A New Assignment, Mahaicony

Mahaicony

So I arrived in my new assignment. Mahicony. LOVE IT SO MUCH! I had a hankering to try something new and I was given the contact of a girl from Ohio. We emailed each other a few times and soon decided to write the Branch together and ask to be sent any where as travel partners, preferably the coast or jungle. Among our first emails sent to eachother she said "I am pinching my self! This is not happening!" I felt the same way. So exciting to have a travel parteener, its so much easier to solidify your plans. But what would she be like as a roomie?.... (To be continued...) LOL. So we did end up getting sent to the coast, the Mahicony congregation in Berbice. (There's far less mosquito born illnesses here, AKA Malaria and Dengue are a rarity!) I met Melanie and we have been good friends ever since. She has a great since of humor, a hundred and one faces and voices. We are laughing and being stupid all the time. We have had several girl room mates in and out of the house with us, we've enjoyed there company very much! Come back our Canadian friends Cassandra Grace Emma and Abby! We miss you guys! I love my new congregation. My new studies, the new territory. One of the most picturesque things we've enjoyed thus far is running up and down the dams of the rice fields at dusk with awesome sunsets and palm lined horizons. I've been given and have found some of the most wonderful women to study one of which has started attending some meetings and some of which even write out their scriptures in a separate tablet, and have accepted major basic doctrines as the truth! They are grasping the meaning of the scriptures and one has expressed her desire to bring up to her priest the differences that they've accepted as their own from the Bible. I'm so happy with my new assignment!

This week I had a friend visiting from my home town congregation in Milwaukie, Oregon. Its been great having Landon here! I am happy to have a partner in crime on this vacation to my old assignment: Lethem, Guyana! We're going back to the Brazil/Guyana boarder to pick up my left over life of 2 1/2 years worth of junk I had left and to get an extension stamp on my passport. I was frustrated at first only having received a 2 month stamp when they can allow you 3, but now I realize that all this really means is that I'll have company on the next boarder crossing (over Suriname's boarder) with my room mate Melanie Wilson. So its really no problem at all. You can read her fun informative creative blog at melanieinmahaicony.wordpress.com its her first time blogging and she's doing an awesome job!

The visit to Lethem has been great. The day we arrived we slept all day firstly and then the next day was the assembly, held at the kingdom hall. I had also gotten the same assembly the weekend before but I was feeling sick then, and got barely any thing out of it. So I got much more out of the assembly this week. My favorite illustration explained the need to keep your life simple and showed the scripture that says how we need to all carry our own torture stake. If we were going into the woods to carry out a tree trunk sized torture stake what else would we bring? Likely, very little, only exactly what we needed in order to survive and so that we would have the strength to carry the stake back out of the woods. So in this life following Jesus patten of life is a large responsibility and we need to be very selective with what extra burdens we choose to add to our lives, making sure we have the strength needed to carry out our Christian responsibilities. We had recorded talks from NY that were very polished speakers and great demonstrations. And I spent the day trying to keep it together, but was actually blubbering over having left the assignment and the congregation. Not that I wanted to go back but just seeing all that I'll be missing, and thinking about how much I love everyone there. When you move in Jehovah's organization though, you don't loose friends, just make back double friends, new ones.

Best part about the assembly? I found out my former Bible student made the morning session and I hugged the life out of her! Was so happy she'd been making a lot of the meetings lately, even the evening one! Soo sooooo proud of my Hosalina!

We're making a quick trip of this. Service a little here in Lethem, Guyana, a little in Bonfim, Brazil, where there is a brand new English group not even a year old getting started. There is work to be done around here.

There is a special pioneer couple that was just sent here to Lethem which made me so happy. I got an especially warm welcome from my little cubby. He saw me and looked like he was about to burst with excitement,when his little leg started jittering and a big smile on his face. Our finished kingdom hall is exciting to be in and the breeze is so wonderful. Our hall used to get so uncomfortably hot some meetings on some Sunday mornings you would have to fan your self all meeting long, including the songs. but now it is so comfortable and huge, with room for a lot of expansion.  

Seema

I met aunty Seema not long after I got to Mahaicony. She had stopped us on the road and asked us for a Bible study. She prepares her lesson well. When I went this week she told me after our study in thee Good News brochure that she had especially learn a lot on question 2 because she had always been taught that you either go to heaven or hell, and accepted this new-to-her teaching that the dead are unconscious. She has already accepted that the trinity is false and a few other of our main doctrines. She meditates and reasons on the scriptures on her own and comes to her own conclusions, then, when we study together she shares with me what she has already meditated on, on her own. This makes a world of difference. If only everyone would pre-study like that! If I lived in this country for Aunty Seema alone, it would be worth it. She is only a few years older than me but I call her 'Aunty Seema' and she calls me 'Aunty Cortny' back, lol. Aunty Seema already left the Hindu religion for "Christianity" a few years back, hopefully now is the time for the light to get brighter for her again.

Mion

Mion is a precious little soul that once again, sought us out. She saw Melanie and I walking down the street a long ways off, and waited for us to come, then she asked if we had any literature. She had been at her auntie's house when she studied with the witnesses and she liked how they shared things with her and hoped that we would 'share something' (study) with her too. So she was up for a Bible study. We started with her and when I gave her a hand shake good bye she pulled her self up for a hug. She was happy to have us. She immediately started telling us that her dad had been killed, knifed to death just a year ago over a scuff over the use of a bathroom. When we came a following time she started tearing up confessinng that during the week she'd missed us so much she had started to cry. She is a darling precious individual. I appreciate the precious opportunity to study with her!