Off to Guyana

We’re all packing now  in preparation for the 7 week outreach in Guyana; (back on the 19th June). Really looking forward to the change of scenery and to see what God has in store for us in this beautiful part of South America.

First of all we are staying in the YWAM Guyana Base which is not really built yet so we will be doing some construction work there as well as working locally in the churches leading youth group services aswell as working in the Hospitals working with the homeless and doing other community improvement projects.

A few weeks later we are moving on to catch the boat and hike to Imbaimadai where we will help again in the community with construction and painting, working with the poor and the sick. As well as travellign to a nearby Amerindian village where we work also.

Towards the end of the trip we will spend a few weeks deep in the jungle, working with tribes who have little contact with the outside world. Please be praying for us in our time here, it will be a fruitful and growing experience but very hard work.

Prayer points:

Protection during transportation, we will be doing a lot of hiking, some boat rides, travelling in very small planes.

Protection from the tropical diseases present there such as various forms of Hepatitis, Malaria, Dengue Fever among others.

Protection from the animals especially when we are travelling and living in the jungle interior of Guyana. There are many highly poisonous snakes aswell as other dangerous animals, of them all the one that scares us the most is this fish the Candiru Vampire Fish which can swim up your urethra and chew at your inside, sucking your blood and eating your tissue until you most likely hermorrhage to death.

Pray for unity of the team as this time will be testing and stretching to the max.

Guidance from the Holy Spirit in our words and actions, operating in the gifts and fruits of the Spirit so we can make the maximum impact in our time there.

Energy for us all as our days are packed full.

Local Outreach

For a week we went up to Mandeville where we stayed at the Carribean Christian School for the deaf. Each day we worked around the school helping in various different ways  painting the school bathrooms, sanding chairs and helping out around the schools farm among other jobs. I learnt a small amount of sign language which i used to speak to some of the kids, asking their name and telling them my own. In the afternoon each day we went into the community to chat to people, give out Bibles and have a postive effect there.Some of the highlights of the trip were meeting an old lonely lady who we had the opportunity to chat with and pray for as well as a young girl with post-natal depression who we met many times; we had chance to pray with her and talk with her about her issues.

Another one of the highlights for me was meeting the local churches youth group and having the chance to have a basketball game with them which was good times. They really opened up to us because of that and we had good chat with them all afterwards.

On Friday we returned to the local area around the base and worked on creating the foundations for a house for a poor family in the area. This was part of the Homes of Hope project, providing homes for those who cannot afford to build their own. This was easily the hardest work we had done by far, however all the team got stuck in with pickaxes, sledgehammers, jackhammers and spades and we shifted alot of rock and soil. Was great that the people who we were building the house for were there helping too and we could see they were very enthuasiastic. After a few hours many people from the local area turned up to help their neighbours with their new house.

Lead Us Up the (Blue) Mountain…. Trek to the Peak

In one of our weekends off we decided to make the most of it and hike up Blue Mountain to the highest point in Jamaica, Blue Mountain Peak. We caught the public bus from Montego Bay to Kingston which was crazy even before it began. Drivers from all the buses shout and do their best to persuade you to get on their bus and not anyone elses, once on the bus the driver does his best to fill every part of the bus with a person so he can get the most amount of money per trip possible.

When we got to Kingston we caught a taxi from there to a small village a quarter of the way up the mountain. The scenery was breathtaking as the taxi drove up the winding hills at incredible speeds. Most of the time there were no barriers between us and a sheer drop where we would have plenty of time to think about the bottom before we hit!

From the small village a quarter of the way up we caught a 4×4 up deep into the forests of the mountain to our lodge half way up.  We realised why we needed the 4×4 and could not take a normal taxi, we went through rivers up, dirt track roads; incredible experience. By this time it was night and looking down we could see the lights of Kingston far off in the night. Was incredile to drive through little village and hamlet communities so far and deep up in the forests of the mountains.  It was strange to see in these little communities in the middle of nowhere hat they had massive stacks of speakers pumping out the jamaican rhythms. We arrived around 11ish at a little lodge lit by only oil lamps in the rooms. We set our alarms for 1:30 to get up and make the peak in time for some rise. We managed to leave the lodge by 2am and made it to the peak by sunrise at around 6am. The sunrise, colours and scenery is something I could never forget. We were so high up some clouds rush over the mountains and many are below you as you stand on the peak. We watched the sun rise slowly from behind the clouds, was so perfect. Reminded me of the film ‘City of Angels’ where the Angels come every morning to watch and see the song of the sunrise as it peaks up from behind the horizon.

We stayed for about an hour before beginning the 3 hour hike down. On the way down we met a very strange donkey called Jordan with an obvious multiple personality disorder. We arrived back at the lodge around 10am after 7 hours of hiking in total.

Amazing what you can do when you wake up early.

Sons and Daughters not Orphans.

This was another great week of teaching, one of the highlights for me was further teaching on Adoption ( by Dave and Nancy Harper), by that mean how when an individual becomes a Christian they are adopted into God’s family. In society we see many people grow up with many problems from lack of parents or parents who do not know how to fulfill a loving parental role. From this we have so many people who are literally orphans or who have a orphan mentality:

• I don’t really know who I can trust.
• I’ll meet my own needs
• No one will care for me. I need to make it on my own.
• Let’s make a deal attitude. So often we say “this is unfair God I did this for you but this has happened to me!!!”
• I don’t think I can make it or I am a failure or I fear that I’m a failure.
• We seem to swing between the old son and the young son. Either backsliding and going the worldy way of Hedonism or swinging towards religiousness and legalism.
• We need to get the middle point here of not backsliding or getting legalistic.
• Often we compare with others, doubting God and feeling hard done by: orphan attitude.
• In each area of family, friends and authority figures we can take on lies and plant a seed of something that’s not true from Gods perspective. A tree of lies about our identity that can begin to grow.

As we begin to better understand how God thinks of us as sons and daughters, we can begin to recognise some of these attitudes and begin to understand and deal with them, realising our true identities and removing the lies right out from the roots.

In Hebrew the word orphan means a fatherless child.-

1) had no name and no deep sense of identity

2) No inheritance/ squandered an inheritance.

3) No sense of belonging or protection.

Orphans also:

1) Out of self protection start focusing on the faults of others.

2) Start nurturing and holding onto disappointments and discouragement

3) Lack of basic trust for authority and family

4) Fear of submission

5) Closed Spirit (not vulnerable)- an extreme example of this self-mutilation is that someone feels so emotionally deadened, they cut themselves to feel alive.

6) Independent Spirit (hide/deny pain)

7) Control those around me

8 ) Superficial relationships- push people, away don’t let them in

9) Alone/Isolated

10) I can’t trust God. Continual testing those around them, see if they still love them.

11) Constant search for father, mother figure.

12) Spiritual orphans find false comforts i.e. addictions/possessions/power

13) Can’t receive guidance- becomes works based- exhausting.

Ask God to show you the orphan attitudes in your life, so with his help you can better understand your worth and identity, who you are made to be. He says in
John 14:18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.“