During the meeting, the attendant ran up to us and asked for names and what congregation we were from (an English speaking brother). Then, during announcements, he goes up on stage, interrupting the speaker, and whispers in his ear and hands the guy a paper. He leaves, and the speaker continues. Then amongst the stuff we couldn't understand, we hear "Gudfvrlp fewohife rkfqe podf Micaiah Jong dewazm lofg Yoshua Westfall!"


(Applause)


Then we hear "Olfesjef foejwqw mnqew gpfewonj pogr aqre gfezr!"


(Laughter, applause)


At that meeting we fully experienced the Worldwide Brotherhood. Two brothers go to a different continent, go to a meeting where we don't understand a word, and we're still treated by everyone as if we were lifelong friends. Where else do you find that?


Plus, they didn't mind that we hadn't shaved, and were wearing wrinkled dress shirts, dirty/stained jeans, and mud caked shoes!

_______________________________

After Suriname, we went straight over into Orealla (see a previous blog entry, don't know which one). The last visit, Tom Sanches, another brother named Martin Miguel and I worked in a faraway village named Siparuta. But after some investigating, Tom found that there's a lot of houses on the river next to it, so he organized a trip back to preach to those people.


The plan was to rent a boat and load up the brothers who wanted to join the trip, but the only boat available was a monster 20-seater. After debating what to do, Tom realized "Hey! We have only 7 people gathered to do this. Why not invite publishers from the nearby congregation Orealla to join us?"


Thus, our preaching group went from 7 to 18! And thanks to that, what was going to be 12-hour preaching was accomplished in 4 hours!

(right around this point, pictures are scarce. Orealla was having some major power problems while we were there.)

That's all I have pictures for now, but I do have two left to share. These show some souvenirs we picked up in Suriname.




Brace yourself....