Well where to begin? How can I sum up the past two months in a blog post that isn't going to take hours to read?! I think I can start by saying God is faithful and He showed His faithfulness from the beginning to the end. I wrote a short blog on our time in Guyana, so I am going to start from our time in Suriname. Originally we were only in transit through Suriname to French Guiana, but an expected change of events led to us getting the opportunity to stay in Suriname for a week. After about 14 hours of travel on a bus from Guyana we arrived in Suriname. During our time there we worked with a man named Otis a Jamaican who is in charge of YWAM Suriname. His passion for Suriname was infectious. While there we worked in schools, did evangelism, and did some prayer walks. It was a week of slowing down and resting a bit after a full week in Guyana and before a full five weeks in French Guiana. The hardest thing was constantly being surrounded by a very worldly mindset. There were sexual posters everywhere and men constantly hitting on us and shouting profanities as we would walk by. Luckily the guys on our team took good care of us!
Suriname was probably my favorite country we worked in. It's a Dutch colony, but some people speak English which made it easy to communicate in stores and on the streets. Also, our house was within walking distance to town, so we could go anytime we were free. Here's some pictures of Suriname!
Our contact Otis
Kyle with some kids
Doing a skit on the street
School time
Make a funny face
Attack Kyle
Kid's ministry
Kids ministry
Doing a drama
After our week came to a close we jumped on a bus that drove us three hours to the Suriname border where this man and his boat was waiting to take all 12 of us backpacks and all across the canal to French Guiana
French Guiana is where we spent our next five weeks. Our biggest focus was kids ministry. Almost every day we held a program in our front yard and would on average have about 30 kids show up. But first, let me give a little bit of an overview of French Guiana. It is actually an overseas department of France. This means they do everything exactly like France, they even fly the French flag! Also, their national language is, you guessed it, French! This was something I struggled with. In high school I took Spanish so in Spanish speaking countries I can kind of tell what's going on, but I had no background in French at all, so most of the time I had no clue what anyone was trying to say to me. Towards the end I could pick up words, but I really had to concentrate. We stayed in a small village about two hours from the city called Iracoubo.
This was our house. Cute, but what you can't tell is that there is no electricity and that is how it was the whole five weeks we were there. It gets dark around 5:30 so we would eat dinner by candle light and head lamp. We had to find ways of entertaining ourselves that didn't include electronics, so we would play card games and a guy on our team, Kyle, would read The Chronicles of Narnia to us.
This is our front yard where we held kids ministry
This is where us girls slept
Our closet
Our balcony was usually covered in clothes!
Our living conditions were actually a lot better than I expected. Yes, at first and towards the end it was challenging, but it was our little home we got to come back to at the end of each night and spend time together!
As for ministry, we were going all the time. We did things like door to door evangelism where we met some incredible people. The French Guyanese are very hospitable people always giving and taking care of us. My favorite memory of French Guiana happened one of our first ministry days. It was a rainy day and we were walking around chatting with people. Our last house we came to they invited us in. We made friends with a teen boy named William and his Grandma. As we were talking we told them our names (all of this is happening in French, but Tim, a guy on our team was translating) A girl in our group, Lina, had lost a turtle bracelet that morning that she had gotten during lecture phase in Belize. When she said her name William's Grandma lit up. She got face down on the floor and started reaching under the couch we were sitting on. At this point we were all looking confused at each other. After a bit she pulled out a turtle its name was Lina...say what!? As we were playing with the turtle my eye caught the Grandma's cross necklace and I commented on it telling her it was beautiful. She lit up again, ran out of the room and brought back a bag. She dumped it on the floor and out fell a few hand made bracelets, she told us to pick one and she wanted to give it to us for free. As we were picking out our bracelet, Tim said, "Lina what kind of bracelet did you lose this morning?" Lina replied, "My turtle bracelet." Our eyes all lit up. We were playing with a turtle named Lina picking out a hand made bracelet. Sounds small, but in that moment I knew God would be taking care of us the next couple of weeks. When we returned to our house more of our team mates greeted us with bags of fruit that people had given them for us to eat. This was just one of the many times God provided for us. Time after time, He helped us as a team and me personally. In the times where I wasn't sure I was going to make it, He brought just what I needed to get me through. We definitely faced our fair share of struggles, especially within our team with unity and some times lack of respect, but overall God held us together. I know He worked in ways I will never understand. We went to be a light to people, but I can say personally the people taught me more than I think I taught them!
Gardening in the jungle
Lina is somewhere under that pile of kids!
Teaching the kids to dance!
More dancing!
Having a little fun
Playing duck duck goose
Finger painting
English lessons
The fruit market
Those are oranges
Back to ministry, playing some soccer
Our ministry in Iracoubo ended with a fair we held for the kids. We had games, balloon animals, face painting, and snacks!
We also had the opportunity to spend a night in the Monge village with host families from the church. It was an amazing chance to join them and their families and be a part of their culture and life. The family I stayed with owned a fruit orchard so we went and worked in the field with them picking papayas off trees an art that none of us North Americans were very good at!
Lina getting the papaya down!
Our ride to the fields!
Getting fresh coconut!
Crazy Asian fruit called Rambutan
It's a sweet gummy texture
Our whole group together after a game of bocce ball
Outreach is very stretching and can be stressful at times. Often our days are long starting around 7A.M. and not ending until 11 or midnight. The purpose of outreach is to make God known and this is done by loving on people, but it's also done by getting to know the culture and exploring different things in the country, seeing how and where the people live and the cool things they have! On off days we were able to get in some fun things like visiting the space station!
Fact: French Guiana is known for it's space program and frequently launches rockets into space. (This is not a real rocket)
We also went on a nature walk
visited a beach
and a creek!
and our last night we had an amazing dinner!
Antoine and Marie-France our contacts in French Guiana. They took really good care of us and were so friendly the whole time
Jean-Mitchel and his wife they took really good care of us too!!
It was a great outreach over all. It had its challenges for sure, but we worked through them and made it out victoriously with God's help! Thank you so, so much for your prayers. I know that I have an awesome support team and without you guys I would not be able to do things like this, so thank you! You were just as much a part of this outreach as me and you also made a difference in Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana!
-Brittney
Proverbs 3:5-6
Most of these photos were taken by a student on the team, Tim Potter!