Sunday, April 21, 2013

Immigration Issues

Dear Family,

On Monday evening, we went to a meeting where the President of Guyana and the Minister of Home Affairs addressed all the foreign people  about immigration issues.  Guyana is one of those places where they allow most anyone to come without a visa, but they can only stay for a month without getting an extended time work visa.  For the past 2 years no one in our church has been granted a work visa, so we basically keep going in and out of the country every 3 months to get our visas re-stamped.
The President alluded to the fact that these visas should not be taking years to get and if they were, we needed to go to Home Affairs to see what the problem is, so Dad and I decided to go there and find out what the problem is.  We were ushered into an open area where we were asked what we needed, but the woman helping us had no answers and did not want to take us to someone who could help us. It was a really fruitless time.  We came out of the meeting with no better understanding of what to do than we had when we went in.

Another problem which Dad has developed is with his right hand.  He has a tendon that seems to be developing scar tissue around it that is hard and tight.  We visited with a fellow missionary who is a retired physical therapist about it.  He said with no doubt that it was Dupuytren's Retraction or Disease.  It is a hereditary disease of the hands where this tissue grows around the tendons and eventually causes the fingers to tighten so that they cannot open up properly.  His suggestion was to massage it regularly to keep the tissue soft.  Aneesa, maybe you could talk to your dad about it and find out what he knows.   The therapist thinks that massaging is much better that surgery at this point, because the hand is not very bad, yet.

The rest of the week has been business as usual.  We pay the bills and take care of the missionaries.  One of our elders has a temp for a companion right now.  A temp is a young man who is not yet ready to serve a mission, so he comes and serves for a few weeks when we send a missionary home before transfer time.  Most of the temporary missionaries end up serving eventually on full-time missions.  Well, the temp here complained about having a bad toothache so Elder Beutler took him to the dentist.  The dentist said that he had 5 cavities and needed two root canals done.  He said that the root canals would cost 60000 GYD each, which is about 300 US dollars a piece.  We thought that was reasonable, but the mission won't pay for that since he is just a temp.  Today, one of the members who works in the medical area told us that the dentist was asking too much.  She said that a root canal in Guyana is only 25000 dollars, not 60000 dollars like he said.  He saw the American and over charged.  25000 dollars is only about 125 dollars US.  That is an unbelieveably cheap price for a root canal.  

The other thing that was annoying was that the dentist refused to show Elder Beutler the x-ray, so we don't know if he was really telling the truth about the problem.  Anyway, the temp goes home on Wednesday, transfer day, so we will have to let his parents decide what to do about his teeth problem.  Unfortunately, the dentists more often than not, just pull the teeth rather than fixing them, so we see a lot of people with missing teeth here.

Well, I think that right now you are having a party without me.  I was so happy to hear that so many of you were going to support Joelyn as she gave her mission report in Dayton.  I know that her parents were probably dying to be there themselves.  I remember when Josh Lowery gave his report in his ward, that Uncle Dave set up skype so that Sherry and Larry could listen to the report.  After that, Sherry was pretty anxious to come home and so the rest of the mission was a little hard for her.  

Please write and tell us about the day.  I know that Amy will want to hear about Joelyn's experiences too.  Love to all of you,  Mom and Dad

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