Travel Diary - Day Eight

Day Eight – Welcome to Guyana

Up, shaved, showered and ready for church in my Sunday best by 8:30am. I decided not to wear the tie I had bought in BA and was pleased with my choice – it was too hot and besides, only some of the people at the church were wearing them J.

The church we attended is a lovely wooden building that would seat about 250-300 depending on the temperature. It was two blocks away from where we are staying and we were picked up by taxi to get there – go figure. (we insisted on walking back) The service was a very traditional hymn sandwich with communion, with three main exceptions: the notices literally took over 30 minutes, the young people led a set of singing that included several choruses I know, arcapella and with a most unusual, but rather enjoyable rhythm, and there were something like 11 hymns sung – Good Grief! I thought a standard hymn sandwich was bad – this lasted 2½ hours in the heat and most of us were really struggling hard to stay awake.

The congregation would have been around 150 people with children and young people and after the service a good proportion of them wanted to shake our hands. The minister is a retired judge and he had a most interesting delivery. It was quite slow and rhythmic and I am quite sure contributed to our sleepiness, but at the same time it made it extraordinarily easy to listen to. After the service we were taken to the pavilion at the back of the church and given a drink – melon juice I think – a piece of pizza and a cupcake. Some of the elders came and shared the meal with us and we talked, at my table at least, about some of the history of the church in Guyana, a most interesting conversation.

Walking back to the hotel we had a small lunch (I had curried potatoes – too hot for meat dishes which were the alternative) having already had something to eat and then I headed for bed again – I slept for nearly 4 hours but when I woke up I was beginning to feel somewhat more human. In the meantime I had managed to figure out how to send international texts, I had the email working – we have wi-fi in our rooms – and life was coming right.

Dinner was a state affair with lots of church dignitaries, dressing up and interminable speeches. I sat at a table with two pastors and one of the pastor’s wives. I was quizzed within an inch of my life about what I do, what I think about the church, where I think the church in NZ is headed, etc. I’m sure you can imagine most of the rest. Along the way I learnt a fair bit about what they were doing as well. Dinner was chicken and rice followed by jelly and icecream. Quite nice icecream too. I got to meet the national youth director and he promptly booked me in to speak to a group of leaders on Friday. I’m not sure how that’s going to fit with the rest of our programme, but it would be cool if we can make it work. The rest of the dignitaries formed quite a bunch and included a former government minister of education, the retired judge who had preached in the morning and a number of other, equally formidable men and women. This might be a smallish church in a smallish country but they certainly aren’t lacking in smarts!! I would be happy to spend time learning from any of them.

After dinner we headed for bed. Before I shut down for the night I noticed David was on Skype and so I called him and we chatted for 20 minutes. He sagely told me the best way to deal with the heat was to turn off the airconditioning. That’s fine, but our class in the morning was in an airconditioned room – what can you do?? Ah well – I’ll turn mine off and put up with the rest.