Dear
President Mehr,
Wow, can’t
believe it is February 7th!
Here is our report for January.
We loved our senior missionary conference in Trinidad. It was wonderful to meet all the other senior
couples. We learned and were inspired by the talks and information
presented. It will help us to be better
missionaries. The visit out to see the
scarlet ibis was especially a thrill, and it was so enjoyable to go for a nice
boat ride with everyone. There was a peaceful feeling being together with the
group, although we missed Sister Mehr.
The idea of
starting our own English and Maths CXC preparation classes at the church in
Guyana is very exciting to us. Our great
Guyana PEF Country Committee has a vision for being able to help the people
here. We spoke with President Gamiette,
as you suggested, and he was very interested in holding the "Maths" and "English" classes right after seminary and institute.
He thinks it would help in getting more students out to seminary and
institute if we made that a requirement for the CXC classes. He called Brother Rappeley who wondered about
the legality of having a public class in the church, and also whether private
schools would complain about the Church teaching their own classes. President Gamiette then called Elder Cornish
and told him about his interest in the idea and also about those two
concerns. Elder Cornish met with the
Area Presidency who decided that if the teachers are not being paid, and the students
are not paying for the class that there is not a problem holding the classes in
the church. Elder Cornish wants us to
turn it over to President Benn and the branch presidents to discuss and work
out the details, so that it belongs to them and it’s not the missionaries
running it. That is our plan right now. President Gamiette may come on the 17th
of February when we have our next PEF Country Committee meeting. He would also like to be there when the
Priesthood discusses it.
Planning and
organizing the humanitarian program, the “Vision for All Project”, that is
coming February 23rd has kept us very busy. It is challenging to figure out how to serve
the members and non-members. Getting enough
people out to the clinics and not too many is a fine line. Better having a few
too many than not enough is our motto, although having a mob of needy people is
not good. We are planning what to do
with all the people when they come to the clinics. We have been making vouchers for the branch
presidents to pass out and trying to get them to write down the names and phone
numbers of those to whom they give vouchers.
We want to make the 5 eye doctors and the other 17 people they are
bringing happy. Figuring out transportation for 22 people and their luggage
with 5,000 pairs of glasses to and from the airport, to church, to the clinics
etc. is challenging. They do not all come nor leave at the same time. We are planning lunches for them on three
days and figuring out how they will do their laundry. There will be three clinics; one in Linden,
two in Berbice, on Monday, February 25 and a three day clinic in Georgetown on
the 26th, 27th, and 28th. We
are signing up volunteers to help and the missionaries to teach. Plus we are building cardboard boxes with
dividers to organize the 5,000 pair of glasses, and planning how to set up the
exam rooms. The Cooks are helping when
they are around. We will be grateful when this project is over.
We are also
helping the Cooks with another project.
They ordered a container of humanitarian kits, clothing and shoes from
the SORT Center for the Guyana Council of Organizations for Persons with
Disabilities. The missionaries and YSA
will help unload the container and sort the clothes and shoes. Everything needs to be distributed out to 22
different groups.
We are
keeping up with our monthly contacts to our PEF participants and sorting out
all the little problems. There are several
who need to renew their loans, but are having problems meeting the PEF
standards. Three girls who were 150+
days behind in their payments have been making buck bead necklaces for Sister
Beecher. She is buying them to sell at
home, only none of them have made it home yet.
The sister missionaries and visitors are buying many of them. All three girls are caught up on their
payments now, and are making more necklaces.
Two people got their new loans approved, but they have decided to wait
for the CXC preparatory classes to start in the church. The best loan is no
loan.
We are
making progress with our piano students and are thrilled to have the six new
keyboards from the Harmon Grant. We need
to quit teaching every new person who shows up.
We need to finish up with the ones we are working with and then start a
new group. We are also going to shut the
door so all the primary kids and babies don’t come in. A few students are making good progress.
We also
finished training the Employment Specialists for all but two branches in Guyana
when we finished the training of our 5 Berbice Employment Specialists on
January 26th. The training lasts about ten hours. We LOVED training them using “The Career
Workshop.” We know such a powerful
program will definitely help a person get a job. We hope that the branch
presidents will have them tell about it in church and share how they can help
the members. We also hope they will
teach these classes to members of their branches.
Being here
in Guyana as missionaries is great. We
love our association with the other missionaries. We were sad to see Treseders leave, and
Summers will be right behind them. It
was fun to meet the Carters and Esplins, and we pray that they will be settled
soon in Berbice.
Oh, one more
thing. We attended the “World Interfaith
Harmony Week” where President Pooran gave one of the talks at the National
Cultural Center. We set up a table and
gave away pamphlets and Books of Mormon.
There were many other religions represented but we were proud of Pres.
Pooran and felt that the Church was represented well.
Thank you
President Mehr for all you do. The zone
conference was also great and the fireside for the youth. Sorry this is so long.
