Life that is truly life: Guyana Mission Trip-Part 2

Ahhh!!! Do you ever just feel incredibly behind on life?!! That's about where I am right now! I have so many posts in my brain that I'm so eager to work on, but I just haven't been able to justify spending the time to get them done. Slowly but surely, I suppose!

Well, I promised I would share a bit more about the boys' and Kenny's Guyana trip. Jake and Caleb wrote their own "Top Ten List" from their trip, and I thought it would be perfect to include it here (in their words). I think it sums it all up quite well. Here we go:

THE GUYANA TOP TEN LIST! by Jake and Caleb [not in actual order]

10. Learning to play the number 1 Guyanese sport Cricket, which all the children there love. We played it for hours with the kids

9. VBS! We had a great time playing games and sharing Christ with the boys and girls at Save R Kids with a Vacation Bible School. We taught them songs, told them stories, and the overall favorite moment…. SNACK TIME!! One of us writing this letter (eh, Jake), Decided to show off some disco moves, some of the kids joined in and before we knew what was happening, there was a dance party going on!

8. Getting to go on a jungle cruise for part of the last day and swim in pitch black water (Don’t worry, it’s black because of minerals.)

7. played a huge game of soccer err… football in the torrential rain! It was the kind of rain you see very rarely here, it was a blast, even though we kept losing the ball in a puddle…

6. Working on a new work shed for the orphanage was fun. We learned how to mix concrete, Guyana Style, (they don’t have Quick Crete there)

5. Getting to slaughter chickens! Every six weeks they have chicken killing day where they kill forty or so chickens. We all tried our hand at it and learned quickly how to kill, boil, pluck (with a machine), and gut a chicken. The best part of all is, while we were doing the whole thing, Caleb had a shirt on that said “Eat More Chicken!”

4. Getting to meet Brother Mike, and Mrs. Michelle, the people that run the orphanage. We got to talk to them mostly on the jungle cruise, where Brother Mike gave Caleb, being the youngest in the group, the nickname “Anaconda bait”

3. Just plain hanging out with the kids was fun, and many funny things happened. Actually on the first day when we were getting to know the kids, our Dad was standing at the foot of a coconut tree, he looked up and said, “I sure wish I could get one of those fresh coconuts.” One of the kids there, Bryan, (who by the way is getting adopted by our friends the Joiners) Said “I can get it for you.” My dad said that there was no way he could climb the twenty five foot tall tree with no branches until the very top. And Bryan said “Watch.” He began scrambling up the tree. Five seconds later, when Bryan was over half way up, my dad asked if he was allowed, he grinned and said “I am never allowed.” My dad told him to come down quickly! And all of us broke down laughing. We did end up getting a coconut too, when and older boy named Dan Rahge (who was allowed!) climbed up and got us one.

2. We had an incredible time sharing Christ with kids from the whole community through the sports camp. We had many Hindu boys accept tracts and talk with us about Jesus, and others also who didn’t tell us what religion they were. It was an awesome experience to say the least.

1. We had a prayer walk through the community where we passed out vitamins and asked people if we could pray for them. We didn’t have a single person to refuse. We had several people invite us in their houses to pray. We had one woman who asked us to pray for her child with autism, and begged us to come back next year and pray in her house. It was an incredible time to talk with God.

I'm a details kind of person, so I wish I could share tons more about each of these that the boys told us, but I suppose this summary will have to do! Here are a few more pictures from their time in Guyana. Again, thanks to Eye4Media and other friends for the pictures!