Loved hearing about the Reunion

Dear Family,

We have enjoyed hearing about the reunion and all the activities you have been involved in this week. Becky, thanks for sharing the news about your newest baby boy.  We loved the picture with everyone's shoes.  We hope that you all find the things that you think were left at our home last week.

This week has not been very structured for us.  We helped find elders a new apartment, went to a funeral where Dad spoke to a family of Amerindians about the plan of salvation, we helped organize and carry out a YSA activity, and we went to a Lions Club dinner where one of our good friends was installed as the new president.  His daughter was the reigning Miss India World last year.  She attended and she was beautiful.

At one point the Lions club members stood up and sang their Lions club song which was to the tune of "The Bear Went Over the Mountain.  Here are the words.

I'd rather belong to the Lions, I'd rather belong to the Lions,

I'd rather belong to the Lions, than any club I know.

Than any club I know, than any club I know,

 

I'd rather belong to the Lions, I'd rather belong to the Lions,

I'd rather belong to the Lions, than any club I know.

The club members sang the Guyana national anthem also and I think that we should for sure learn the words to that song.  They sing it often and it is beautiful.  It would be nice to be able to sing along.

Our YSA activity had a leadership theme.  We played games which included a treasure hunt and a blind mans kick-ball activity.  Dad tried to referee the game but since no one had ever played kick ball before, they didn't obey the rules.  Still, I think they enjoyed running around and mingling with each other.  

We look forward to the world wide leadership training meeting in a half hour, so I will close for now and we will hear from you all later tonight.  Love Mom and Dad

Happy Father's Day

Dear Family,

It seems strange to be celebrating Father's Day by driving to Linden and attending church there.  We are not really well acquainted with the branch there and we only go there once a month and see different faces each time we go.  The Relief Society President gave each of the fathers a beautiful ceramic mug.  Dad also received a new wallet.  I don't know why she singled him out for that gift, since he was the only one there to receive the wallet.  Anyway, it reminded me of the song we sang at the baptism yesterday,  

There's surely somewhere a lowly place in earths harvest fields so wide,

Where I may labor through life's short day for Jesus, the Crucified.

I felt like I was in that lowly place as we celebrated Father's Day so far away from all of you children and grandchildren. We miss you and would have loved spending the weekend with all of you, but hopefully, we will be able to influence some of the people in some of the branches to work toward making their own families eternal as they prepare to go to the temple and make covenants there.

It has been a good week.  We had Family Awareness Week.  We spent three days at exhibits in the city where we gave out church literature about family issues.  The Elders talked to people on the street and invited them into the room to learn more. We did find some really good families and individuals there.  

Yesterday was the best day.  We went with members from three different branches and cleaned the walls, floors, and cabinets of a three story building which was a home for men who needed extra care.  One of the residents there was a man who was the mayor of Georgetown in the 1980's. He had diabetes and had one leg amputated below the knee.  He was very intelligent and gracious to us.   '

Later in the day we attended and provided music for three baptisms, two in the Georgetown branch and one in the Demerara branch.

It was really good to serve along side of the members and also to be able to support the new members at their baptisms.  It gives me hope that Guyana is going to continue to grow in faithfulness to the gospel.

We enjoyed visiting with you children yesterday at the reunion.  We hope that you made it safely back to your homes.  To all of our brothers and brother-in-laws, Happy Father's Day.  Keep the Faith!

This is your dad and I need to wish all a happy Father's day. I have said it before but I'll say it again. One of the saddest days of my life was when I realized our time for having children in this life was over. What a blessing children and now grandchildren are!  Thank you for letting me share our lives as your dad and grand dad. 

After church, we visited the Narine family down on the river. They live in a small raised home and have few material things. They wash their clothes in the river and hang them on the line to dry. They swim and bathe in the river everyday. The children paddled their boat about a mile up the river to attend church. To me it was a peaceful enjoyable visit. The children are members but the parents haven't made that commitment yet. Perhaps they will be someday if they only could see the great blessing an eternal family would bring to them. Hopefully we can influence them to make the commitment to each other and the Lord and become an eternal family.

In closing I want to give thanks to a wonderful Father in Heaven who loves us so much that He prepared the Plan of Salvation that we can become like Him and go back to live with Him. Let us always give thanks to Him. And let us always live clean lives that we may be worthy to return to His presence.

Happy Father's Day

 

 Love,  Mom and Dad (Elder and Sister Beutler)

Transfer Week

Dear Family,  Wow this has been a really hectic transfer week. all 10 companionships have new companions.  We had five elders leave the country, and 4 new ones come in.  We also had two mini missionaries, which are young men who are not yet old enough for a regular mission replace two of the full-time missionaries.  The young missionaries serve for only 6 weeks and then return to their families.

Besides moving the missionaries to their new apartments, we had two sets of missionaries who are moving into totally new apartments.  The old apartments were needing to be renovated because of not being up to standard.  

Our mission president really feels that the Guyana apartments are way below standard.  He would like to see them all in new apartments but good apartments are really hard to find without paying dearly for them.  We did find one for $400 a month that is really in good shape.  I hope that the young elders will take good care of it.

Yesterday, the Church sponsored Family Awareness Week.  We had a program yesterday to introduce the events of the week.  There were several dignitaries from other religions.  We had the leader of  the opposition party speak and also the Mayor of Georgetown.  

I really enjoyed the mayor's talk.  He was adamant that we as a church need to stand up and condemn leaders in the government when they break the law in relation to their immoral private conduct, and not just ignore it  It was interesting to note that he has two children living in the United States who are members of the church. 

His talk reminded me of the time when President Clinton was condemned for his adulterous behavior when he was the President of the United States.  It is pretty common for the leaders here to have the same kind of problems and nobody really thinks much about it.

This coming week we are going to be involved in three exhibitions about the family, a health fair, two service projects and two firesides.  One of the firesides is entitled "marriage and family, real life experiences" and the other is "preparing for marriage".  It is going to be a busy week.  

Dear children and grandchildren, as you meet together for the Beutler family reunion, please know how much we love all of you and would love to be there.  Maybe we can skype and see all of you together during the weekend. Please continue to love and enjoy each other and have a wonderful reunion.  Love, Mom and Dad

Summer is here and we are still in the middle of the rainy season

Dear family and friends,

It has been raining sheets every day for the past 4 weeks and they, the Guyanese, tell us that the whole month of June is more of the same.  We don't mind it at all.  The rain keeps things a bit cooler.  It only reached 80 degrees yesterday, so we didn't have to run the air conditioner that much during the day time.

We really enjoyed hearing about the end of school activities, especially the track championships and seeing the pictures that Melissa sent of graduation.  It was fun to look out into the audience and see some familiar faces of our friends at West Side.  May has always been reward month for us as we see and hear about the accomplishments of the children.

Things have been a little bit different for us this month.  Our mission president asked us to visit four branches instead of just the Georgetown branch, so that we could spend more time training leaders who were new in the church and didn't understand their leadership responsibilities completely, yet.

It has been a little overwhelming to spread our so much.  I no longer get to lead the music in Primary, and Melvin is not teaching the young men anymore, so we are missing being with the young people. 

Most of the branches seem to be doing fairly well with leadership, but one branch, the Linden Branch is really struggling.  The leaders don't seem to understand that they need to be there on Sunday in order for the classes to be taught and to meet the needs of the people.  The Relief Society President just quit coming because so was angry about something and so her counselors try to pick up the pieces and lead without her.  

We had a similar experience here in Georgetown last September, but the Branch President called a new Relief Society President quickly and things moved forward as usual.

The other thing which has been a really challenge is missionary apartments.  We had a couple of them which are in really bad shape and we have been looking for several weeks to find new ones to move into.  We saw some real dumpy places that people wanted to rent out. Finally, yesterday, we found one for double what we had been spending but it is immaculate and the landlord is really good at taking care of the house and yard.  Hopefully, the Mission Finance Department will approve the rent increase from 200 to 400 US for the place.

This week is transfer week, so we will be moving missionaries around for two days.  I remember that at one time, Carolyn and Wayne counted the number of tranfers they had before the end of their mission.  I counted ours today, and we have only five more transfers after this one this week.  Time is starting to speed by for us.  

We have become more involved with young single adults during the past 6 weeks and are helping them organize one major activity and one fireside each month.  We found out by looking on the district records, that there are over 900 young single adults in our district of six branches.  We could easily form a stake out here with the number of members on record, but with only about a 10 percent retention rate,  they are still struggling branches instead of wards.  

The key is to get these young single adults to marry and raise families in the gospel, instead of just living with each other and making no family commitments.  Hopefully, that will be the case in 20 years after a whole generation of people have been members here.

Well, enough of my ramblings.  We love hearing from you all.  Keep the faith and have a wonderful summer.  Love, Elder and Sister Beutler

Weary in Well Doing

Dear Family,

 I've decided that three days of traveling outside of our usual routine is too much for this middle aged  woman.  I am in awe of how Melvin continues to have energy to go and go when I am exhausted. 

On Friday, we spent much of the day across the river in La Grange, helping the elders look for a new house to rent.  They were told by President Mehr to relocate closer to the chapel so they won't have to ride their bikes for a half hour just to get to the area where they do their tracting.

Then, on Saturday, we took one of the Elders to the airport because his visa had expired and we weren't able to get a new one for him.  Apparently, neither the Guyana or the Suriname government has good relations with Mexico, and the elder was from Mexico.  

When we checked him in at the airport, he had too much luggage and they charged him an extra $70 US for the luggage. It took over an hour to figure that one out, so it was an all day affair to get him there, and for us to come home.

Then, today we went on the 1 1/2 hour trip to Linden to visit that branch.  The mission couple who trains branch  presidencies about how to take care of the finances also attended and had a two hour meeting with the Branch Presidency to train them.

The Branch President has only been called for about 3 months, and he is really discouraged about his calling.  He says that he has lost many friends and some of the members think that he is unfair because he does not give them Church Welfare whenever they ask.  He is learning about the "loneliness of leadership".  Even his Relief Society President is mad at him and has quit coming to church.

The church is so young there.  Only one family in the branch  has been members for more than 4 years, and none of them have been to the temple, except two young returned missionaries from that one family.

The highlight of the Linden visit was that we were able to visit with Brother Featherstone, our good friend who Melvin was able to baptize a couple of months ago.  He is teaching the Gospel Doctrine class. He read about temple service as he was preparing his lesson and he had not understood before that he could do the work for his parents.

He said that he had the most warm feeling about  his own parents when he read that.  He realized that he wanted to do their temple work so that they could be an eternal family.  It was great to see him understanding that concept of the "hearts of the children turning to their fathers"  through the temple ordinances.

Well, as I said, I am pretty worn out from all of the travel, so I will check out for now.  Have a great week, all of you and thanks again for all the mothers day news.  

Love from Melvin and Carol

PS In case you haven't heard yet, Both the boys and the girls West Side Track teams won state this  weekend.  Go Pirates!

Mother's Day Activities

Dear Family,

It was good to hear from all of you during this past week-end.  I know that most of you did not get to talk to Amy.  She is looking really good, as you could see from the picture she sent of her and her new companion.  She said that her companion was a little bit  disgruntled because the houses in Kolonia were pretty run down compared to the ones in American Samoa. She called them slummy.  Amy wonders what she will think when she sees the huts in the bush. 

Thanks to all of you for the Mothers Day letters and cards.  I must admit that homesickness was bothering me on Saturday and Sunday.  I just miss all of you and the grandchildren, too. The letters really helped cheer me up! 

The district had a mother-daughter activity on Saturday evening which I attended for a couple of hours before a baptism.  Each branch performed a talent, either a skit, poem, or song.  It was fun to watch them and see the love that the girls had for their "Mommies".   I love that endearing term.  Even the parents of teenagers talk about their "mommies".  

On Sunday, we attended the Demerara branch, because Pres. Mehr wants us to start attending all of the branches to help train the leaders, instead of just the Georgetown Branch.  

During Relief Society,  the primary children came in and gave all the women bouquets of silk flowers.  Then the Priesthood brought food, (mostly dessert) for us to eat.  Then a couple of young women came in and recited a poem for us.  They really go all out for Mother's Day.

We spent the rest of the day (from 2 until 9) helping our elders skype their families.  It worked really well this time, except for the one elder who was talking to his family at 7:30.  The picture was bad and the sound was bad, so he just ended up having them call him instead.  I think his family has a poor internet server.

Now, today, we are back to business as usual.  We had to move our cars to the neighbors' driveway because the landlord hired a couple of guys to paint the fence around the house.  They figured that it could be done in a couple of days.  We will see.  Guyanese are not famous for working fast.

If anyone knows how the track team is doing, let us know.  We have not heard anything about them this year.  

We will talk to all of you later.  Love, Mom and Dad

Rainy Season is Here Once Again

Dear family and friends,

We have been enjoying the cooler temperatures during the past two weeks as the rainy season began in earnest.  We had a fireside at the church last Sunday evening and the rain poured down so hard on the zinc roof that we could not hear what the speaker was saying.

Then, last  Monday was a little bit scary, because it was high tide season also.  Apparently, the ocean experiences a high tide for about a week at this time of the year because of the ice melting in the north and creating more water, just like the rivers in the mountains flooding when the winter snow melts in May and June.

We were traveling along the sea wall after our quarterly zone conference and we saw the waves splashing over the sea wall with a huge force.  It is times like this when I wonder why the people built this city below sea level.  One big leak in the sea wall and everything would be gone!

 

I need to mention another activity which is being organized for the young people here.  They have to take tests at the end of high school called CXC's.  If they pass them, they are eligible to go to trade schools which are paid for by the government to learn a trade.  If they do really well, they can get help at the University also.   

Many of our members have not taken their CXC's for one reason or another, so some of the qualified members are volunteering to teach them the classes once a week in the evenings, to prepare them for those tests.  One of the members, who is teaching the English made the comment at the fireside, "There is nothing so worthless as knowledge that cannot be recalled." 

I thought about that and then smiled because now that we are in our 60's, we have to be taught over and over in order to understand a new language or computer skills and such.  I sure hope that on resurrection morning, we will get it all back.

I just read Mary's letter and heard about Clancy Sears coming home from his mission.  Lisa, give him a hug from us.  Let him know that Amy is just getting the opportunity to become a trainer.  We can hardly wait to hear from her next week on Mothers's Day to see how things are going there. 

We are doing well.  We still are very healthy and count that as a blessing every day.  Our mission president has given us as senior couples the responsibility to go to ward council meetings and train the leaders there so that they can lead in the Lord's way.  They are coming along slowly and we are grateful for a church handbook to help in the training.  

We would love to hear from any and all of you,  Sincerely and With Love,  Elder and Sister Beutler