2014 Circuit Assembly (#BWOOL)

Apologies for it being two weeks since the last blog post, but those two weeks have been among the busiest of my life. Here's a brief overview in pictures of what has been going on.


Hiking to the savanna to explore/watch sunset/get lost

Learning how to boil the cyanide out of cassava

Bubblegum bubble blowing contest

Fishing in the Courantyne river

Making dinner out of said fish

Circuit Pioneer Meeting

Settlers of Catan night

And of course, Circuit Assembly

So, now that we've gotten an overview, let's go through the specifics shall we?

This past week, it came to the attention of Brother Johnston and I that we had two people in our congregation who were leaving soon (Dustin Reynolds and Zandile) but who had not had a chance yet to preach in Siparuta, which in case I haven't specified before, is part of our assigned territory, but we can rarely get to it.
Around this same time, Micaiah and Jessica had two sisters from Ohio visiting them who expressed interest in visiting the interior, so we looked into having them along for the preaching trip.

Thus, it seemed we had a perfect setup for getting to Siparuta. Enough people to pay for the boat, the gas, etc, and also enough people to be able to cover the entire village of 800+ people in a single day. It took a while to put together, along with a small handful of delays and cancellations and switching the boats, but finally we had all the pieces in place.

When all was said and done, we had two Amerindian brothers (Dolan France and Rahoul Alpin), Dustin Reynolds, Zandile, the two sisters from Ohio (Olivia DuBois and Melanie Wilson, who are also the ones who brought me the phone that allows me to use internet here), a sister from England I had never met before named something that sounds like Charismatic, and then me.

The batch of three girls arrived early that morning (like, 1AM). We shipped them off to the places where they would be staying for the weekend, then ran back home to get what little sleep we could to get ready for later that day. Thus, 7:30 that morning, we were ready. We packed up our literature and headed out.

Oh wait, silly me. The boat was broken down.

We had to wait a while as they fixed the boat up, but that did give us time to take lots of group pictures.

 On the left is Rahoul. I just realized this is the only picture I have of him. Alas.

And the rest of the group, minus Dustin. L-R: Olivia, Zandile, me, Charismatic, Melanie, and Dolan.

Aside from the boat breaking, the plan went off without a hitch. You know, once we got to Siparuta. We split into four groups and covered the entire village in one go. Between us I believe we had the equivalent of about three boxes of literature, and it was almost completely gone by the end of the day.
Actually, we finished around 3:30 in the afternoon, so we managed a total blitz of the place. It went so well we're making plans to go back for the Memorial campaign.

The rest of the week was pretty much the silliness outlined at the beginning, at least until the Circuit Assembly came.

Which, I must say, was icing on the cake for an incredible week. After having been away from Guyana for two years (whoa.... two years? How can that be right?) it was weird suddenly jumping straight back into a Circuit Pioneer meeting, and immediately being surrounded by friends whom I hadn't seen in such a long time. I'm pretty sure I was hyperventilating from joy at one point...

Of course, I also got to stay with Mike and Lara Alston during the weekend, who are the ones that got me here in the first place, so that was awesome. Weirdest thing about that was that the last time I saw them, I was in the United States. Super weird.

Also saw some other old friends, plus new ones (I know y'all are reading this, so Hi!), but that's another story for another time.


And I must say, it was an amazing assembly. I don't like divulging details of assembly parts on the blog, if nothing else so I don't spoil it for everyone else, but ever spend an entire assembly (or more specifically, the pioneer meeting) feeling like it was written just for you?

Of course you do. Why'd I even bother asking?

Naturally though, the busy week was far from over. Monday was a Hindu holiday called Phagwah (or Holi, or the Festival of Colors), which essentially comprises of people running around spraying dye all over each other. I stayed inside most of the day at Micaiah's house, and thus was spared.

UNTIL....

The bus ride home.

Then my busy week was almost over. The final hurdle came in the form of the boats not running on Monday because of the holiday, so I didn't leave the coast for Orealla until late Tuesday. The problem there is that our meeting is Wednesday, so come that morning Brother Johnston and I had to write the entire meeting for that night.

I'm not even joking about the "whole meeting" thing. From the Congregation Bible Study to the student talks to the Service meeting, everything. In a few hours. So that was rough, but it's amazing what holy spirit can make happen.

So now I'm catching up with stuff (translation: gobs of laundry). As such, I have nothing further to add, beyond a picture of me and the three girls looking sad because the Assembly is over.