Many hats

May 20, 2013

When it rains, it pours!  Well, it is the rainy season here.  A couple mornings last week we came home drenched from our morning walks.  The Guyanese don't like to be out in the rain, so we walk pretty much alone and it's nice and peaceful in the Botanical Gardens.

We also feel a little drenched from all our new assignments and projects.  When it rains, it pours.  

At our zone conference, President Mehr asked us to work with three branches.  We were already working with LaGrange and Vreed-en-Hoop, so now we have added Diamond.  We were to ask the Branch President for a blessing, attend the branch council meetings and do our best to help, and ask the branch president for 10 families to visit.  We have had wonderful blessings from two of the branch presidents, and attended two branch council meetings, and the branches are working on ways we could go with someone to visit people.

We spoke with the Cooks, our humanitarian missionaries.  We are working on a project with them and their leaders.  They don't have a replacement yet, and they go home the end of July, so their leaders asked them to ask us if we would be willing to be trained in the humanitarian procedures, and carry on with the projects they have to finish, and then train their replacements.  So we said okay.

We received an email from Elder Gamiette, the Caribbean leader for Seminaries and Institute asking if we have had our Educational Devotional.  That is the new PEF Planning for Success Fireside.  We hadn't, so we need to work with our district leaders, Seminary and Institute people, and our district employment and education specialist to get the fireside going.

Elder Beecher has been working with a District President in Barbados, trying to help him get a PEF loan.  It has been an amazing process since they don't have PEF in Barbados.  Our PEF leaders in the D.R., Elder Cornish of the area presidency, Bro. Negron in Puerto Rico, Elder Gamiette in Guadaloup, plus at least 5 people in the PEF office in S.L.C.  have been emailing back and forth for three weeks trying to help him.  I think the loan will be approved in S.L.C. this next week.

Elder and Sister Monson from Trinidad were here a couple weeks ago to train us in the YSA program.  We set up meetings for them and we are working still with the YSA, but now we know what we are doing.  They taught us to come up with a gospel application for the activities.  It's great.  We are also encouraged to help the youth groups to make sure they are using the new curriculum.  The Monsons are coming back this week to help with the big Water Fight activity.  We are excited to have them come back.

Elder and Sister Dunford came yesterday, they are the Public Affairs missionaries in the D.R.  We picked them up at the airport and took them to visit the D'Oliveiras.  The Dunfords are working on a new video to introduce the church to government leaders.  They interviewed Sister D'Oliveira and took pictures of her and her chicken pens.  She is very industrious and a great planner.  She did well in her video.

Brother Negron was here from Puerto Rico at the same time that the Monsons were here.  He is our Employment Leader.  We set up meetings in Berbice and Georgetown with the Employment Specialists we have trained.  The Guyana LDS Employment website has just been launched.  He would like us to get all the PEF participants, and all the members signed up on the website plus, have them fill out the Resource Surveys so they can mentor each other.  The plan is to have wifi in the branches soon, so maybe we can do one branch at a time as they get their wifi.

We are still teaching piano lessons.  The branch council meetings have put a crimp in our piano lesson schedule, but today our students were willing to wait for us to get out of our meeting for their lesson.  We have between five and eight piano students.  They are coming along slowly.  Two of them were Laman and Lemuel in our play.  

We are working regularly with our PEF participants, checking on them and helping them with their auto debit accounts, and cheering them on.  

Our CXC preparation classes that we have been working on since January started this week.  We have Math and English classes in four of the branches.  In a month or so we will start some computer classes.  The teachers are qualified, and we hope they and the students will be committed.  We are so hopeful that they will go well.

We hope we can keep our heads above water!  We are learning much and especially enjoying the people who come to visit and the people here.  

April Report to President Mehr

April Report to President Mehr

Last Wednesday President Khan gave Sister Beecher and me a blessing.  One thing that stands out in my blessing is that I might be able to understand.  I am looking forward to better understanding.  His branch council meets the second Sunday and he would like input from his branch council as to the ten names he will assign us to visit. President Chin's branch council meets the 4th Sunday. Their branch council focuses on three things: visiting and home teaching, temple preparation, and the last one is really a good one (when I remember what it is I will let you know). He wanted to wait until Sunday to give us the blessings.  President Bharat we have yet to contact. A branch member whose family was baptized the same Sunday as President Bharat and his family died last Saturday. Circumstances were not conducive to talk to him about your assignment. Which leads me to a clarifying question. I assumed that the 10 members from each branch assigned to us would be people that we would work with on a more-or-less on-going basis and not just a one time visit.  Is that correct?

We loved having the Monsons here and they are wonderful teachers, examples, morale boosters. They are tenacious and just what we needed.  They really inspired those YSA and Youth and their leaders. Hopefully on their next visit they might be able to visit with more people and teach those principles that are life-changing. Brother Negron came and we met with many of employment specialists. Hopefully we can get that moving faster now that they have a Guyana ldsjobs.org web site.

President Sampson from Barbados has been very appreciative of efforts to help him secure a PEF loan.  We are waiting to hear the final word on that. I think we will hear soon from SLC. I am totally amazed at the number of people involved in that process. I am grateful that Elder Cornish threw his powerful support behind the efforts to secure the loan. 

The wheelchair humanitarian project was a great success. The Spencers were delightful and professional. They were such hard workers.  The Cooks always work so hard and accomplish so much. This mission is very fortunate to have such incredible missionaries.  They have such a vision of what can happen and then work to make good things happen. The Cooks have been keeping us informed of projects they would like us to help with whenever the projects are ready, before and after they leave.  We will do our best to take care of things.

Our CXC classes will be starting next week.  We have about 60 members signed up to take the classes.  We will have math and English taught in four branches.  There will be three computer classes in Georgetown.  We are amazed and humbled at the willingness of the teachers to volunteer their time to serve others.

We were inspired by Elder Cornish and enjoyed having his family and you and Sister Mehr here to visit.  We were grateful for Elder Cornish's help with our projects to support the CXC classes.  We hope the projects are approved soon.

Zone Conference was great, as well.  We were grateful for the direction you gave us to work with the branches and hope that we can be effective in fulfilling our assignments.

We work regularly to keep up-to-date with our PEF participants and to encourage them.  We are grateful for the loving attitude the PEF leaders taught us to be a support and help to them.

Things are going well.  We enjoy our morning walks with the Beutlers.  We accomplish a lot of networking during that time.

We love the members here.  We have really enjoyed working with the YSA.   Our keyboard students are slowly progressing.  We like living here in the Penthouse and having company for dinner.

We are looking forward to another Senior Missionary Conference in July.

Love,

Elder and Sister Beecher