The unbelievable happened!

It all started with a baptism interview that Elder Bullock was scheduled to give to Terry and Sharmala in their tiny home situated deep in Cow Dam.

When we arrived with the 2 elders, Elder Webb suggested we all wait outside while Elder Bullock interviewed them inside privately, one by one, because their living room was very small.

Elder Bullock had been concerned about interviewing them in the normal dim lighting he expected to find in their home. Later, I discovered, the room was pitch black. There was no lighting.

Terry and Sharmala with Amanda (on their wedding day last week.)

After a sweet prayer by Terry we exchanged our kisses, and hugs and headed for Family Home Evening at Jade and Travis’s. We found them in front of their little home.

Jade was wearing green, Travis had the blue shirt and 4 of their little brothers were part of the group.

Travis had a long stick and was taunting a couple of small alligators that were resting in the big trench in front of their home, while Jade sat on a horse cart watching and cheering him on.

Here is what a horse cart looks like. They are all over town.

We took a seat next to her on the horse cart, and said in our minds, “Good evening and move on over” to the mosquitoes that surrounded us and held a sweet family home evening together.

As we walked home in the dark, I was watching my steps closely to avoid the mud and puddles. I came to an area that had a lot of mud and decided to move over to the left, when suddenly to my surprise, the unbelievable happened.

I stepped right in the huge trench…the same one where Travis had been taunting the alligators!

I was waist deep in muddy, dirty water and one of my knee-high rubber boots was stuck fast in the deep mud.

Elder Bullock and the two Elders, Webb and Williams, instantly grabbed me and began to pull me from the trench. There was no way I could get out on my own.

“Stop, take her picture before we pull her out!”, called Elder Bullock to the elder and Elder William's camera instantly flashed.

Muddy me

I tugged and tugged at my boot until it finally came loose from the deep quick-sand like mud, and they were able to drag me from the trench.

When we arrived home, the elders and Elder Bullock dowsed me with glee with bucket after bucket of cold water.

I’ve learned that you’re not an official Guyanese until you fall in a trench! I guess I’m now official.

Breaking in our rubber boots

At last, we get to wear our rubber boots.

It has rained and rained. We are set to visit families in Cow Dam a couple of evenings with the young elders. I am full of anticipation.

Lots of the church members live in Cow Dam which is a area of New Amsterdam, where we live.

The area is scattered with randomly-placed small wooden shacks that are built high above the ground on posts or stilts, many about the size of one small bedroom. Few have electricity or inside plumbing. Outhouses dot the area. Here's a sample of how the houses look...

There are mud puddles, swampy areas and trenches to be avoided as you walk down the muddy pathways in the dark. When the heavy rains pour, there are swamps and mud everywhere you want to walk!

Some places, a few scraps of lumber lie in the mud for you to walk on so you don’t have to just step in all the gushy mud.

Or, a long narrow elevated board, or group of boards, have been placed to help you cross the swampy areas that surround the houses. I always hold my breath crossing these boards until I make it to the front step.

Learning our way around the Cow Dam area is a challenge, without any signs, numbers, lights or significant landmarks. The elders seem to know their way as if they had played in the area since they were little kids. We are watching our every step as we blindly follow them through the night.

We usually meet the elders somewhere in the middle of Cow Dam to begin our night of visiting. We are becoming confident enough of finding our way, at least to our meeting place, even through the darkness.

Our eyes are getting accustomed to walking in the dark. We don’t seem to need our flashlights even though there are almost no lights, only the faint flicker of gas lanterns in a few of the windows we pass.

We are to meet them at Jade’s little house that is deep in this area…a 40 minute walk from our apartment. We are proud of ourselves when we finally make it to her house without getting lost and are glad we have prayed for safety before we started our trek.


(Do you remember Jade? Here she is with her little boy, Travis, on her bike when she stopped by our place for a visit.)

Every person we meet in the darkness feels like a threat and a possible danger and we pass a number of others, walkers and bikers, as we walk these muddy trails. We walk fast and try to be calm and unafraid. I can’t help but be a bit nervous.

As we pass a group of men loitering and talking, Burt says to me, “Now you remember, if anything bad happens, you just run home as fast as you can, and I’ll try to take care of the rest!” I realize he is nervous, too!

Before we enter each home, we remove our muddy boots. Inside one dim light barely gives light to the living room. It is a gas lantern or a single light that is somehow hooked up to a car battery. We can see bodies but faces are barely distinguishable. The rooms are almost totally dark. Each family we visit, the setup is the same.

We have family home evenings in the dark, give missionary lessons in the dark, sing songs in the dark, eat a meal with one family in the dark, play games in the dark, and kneel together on the hard wooden floor for prayer in the dark. My flashlight goes on each time we sing so I can see the words in my small hymnbook.

We meet with a newly baptized elderly couple. The husband is 83. The wife is my age but seems 15 years older. Their house is the tiniest, riskiest and darkest one we’ve ever visited. One of the posts that the house is setting on is leaning badly. I am confident that when it collapses, the house will collapse, also!

The stairs leading to the front door are unevenly spaced with a huge step near the top. Inside, the floor is slanted and as I sit on the old, old couch, I wonder if we will to tumble to the ground with the house at any moment.

This couple is very worried because their 10 year old grandson has run away from their home…again. He has been gone 10 days. We sing a hymn and pray with them that he will return and as we leave, I hold tight to the banister as I carefully climb back down the risky staircase.

We have family home evening with Jade and her husband and baby, teach a lesson on baptism to a couple who are waiting for their birth certificates so they can marry and be baptized, ...and have family home evening with Terry and Sharmala that have just been legally married so they can be baptized next week.

(Terry and Sharmala on their wedding day. What is Elder Hyde doing during such a special moment?)

As we leave each home, I am hugged and kissed on the cheek and thanked for coming. I, too, am so thankful that I have come for I feel so much happiness being with these precious families. I am especially happy that we are able to bring to them something that will bring light into their lives…lives that are filled with so much darkness. We are bringing the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We teach them of spiritual truths, and now as I think of it, I am wondering if the darkness isn’t to our advantage. Our minds cannot be cluttered and distracted by the things of this world…because we can’t see any of them! It doesn’t seem to matter what I am wearing or if I have mud on my skirt, if my hair is not as I’d like it to be, or if the furniture I am sitting on isn’t all clean and new.

I can’t even see the cockroaches that I know are hiding under the couch cushions where I am sitting.

Most of all, I have almost forgotten that my light skin doesn’t match the dark color of theirs. To me, we are all just Heavenly Fathers kids trying hard to be good kids and to help others to do the same.

I’d have to say that my very favorite part of our mission is visiting in the homes of these humble families. I see them trying so hard to learn and live the gospel. I just want to take them all “under my wing” as my mother used to say. I want them all to be my children so I can take care of them, buy food for them so they have plenty to eat, teach them and help their lives to be better.


By the time we arrive back to our apartment at the end of our nights of visiting, our knee-high rubber boots are caked with mud and the bottom of my skirt and Elder Bullock’s pants are spattered with mud.

And we realize that our house is as dark as those we visited. Our whole street is dark. We don’t have any power either. We are experiencing another blackout, which is a daily occurrence for us.

But, the blackout doesn't seem to matter for I feel so light and bright and wonderful inside. That’s what sharing the gospel does for me!

Brand spanking new!

Can you imagine renting the house across the street from your apartment in a little old town in Guyana and the next week having it ready to hold church? Well, that's what the two elders did in Crabwood Creek that is about 1 1/2 hours from here which is at the east end of nowhere...or just across the river from Suriname. We visited this new branch last Sunday for the first time and were excited to see how they set it up. It felt so good when we walked inside.
The branch president repaired the chalk letters of some of the words on this chalkboard and set it out in front of the meetinghouse.
These are the two elders that are teaching the newly baptized branch president how to run his branch. Attendance started out at the beginning of the meeting at 7. By the end of an hour there were 19.
These 3 little girls got all ready for school today, but never made it there. Instead, they came knocking on my door at 7:30 am. I pretended to be asleep, but discovered them hours later still outside my door. They skipped school all day, hoping that I would let them in and give them some candy.

When the neighbor lady told them to leave, they just glared at her from where they sat on the cement by my front door. She finally got them to leave at about 2 pm.

A bunch of whiteys?

When general conference was over in the Canje chapel, someone told me the truck had arrived to take the members of the New Amsterdam Branches back to New Amsterdam and said, "Come ride with us!"

I took one look at this truck, that is set up to carry 60 cane cutters to the cane fields every work day, and I quickly called out to Burt, "I'll meet you at home." I wasn't going to miss out riding in this big crazy truck!

You can see the elders all racing to take their seats on the truck.I put away my camera...
and raced to get a seat. When we arrived back to New Amsterdam, it was dark and I posed for a photo with a couple of my friends that had been laughing as we rode, saying, "I can't believe we're riding in this cane cutters truck with a bunch of whiteys!" That would mean the elders ...and me!

Little by Little

Zone conference in Georgetown, Guyana.

Here we are with our zone of 10 elders…

Our first time to meet President Robison and his wife.

Here’s why it took us all day to get there:

A flat tire in the line to get on the ferry.

Hours of waiting in the line for the ferry in a scalding hot car with a billion other cars and trucks. We live on the equator.

Beggars hounding us for money and the peanuts we were eating as we waited.

We finally made it to the front of the line after 3 1/2 hours! (Sometimes the wait can be up to 7 hours to get a car on the ferry.)

A 30 minute ride across the ferry over the Berbice River, followed by 1 ½ hours of driving on a highway dodging...

cows...more cows...some pigs... and donkeys, goats and dogs.

Eating fried rice in a small Chinese restaurant on the way.

After 3 days, we were glad to be home.

A bright moment for dad was finding a set of 25# barbells to buy. In his excitement, he forgot to check the price before he hauled them to the cash register. Do you suppose it mattered to him how much they cost?

A bright moment for me is that my hair is growing back little by little. A significant amount of it fell out during the past 8 months and the doctors never discovered why. Two questions I must ask: Where did the waves come from? And, how could one person have so much forehead?