Quarantine on the Corentyne

I have battled with how to handle this blog post for a considerable amount of time now. I try to be generally positive on here, but it's difficult to manage that when talking about 2020 and the events it's contained. Eventually it reached a point where I decided I wouldn't even try.

But then I remembered storm clouds. You know the expression "silver linings"? I looked up the full phrase, and it is "every cloud has a silver lining", or in other words, no matter how bad things seem, there is always a positive element to it. And I feel this expression fits our current situation perfectly, because I don't think any one of us would be crazy enough to say everything going on is good. And yet, there are still many things to be thankful for. Dwelling on the positive doesn't mean we're glad these things are happening, but at least we're finding the best part of it.

So with that in mind, let me share with you what's been happening in Orealla since all this insanity has gone down.

When the virus first hit Guyana, I had the incredible misfortune to actually be in Georgetown (the virus epicenter) at the time. Due to this, when I was preparing to return to Orealla, I was told that they were banning anyone who had been in or near Georgetown. I would have to wait two full weeks before I could come back in, or fourteen full days. That wasn't too big a deal, some brothers out on the coast were able to find me a place to crash for the time. It was comfortable, it had electricity, refrigerator, all that good stuff. Like was good.

But as my 14 day ban continued, Coronavirus starting building a stronger and stronger presence in Guyana, and it spread from just being in Georgetown to getting within one hour of where I was staying. The village council in Orealla got understandably worried, and eventually decided they would shut down all boats in and out of the village, so there would be no chance whatsoever of the virus reaching them.

Great idea. Sensible precaution. But I was still outside.

One night (the final night of my 14 days ban) a brother in Orealla calls me and tells me there is one last boat going into Orealla the following day. If I don't catch it I'm stranded. So I pack up and run down to the dock the next day. After some slight hassle on the boat where I had to try to find proof that I hadn't been in Georgetown for 14 days (which I managed to find!)I was allowed back in. And with that, the river shut down.

Obviously, the biggest question became how to do meetings? Many congregations are doing Zoom meetings, but we don't have the internet requirements for that. We considered downloading and distributing the streamed meetings, but then realized about half the congregation doesn't have the equipment necessary to display the videos.

Finally, the solution came. Everybody at least has an old touchpad style cell phone, so we found the maximum size conference call our cell provider allows (six phones total) and split the congregation up into four groups of six households. Each group would have to do their own meeting individually.

This lasted about a month and a half, when we discovered an odd but workable way of expanding the conference call so large we could fit the entire congregation on one call. Each hosting phone has to purchase a considerably expensive cell plan to allow it to happen, but thankfully we've gotten some overseas contributors who have enabled us to keep renewing this plan month after month. As of last week, we've even figured out how to tie in phones from other congregations (and even overseas!) to allow visiting speakers, which is giving the local congregation a nice break from hearing the same three voices every single Sunday, over and over and over again.

However, this left another problem. Field service. Letter writing doesn't work here because there's no mailboxes or delivery service. The only way we could deliver our letters would be if we were to go house to house leaving them in doors, but I'm sure you can see the problem with doing that.

Of course, with the swanky new phone plan six of us got, phone witnessing became an option, but there was a problem with that too. Even though practically everyone in Orealla has at least a cheapo cell phone, there's no phone directory. I personally have the numbers of only witnesses and the local hospital workers. So who can we call for field service?

Here's where our C.O. stepped in and worked out a deal for us with a city congregation. They have literally thousands of homes with landlines, whose numbers you can find on the internet and on a phone directory. So this congregation went through the work of compiling around 2,000 phone numbers and sending them to us, so we could do phone witnessing. So now, each of the six hosting phones (which all have unlimited talking time) simply call the others in the congregation who want to share in ministry for the day, and there we go. We remain in our homes, we get an almost endless supply of people to call, and all is well.

Now if you're wondering how we're getting on with the river shut down and no boats coming in bringing supplies, honestly we're fine. Orealla has only gotten electricity in the time that I've been here, so everyone is pretty skilled at living without conveniences. On top of that, they have also worked out a deal with the Suriname government (who has legal oversight of the river) to send out two boats a week now, with only necessary crew on board, and buy in bulk whatever supplies people in the village need or want. So far, this system has worked out great. The village hasn't even run out of Coke yet for crying out loud, so really we're having a pretty good time through this.

However, my coffee supply has nearly run out. There is that.

So in the face of everything going on, what has been the silver lining for us?

First off, even though we've had to overhaul how we do our meetings, our average attendance has seen a huge uptick. We went from averaging 58-59 on Sunday to getting 65-75 each week. Our Memorial attendance was an all time high, even without tying in our neighboring village. Numerous ones in the congregation who couldn't get out in the ministry because of being home bound, or easily getting sick in the intense sun, are now simply staying at home and doing phone witnessing on a weekly basis. Some have even been auxiliary pioneering throughout all of this. We've been cooperating more with other congregations, both through contact with brothers in the city congregation offering us phone numbers, and even through simply joining phone witnessing groups in other halls. I personally have worked now with people from about eight different countries now, and that's just off the top of my head. And instead of the congregation being subjected to public talks from the same three people all the time, they're now getting to hear a limitless influx of voices from basically anywhere in the world with phone signal. Just yesterday one of my studies was gushing about how nice it was to hear someone else for a change ("not that I don't enjoy your talks!" he hastily added).

We've even seen formerly opposed relatives of our studies start taking an interest because of seeing how well the Witnesses have been handling the situation, in stark contrast to the churches of the village (one of which has had members repeatedly get arrested because they kept sneaking into their church at night for services)

The biggest annoyance for us though was the cancellation of our Circuit Assembly (which happened literally one week before the day it was scheduled for). While not having the do the related work was nice, the disappointment was that a local brother was meant to get baptized at the assembly, and now wouldn't be able to.

But no fear! We did indeed get our silver lining!