Monday, Terri and Joe and I set out to preach once again on the river. Between it being Terri’s first experience at river work, and the fact that I was going to drive the boat all day for the first time, it was bound to be an eventful day.
When preaching along the river, you are driving as fast as you can along the river and then you see a small creek or canal going off the river, so you slow down and double back to take a second look to try and figure out if there is anything up it. Sometimes you are able to see a hut at the end of it, or you look to see if the brush has been trimmed along it, or you just decide to go check it out. Then you have to drive into this narrow opening and if the tide is running in or out on the river, you have this cross current to try and compensate for. The creeks and canals are not much wider than the boat, and if the tide is not high, they are often too shallow for having the motor down, so you have to paddle in and out. All rather stressful on a rookie driver.
When we were first getting started, we were a bit ahead of the tide, and we had to walk a good bid along the banks of the canals and creeks to get to the houses, but as the day progressed we were able to drive up to most of them.
At one house (that’s using the term rather loosely), Joe and I met a man and his wife. The man couldn’t read but the wife was able to somewhat. I asked if they had a bible and they said they didn’t. I shared a few things with them from the bible and gave them the brochure, “You Can Be God’s Friend”. I had the wife read a little from the first lesson to let them see how to use it, and so I could commend her on her reading. When we got to the first scriptural citation, I mentioned it was too bad they didn’t have a bible because the bible was the true authority. Joe asked them if perhaps they had an old bible, and they said they did. We encouraged them to get it, so they could see how to use the bible along with the brochure. Imagine our surprise when the woman came back carrying a black covered New World Translation! It turned out he had gotten it from his father who had lived at Matthews Ridge, where there used to be a congregation.
Towards the end of the day, Terri and I went to a hut where we were met by a woman who came out to greet us. She shook our hands and then she gave each of us a kiss. It was very unusual, since the people here are not apt to be very affectionate. There was a large extended family living there and none of them could read. They said they had a girl who was at school who could read a little, so we left some material for her to read to the whole family. Before we left, they had one of the men climb a coconut tee to chop down some water coconuts for us. They are the immature coconuts which are filled with a lot of ‘water’ as opposed to the smaller amount of milk in a ripe one. They also picked a bunch of fresh limes to send with us.
Now for the less pleasant stuff! At about 2:30 it started to rain. Now all the small poles that they lay out as a walkway to get across the mud were wet and very slippery. Also when you would be driving in the boat, you would just get soaked. Between the soaked and the wind from the driving, I was shivering very hard. Once we started the hour and a half ride back, it started to really pour, so I was soaked to the skin.
We arrived back at Kumaka just as it was getting dark. At this point Joe was driving and he was going to pull up by a dock so we could unload everything from the boat. He told me to go ahead on the bow to help guide the boat in. I forgot one of the first rules of boating; You never reach out to grab hold of something, rather you wait for it to come to you!! As I reached for the side of the boathouse, the boat went the other way, or because I reached for the wall the boat went the other way. Which ever, the boat went the other way, and I went head first into the water. The good news was I didn’t get wet, since I was already soaked. After I had climbed up onto the dock, both Terri and Joe started laughing uncontrollably.
After we had finally gotten home and I had showered (with no warm water) and gotten into dry clothes, I mentioned to Terri how warm it felt out as we were walking up to the main house for dinner. All in all, just another day in Guyana.
