Good News! I have just finished putting three Bethany Medical Missionary College videos online. These videos give a glimpse of what life is like down in Guyana at the school. You'll notice that these videos are a bit dated. All that means is that God has done incredible things in a short amount of time.
Building The College
Heart Of A Samaritan
Bethany Update
2008-01-27
2008-01-08
Our Future
Left: Current Wood Shop / Storage / Laundry room / Sand pit.
Lauren and I enjoyed our time in Guyana so much that we've decided to go back for a little more extended stay. We are planning on heading back some time in the spring and staying for a few years. While there I'm going to be in charge of the wood shop, and Lauren is going to teach a bit and look after the gardens.
The Wood shop is a building that currently only exists in our imaginations, but is becoming a reality thanks to people like you. We are planning on building an approximately 2500 square foot building to house our woodworking tools that currently reside in and under the boys dorm. This shop will allow us to build furniture for the campus, and also support the college.
Currently BMMC is entirely funded through private donations. The goal of the woodshop project is to achieve self sufficincy for the day to day operating costs of the college. The cost for one student is about $100 a month, of which they are asked to pay $25. However, most of the students cannot afford this. The woodshop will allow students to work for thier tuition and help support the college in its mission efforts.
If you'd like more information about this project, or would like to donate, please contact us.
Septic System Project
Just before we left Guyana we had the opportunity to work on a septic system. I'm glad to say that it was successful and there are now flushing toilets all over campus. Indoor showers are ready for tiling, now that's progress!
Septic system pictures
Septic system pictures
The Gravel Saga
Here's a little story about life in Guyana, and trying to get things done.
We needed gravel for the people coming down to build our septic system. Gravel is not native to our part of Guyana, so it has to be imported from elsewhere. Gilbert, the schools director/principal/guy in charge, called the gravel company nearest to us. They were out of gravel. Big problem, right? Well, no, because the gravel barge was coming with a load of gravel just now. note: Just now is a Guyanese expression that means, anytime between now and the Second coming of Jesus. First it was going to be there Thursday, so we called on Thursday and talked to the man who owned to company. There was no gravel barge at the dock, and he didn't know of any coming in in the next few weeks. HUH? So he called the barge and found out that, oh, a barge with 500,000 pounds of gravel is indeed coming. That sounds like something the boss might need to know of to me.
Well, Friday came along, and we were told by Gilbert, be ready to go fetch gravel at any time, because we want to use the excavator to load it into our boat right off the barge, and not have to load it by hand. The barge was "scheduled" to be at the dock Friday about noon. Friday came and went, no barge. When Saturday night, we called to gravel company and found out that the barge had come and left on Sabbath, but they had set 10 000 pounds right at the dock edge for us, and we could pick it up anytime Sunday.
Sunday morning came and we boarded our small boat with all our gravel hauling tools. That is, bags, buckets, shovels, and lunch. The standard drill is to shovel the gravel into buckets, pass those down to the boats, dump it, and repeat. Always repeat. We left campus at 5am, just when the sky is getting light, and headed down in our nice new aluminum mission boat to Supanam. A boat had been arranged to meet us at 6 am there, load the gravel and 30 bags of cement and rebar, steam back up to the Village of Bethany by around noon, load gravel onto our tractor trailer, make a few trips back and forth the 1.5 miles to campus, and be done by 5 or 6pm. That was the "plan". When we reached Supanam, at 6am, we didn't see the boat we had ordered waiting for us. Puzzled, we called Tiger, the boat owner. Well, the boat was in Parika, about 2 hours away, the night before, but it was supposed to be there for us. So Tiger called the guys who were supposed to have met us. Half an hour later we get the "official" word: the boat left Parika an hour ago and should be to us in another hour.
An hour went by, no boat. We call Tiger, "Well, the guys were up drinking rum all night, and slept in. The boat is still in Parika, but should be leaving just now, and both boats will be there in an hour." Now at this point I started to get sceptical. If the boat hasn't left on a 2 hour journey yet, how is it supposed to get there in one hour. But even with the huge logical hole, there was still a chance one boat would actually be there by 10:30. Tigers other boat was come from another direction, and it was claimed to be actually moving toward us at this time. So we waited another hour. In the mean time our 30, 100 pound sacks of cement arrived, and we had to stack them on the dock, for lack of any boat to put them in.
At 10:30 we called Tiger, and his new "official word" was that the boats would both be there at noon. Fool us once, shame on you, fool us 3 or more times, shame on us. We decided to drive back up river about 20 minutes and grab a smaller boat that we knew for certain was available. We grabbed the boat and put our 40 horse engine on it, and slowly steamed back to Supanam. We finally reached the gravel dock about 11:30, and everyone was eager to get some gravel in the boat. Just one thing though, the big catapillar excavator could load it all for is in about 10 minutes, saving us a lot of work, but we had to wait for it to finish another job first. So we sat around for another hour. While we sat and ate lunch we saw Tiger's boats come into Supanam, just when he said the would at 12. Oh well. We got our boat loaded down with around 10 tons of gravel, and the driver was instructed to "keep near shore, and be ready to run it aground if it starts to sink". Not an idle caution, let me assure you. When we finally got on our way we ended up towing the aluminum boat filled with 2500 lbs of cement behind the boat filled with 20 000 lbs of gravel. All with our 40 horsepower engine, against the tide. Kind of slow going. I got the easy job of making sure everything was alright in the cement boat, keeping things dry, tossing bags of cement overboard like a madman if water started coming in over the sides, you know, the usual.
Meanwhile, everyone else was loading 100 bags with 100lbs of gravel, so we could load it onto the tractor that was waiting for us. When we finally reached Bethany, we unloaded bags like crazy, well, as crazy as you can with a 100 pound bag of gravel. As soon as we got it into the trailer, about 5 feet off the ground, we had to dump it and send the bags back for another round. We worked hauling and filling oversized bags of gravel until about 7pm, Well after dark. As we
worked another boat carrying our guests pulled up to unload them. Louis, the septic guru, was thoroughly appalled at the amount of work we had to do to get something as simple as gravel to our work site.
Just a typical day in the life of a missionary in Guyana though.
We needed gravel for the people coming down to build our septic system. Gravel is not native to our part of Guyana, so it has to be imported from elsewhere. Gilbert, the schools director/principal/guy in charge, called the gravel company nearest to us. They were out of gravel. Big problem, right? Well, no, because the gravel barge was coming with a load of gravel just now. note: Just now is a Guyanese expression that means, anytime between now and the Second coming of Jesus. First it was going to be there Thursday, so we called on Thursday and talked to the man who owned to company. There was no gravel barge at the dock, and he didn't know of any coming in in the next few weeks. HUH? So he called the barge and found out that, oh, a barge with 500,000 pounds of gravel is indeed coming. That sounds like something the boss might need to know of to me.
Well, Friday came along, and we were told by Gilbert, be ready to go fetch gravel at any time, because we want to use the excavator to load it into our boat right off the barge, and not have to load it by hand. The barge was "scheduled" to be at the dock Friday about noon. Friday came and went, no barge. When Saturday night, we called to gravel company and found out that the barge had come and left on Sabbath, but they had set 10 000 pounds right at the dock edge for us, and we could pick it up anytime Sunday.
Sunday morning came and we boarded our small boat with all our gravel hauling tools. That is, bags, buckets, shovels, and lunch. The standard drill is to shovel the gravel into buckets, pass those down to the boats, dump it, and repeat. Always repeat. We left campus at 5am, just when the sky is getting light, and headed down in our nice new aluminum mission boat to Supanam. A boat had been arranged to meet us at 6 am there, load the gravel and 30 bags of cement and rebar, steam back up to the Village of Bethany by around noon, load gravel onto our tractor trailer, make a few trips back and forth the 1.5 miles to campus, and be done by 5 or 6pm. That was the "plan". When we reached Supanam, at 6am, we didn't see the boat we had ordered waiting for us. Puzzled, we called Tiger, the boat owner. Well, the boat was in Parika, about 2 hours away, the night before, but it was supposed to be there for us. So Tiger called the guys who were supposed to have met us. Half an hour later we get the "official" word: the boat left Parika an hour ago and should be to us in another hour.
An hour went by, no boat. We call Tiger, "Well, the guys were up drinking rum all night, and slept in. The boat is still in Parika, but should be leaving just now, and both boats will be there in an hour." Now at this point I started to get sceptical. If the boat hasn't left on a 2 hour journey yet, how is it supposed to get there in one hour. But even with the huge logical hole, there was still a chance one boat would actually be there by 10:30. Tigers other boat was come from another direction, and it was claimed to be actually moving toward us at this time. So we waited another hour. In the mean time our 30, 100 pound sacks of cement arrived, and we had to stack them on the dock, for lack of any boat to put them in.
At 10:30 we called Tiger, and his new "official word" was that the boats would both be there at noon. Fool us once, shame on you, fool us 3 or more times, shame on us. We decided to drive back up river about 20 minutes and grab a smaller boat that we knew for certain was available. We grabbed the boat and put our 40 horse engine on it, and slowly steamed back to Supanam. We finally reached the gravel dock about 11:30, and everyone was eager to get some gravel in the boat. Just one thing though, the big catapillar excavator could load it all for is in about 10 minutes, saving us a lot of work, but we had to wait for it to finish another job first. So we sat around for another hour. While we sat and ate lunch we saw Tiger's boats come into Supanam, just when he said the would at 12. Oh well. We got our boat loaded down with around 10 tons of gravel, and the driver was instructed to "keep near shore, and be ready to run it aground if it starts to sink". Not an idle caution, let me assure you. When we finally got on our way we ended up towing the aluminum boat filled with 2500 lbs of cement behind the boat filled with 20 000 lbs of gravel. All with our 40 horsepower engine, against the tide. Kind of slow going. I got the easy job of making sure everything was alright in the cement boat, keeping things dry, tossing bags of cement overboard like a madman if water started coming in over the sides, you know, the usual.
Meanwhile, everyone else was loading 100 bags with 100lbs of gravel, so we could load it onto the tractor that was waiting for us. When we finally reached Bethany, we unloaded bags like crazy, well, as crazy as you can with a 100 pound bag of gravel. As soon as we got it into the trailer, about 5 feet off the ground, we had to dump it and send the bags back for another round. We worked hauling and filling oversized bags of gravel until about 7pm, Well after dark. As we
worked another boat carrying our guests pulled up to unload them. Louis, the septic guru, was thoroughly appalled at the amount of work we had to do to get something as simple as gravel to our work site.
Just a typical day in the life of a missionary in Guyana though.
2008-01-02
It Starts
Hello and welcome to our new blog. While I'm not a huge fan of the word blog, I've decided to start one so Lauren and I can centralize our email updates and pictures into one conveniant spot.
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