We wish you all a beautiful Eastern Weekend.Wajana’s celebrate this with an Easter Conference of four days. One in Apetina , where Trio and Wayana from Tepu and Palumeu en various other villages along the Lawa river flew into or came over by canoe. And one in Lawa, where the people from the villages along the river come together. We feel very privileged to be part of this.The flights to Apetina took quite some effort to organize. MAF made six flights over two days to bring the people from Lawa to Apetina. We needed a list with the names of the passengers and to decide who would be on what flight according to the weight of the people and their luggage. Then we made nice lists for the pilot to know who would be on which flight.The days of the flight we helped to weigh both the passengers and their luggage. After each flight the plane needed a refill of AFGas. This works by filling a number of cans and lift them up to fill on top of the wings. We had fun helping out with a number of activities to make things work smooth.

Next week we have the same operation but now the other way around when people have to be brought back to Lawa again. Perhaps the pilot will stay over one night, so we have a guest to take care of, extra fun in the process.Last week we were busy having an in-house Bible school preparing the Bible school students for preaching during the conference here at Lawa. We repeated some of the lessons they had before in the Bible school and helped them to focus on the chapters 22, 23 and 24 of Luke. Some of them came over to get assistance in their preparations to see if the explained the passage they would preach from well. We now are listening to their messages and enjoy to hear the things we tought them in the week. What a precious investment in these future leaders in the churches.For the coming weeks we focus on our travels to Canada that are due from May 7. For this we had to fly to the city on April 1 with two Wayana to visit Georgetown in Guyana in order to have their biometrics registered at the Canadian office there.First we drove over to Nickerie for a one night stay. The next morning we had an early rise to catch the ferry to Guyana after which we drove to Georgetown to be in time for our appointment in the office there in the afternoon. After we arrived we learned that the power was off, so we had to wait extra time I order to get things fixed. So we were only able to drive back to the ferry later in the afternoon. Now we had to look for our place to sleep in the dark, which was quite a hassle.

At this moment we still are waiting for the approval of two visa applications from the Canadian office. Quite a thing since we are due to fly to Canada in only two weeks…