safe and sound in Suriname

Hello family and freinds (Mike and Ryan here bringing you up to speed )
Our trip started out at 12:10am Jan 3 by boarding our first flight to Toronto, from their to Miami, followed by Trinidad, and finally we arrived at 1:30am jan 4 here in Suriname. As we stepped out of the airplane and onto the tarmac we encountered +27C, high humidity and instant sweat! After clearing customs we were picked up by Lucretia's (our contact in Suriname) nephew, and taken to Pastor Kevin's house. Pastor Kevin is the American Pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church here in Paramaribo. When we arrived on Pastor Kevin's door step at 2:30 in the morning, he warmly welcomed us and showed us to our nicely airconditioned room, were we slept comfortably and recoved from our long journy. (you have NO idea how nice the airconditioning is!) Later that day we were shown down town Paramaribo and went to visit Martin Luther Church which was biult in 1823. It is a very beautiful biulding. When we arrived at the church we were put straight to work takeing down Christmas decorations and removed an old speaker system from the church's main support pillars. That evening we were treated to some fantastic Surinamese cusine cooked by our new freind Ashwin. The meal consisted of Argintinian style fried rice, some sort of delicious chicken in a suckulant sauce! lol also their was lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatos. To drink we had ginger beer and Coke. At 6ish pm we had the oppertunity to attend a confirmation class completly in Dutch. Before heading back to Pastor Kevin's home, we drove over the new bridge which spans the very wide Suriname river.

Today Jan 5th we attended a prayer service at Martin Luther Church where we were warmly welcomed. The rest of the day we got a tour of down town Paramaribo seeing differnt biulding such as the presidential palace, Jewish synagouge, The Mosque, and many very old biuldings with dutch influence. We also planned our next three weeks in suriname. We are leaveing now to our new host familys (Lucretia has just informed us no A/C)

Please continue praying for us we appreciate it very much and we will be doing survice projects around Martin Luther Church for the rest of the week!

Until next time God bless- Mike and Ryan