Guyana Blog 3

Campbellville, Georgetown, Guyana
Wednesday Evening
January 30, 2008

After we completed the previous blog, we got a phone call at 9:30 Saturday night from “our” driver. His name is Roy and it seems that he has become the liaison between us and the local pastor, John Smith, who is also the superintendent of the Guyana Assemblies of God and has the final say about what goes on at the Bible School. Roy informed us that a car would pick us for church between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning. We had previously understood that there would not be a service for us to attend and so we had planned to just take the whole day off for a much-needed “day of rest”. After a brief attitude adjustment, we were looking forward to attending Central Assembly and hearing Pastor John speak. We understand that it is one of the largest churches in Guyana (if not the largest). When we arrived at 10:30 the service had already begun nearly an hour before, and we were escorted to a row of reserved seats near the platform. We had to dodge a lady standing in the aisle waving some sort of a small flag (she almost hit me in the head since she didn’t know I was coming up behind her, and I misjudged her movements as I passed by her). The church was nearly full and we felt conspicuous, but soon were distracted by 6 or 7 ladies in colorful long dresses who were up front, swaying and dancing to the music as part of their worship service. We were so upset that we hadn't brought our camera. I think we could have gotten some great and colorful photos and videos wiothout disturbing anyone. It seems that we had arrived on a special day of celebration – the pastor’s 67th birthday. For the next couple of hours different groups and members of the congregation spoke, sang or presented brief skits honoring the pastor. They finished the celebration portion of the service with a presentation of gifts where virtually each person in attendance (I think Al, Dorothy, Don and I may have been the only exceptions) lined up to present their birthday gifts, usually in the form of money, for which they in turn received a hug from their pastor who looks like a 6’6” football player. It’s hard to “guesstimate” the number of people, but it took them about a half hour for everyone to bring their gifts and get their hug. (I know because by this time I was definitely watching the time.) It was about 12:45 when the pastor started to preach and I guess I was expecting him to make it short and sweet and wrap it up by about 1:00. That was not to be. The closing prayer ended at about 2:15 (yes, that’s nearly 5 hours after the service began), and then we were invited to stay for refreshments!!! By then our backsides were numb from the very hard wooden, straight-backed benches and our stomachs were growling. Fortunately, our driver was ready to take us back to the hotel so they quickly put a piece of cake wrapped in a napkin and a small soda in each of our hands so that we could be on our way. When we got back to the hotel we immediately went to the hotel restaurant for lunch where we learned that they were shorthanded and that it would take awhile to get our meal. We finally got our lunch at 3:30 and wolfed it down before heading back to our rooms for some much-needed rest. Needless to say, it was an experience that we will not soon forget.

We have been putting in long days at the library, doing our best to get all of the books documented and into the library management computer system. Based on what we accomplished last week, we had expected to complete that phase of the work by this afternoon. However, we had not realized that the second half of the library was much more difficult to document since it contained books that required much more research, not just copying information that was readily available in the books themselves as was the case with the first half. We are now hoping to complete the documentation tomorrow and then undertake the daunting task of putting spine labels on about 4,000 of the approximately 6,000 books. Once that is done we will be able to begin arranging books in Dewey Decimal order. I doubt that we will be able to finish by Saturday night, since the last library we arranged took 3 people two full days to do about 2500 books. Don and Al have been training a couple of ladies, and it will be up to them and others to finish the task when we leave. One thing we have been able to do that has made our work easier is to take down all the plastic sheeting that had been protecting the books from dust. Now that the library is air conditioned the windows can be kept closed and the plastic won’t be necessary, but we had to get special permission to get rid of all that plastic. The library already looks so much better without it and now we have easy access to the shelves.

At this point we are planning to check out of our hotel Sunday morning and go to the mission house next to the Bible School until we leave for the airport. We are hoping that they will receive the Super Bowl broadcast which should help pass the time. We will take a taxi at about 10:30 Sunday evening for a 2:00 a.m. flight to Trinidad. We will have several hours to kill in the Port of Spain airport before our nonstop flight to Atlanta which arrives at about 1:00 EST. We will be exhausted I’m sure, but glad to be back.