Since our last update we returned to Lawa for a number of weeks. We spent the Easter conference in Apetina flying out from Lawa with 20 people from the Church. It was exiting to meet the people of Apetina again after only a month since we left in February.

Having made the switch between Lawa and Apetina several times now, it feels as if we live in both villages. We stay for around three months at a time so it seems we only leave for a short period when moving to the other village. We also see the people reacting when we leave ‘ it is only for a short time’ and when we return ‘ you just left just recently’. We understand they feel good about our hopping from village to village in this frequency.

In March we celebrated the presentation of the Wayana Concordance with Roy and Margaret and Fred and Janice Blind. We felt exited to meet Fred and Jan since we heard a lot about them, but were not yet able to meet them.
After they left we were able to take the concordance and the teaching to two other villages using the DVDs Marco produced when Roy was teaching the church at Lawa on how to use the Concordance.

When leaving Lawa last May we stayed an extra week in Paramaribo in order to meet our WT Area Director Karry Kelly and his wife Sharlyn and Jim Head from WT Member Care. They visited Suriname in order to be present at the farewell activities with Roy and Margaret Lytle. We had a good week with team meetings and a warm farewell with Roy and Margaret.

We feel very privileged to have been able to work together this last year, learning the basics of Wayana language and getting settled in into the work. We are proud to be able to pick up the task they left behind. It reminds us of a sermon on Mission many years ago with the theme: ‘Stepping into their shoes’. We feel we are called by God to step into ’the missionary shoes’ of Roy and Margaret. We hope that Roy will be able to visit Suriname a number of times in the coming years in order to teach the Bible to the indians since it will take us quite some time to learn the language and to be able to do so our self.

We both were able to speak a message in Wayana though, just before we left Lawa in May. Marjolein spoke to the women’s meeting on a Thursday morning and Marco was able to preach in the Church service on Ascension Day. Since we shared that in Holland Ascension Day is a Christian holiday and the Churches come together to celebrate this, the Leaders of the Lawa Church also like to have a meeting on Ascension Day. This year was special for us being able to present Gods word in Wayana for the first time without translation.

We started June with a new adventure: How do we get new cooking gas cylinders to Apetina? The only way to do so is by dug out canoe. By plane it will take us less than two hours to reach Apetina. By dug out canoe it took us three days. We had to carry all our luggage and 10 gas cylinders several times out of the canoe, over a trail, in the canoe again. Some rapids were so dangerous that the motorman would only risk his canoe and outboard motor to go through them.
It was a wonderful trip, but we were glad that everybody reached Apetina safe and healthy. We have a new appreciation for our Wayana friends who were willing to work for a week to get us safe to Apetina.