Travel Diary - Day Twenty Five

Day Twenty Five – Treasure Hunt
Wednesday 23 Sep 09

We had a meeting at 9am with Lifeline, an organisation that is quite different to the NZ Lifeline. Here in Guyana Lifeline is concerned with helping people who are affected by HIV/AIDS – that includes those who are infected, their dependants and those who are left dealing with things when they die. There are an amazing number of orphans here in Guyana and many (but certainly not all) are AIDS orphans. Lifeline provides services that range from walk-in testing, counselling and medical support to day-care where patients can leave their children while visiting the hospital or receiving counselling or even while they are working, educational programmes, training for work and extra classes in literacy and school subjects for children.

The proliferation of extra classes for children outside of school is quite stunning. NZ has a two or three organisations like Kip McGrath that provide tuition for a relatively small number of children. Here it is almost the norm for children to receive extra tuition if their parents can afford it. The reason for this is plain when you understand that class sizes of 60-70 are not uncommon. Felissa’s form class has 67 students in it and most of the other classes she teaches are of similar size. As a result the teaching process is kind of abbreviated compared with what we are used to in NZ. That said, it is remarkable how many students receive study scholarships from overseas and prove to be near the very top in their chosen fields.

From Lifeline I got some directions from Keith and headed into town to purchase some more supplies for the training session in the evening. You may perhaps imagine my amazement at the fact that after walking into stores for nearly 2 hours I had found exactly one store that sold those 20cm diameter plastic balls that are so great for playing youthgroup games. Of course we won’t go into the fact that I was reduced to miming for what I wanted because my pronunciation of the word ball made absolutely no sense to anyone I spoke to. How hard can it be to say ball??? Very hard apparently!!! Eventually I was able to get what I wanted and from there I caught the bus home.

I spent most of the afternoon doing prep for the training session. It was my last one and I wanted to do it well.

We headed out to Sophia about 6:45pm. There is no real point in going any earlier because a lot of people don’t finish work until 7pm and there have been quite a few adults attending the trainings. Actually, I think the training is pitched just right for many of the adults who cannot read well if at all and who have had little exposure to any kind of thinking about leadership. When we got there we found about 30 people, young and old. A few more turned up later. I must be a drawcard – mostly because I look so weird I think .

We started off with the balloon game with everyone sitting facing each other in two rows trying to bat the balloon to their end of the row. Everyone appeared to love it. From there I began a teaching session on reading a Bible story for all it is worth. I was using the story of Jesus healing the paralysed man in Matthew 9. I read it through twice, just asking them to listen. Then I asked them to listen for who the characters were in the story and read it a third time. We worked our way through that and spent a little time talking about how each character was related to the others and then it was time for another game.

This time it was the peg game – everyone got three pegs and then ran around trying to protect their pegs while collecting others. Everyone got into it and had a great time. I didn’t let it run too long and it went really well. Then we looked at the story again and asked the question, ‘Who said what?’ That took a little prodding but by the end of the story they were starting to get the idea. They so need to go through the process another 3 or 4 times to get it fixed!! It was interesting as I went watching and listening to the young people and adults processing the ideas. There are some young people particularly who God is working in quite powerfully. When you understand some of their backgrounds you have to gaze in wonder at the way God uses the small, the weak and the powerless to do his will. I am humbled by the faith of these people.

Game three was Bridge Ball. Everyone stands in a circle with their feet spread. The idea is to throw a ball under the ‘bridge’. That went with raucous laughter and it was remarkably hard to get them to stop. We ended the study by asking the question, ‘What does this mean for me?’ It was quite wonderful to have young and old alike coming up with little pieces that held special meaning for them. We ended with prayer and then came my test. That’s me being tested, not them!

Felissa has a small dance group she has been preparing to do some dances for the church. They had asked if they could do a dance for me. That was fantastic. What wasn’t so fantastic was that the girls were going to perform once and then I had to get up and join them for the second go-around. Ahhh, the things I do… Fortunately it was a song I knew, ‘Over the mountains and the seas,’ I’m not sure if that is the title or just the first line, but I knew the words and the tune. BONUS! Second fortunate was that the dance was interpretive and so with a little thought I could work out what came where. That meant I could concentrate on making a fool of myself while also fitting in with what the girls were doing. It got a ton of laughs and was really quite fun. Once I had got out of the way the girls did a second dance that was also well done. Everyone had a great time and although I closed off with prayer when I was asked to it seemed no-one wanted to leave – always a good sign.

Eventually, having missed the first bus we found one coming down the road and set off home. We had to change buses halfway – that’s just how the routes work – and Keith picked us up fish and chips for dinner. The four of us just sat around and chatted over dinner – a really nice way to end the day.