Guyana Flag

The Golden Arrowhead, Guyana's National Flag has FIVE symbolic colors -- GREEN represents the agricultural and forested nature of Guyana, WHITE symbolizes the rivers and water potential of the country, a GOLDEN arrow represents Guyana's mineral wealth, BLACK portrays the endurance that will sustain the forward thrust of the Guyanese people and RED represents the zeal and dynamic nature of nation-building which lies before the young and independent Guyana.

More on Guyana River Ministries

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

I want to lay out here my dreams and visions for Guyana River Ministries. It might help to go back to the beginning.

My story is a great story. Not a story of a great man; a story of the Grace of God that saved a wretched sinner. The great part of my story centers around a Great and Merciful God.

In 1985 I was released from a six month stint in prison. The part leading up to that will be left to your imagination. I was a ruined man. I had lost family, career and my reputation. God is merciful and the prison Chaplin took me under his wing and spoke into my life in a powerful way. Six months after my release, I found myself deep in the jungles of Peru as a guest of Wycliffe Bible Translators and Bill Townsend, the founder's son. From prison to the mission field in six months! Only God could do that.

God began to prepare me. I spent two years teaching ESOL at a school in Mexico where I learned to speak Spanish. Returning to the States, I attended Manna Christian Institute in Bonita Springs, Florida, where I earned an Associates Degree in Missions.

The call was out for a Missionary to assist a small, English speaking church in Venezuela. As a single student with few ties, it was easy for me to go. I felt the call and went to San Felix, Venezuela; arriving in February of 1990.

The church was small, about thirty members but they were hungry for God. In the next seven years, God would grow that church to more than five hundred members, start a Bible School and seven daughter churches. Beyond that, he gave me a wife, Kathy, and two lovely children, Christopher and Amanda.

From the day I arrived at the Rivers of Living Water Church in San Felix, I knew my calling was to the Guyanese. I loved them and they loved me. God worked many miracles during that time. I have missed that fellowship greatly. Kathy and I have returned to Venezuela and made extended trips to Guyana. Somehow, my heart is in that place and with those people. Today, armed with a Bachelor's degree in Biblical studies and an honorary Doctor of Divinity Degree, God has strongly burdened my heart to reach out again and touch Guyana with His Gospel.

I have explained in other places what a mess Guyana is in. The Government does not function, Police protection and legal recourse are openly offered to the highest bidder and the poor suffer greatly. HIV / AIDS is a part of every family's life, even Kathy's extended family has been touched. When she was there in 2003, Kathy was asked to bring resources and teaching on AIDS. Information is scarce in the back parts of Guyana. Often, wives tales carry more weight than fact.

The Christian Church is strong where it is found. Their outreach is limited by poverty. There is a shortage of trained Pastors. In the River areas, a man cannot pastor an area larger than he can cover in a canoe with a paddle.

Our outreach will be to take Mission trips to the river areas of Guyana. We will support local Pastors in anyway we can. We will teach, preach and do things like show the Jesus Movie. In areas with no TV or Theaters, this draws large crowds. We will also prepare and present a very basic seminar on AIDS. This will include basic facts on the disease and a strong plea for abstinence outside of marriage and faithfulness within. Those who keep their sexual encounters within Biblical boundaries have little or no chance of contracting HIV.

In the future, I would like to purchase a small sailboat, capable of making the trip to Guyana with five or six persons aboard. We would be able to motor up the rivers, teaching and preaching as we go. We could generate power for lights, microphones and projectors and we would have a comfortable base in which to eat and sleep. It is not a far fetched dream, it is a tool that would help us achieve our goals and our vision. It would also open up the entire Caribbean for ministry on the trips back and forth.

Fundraising is the first issue of business. We need to plan and hold a fundraising Banquet. I need a person to take charge of those arrangements. We need a place and time, food, drink, decorations and a lot more. If you can help, please talk to Kathy. (239-887-0023) I will present the ministry at the Banquet and we will take up an offering and ask for pledges.

I also have a small Kayak. I am planning a trip along the lines of a walk-a-thon, asking for by the mile pledges. It would be fun if we could get a group together. If that excites you, call me at 887-1024.

Any other fundraising ideas you may have are welcome. Money for the sake of money is boorish. Money for the Gospel is great. It blesses the giver and fundraising can be fun!

We need members for our Board of Regents. Vance and Barb Wonderly, along with Don and Cindy Goodwin have agreed to serve on the Board. If you would be interested in serving alongside these wonderful people, let me know.

Our current goal is $7,500.00. This represents three months salary and will allow me to go into the ministry full time. Besides arraigning and making Mission Trips, there is a fulltime job in fundraising. Also, I would like to be able to offer my time and skills, teaching English in non-English speaking congregations in the area. This is meeting a real need in the community and is a great outreach program for those churches.

Kathy and I are planning a trip to Guyana in the Spring. This would be to make arraignments for a group trip to follow. We could take a couple of people with us; people who don't care where they sleep or what they eat! If that's you, let us know.

Please join us as we reach out to Guyana and the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In Christ,

Dave Rice

This is encouraging!

Link to Article

Country with Second-Highest HIV/AIDS Rate in Hemisphere True Love Waits Introduced into Guyana,

Written by Barbara Brake
United States Army Maj. Tyler Fitzgerald did what any good soldier does when faced with an aggressive enemy. He took the offensive.

Fitzgerald was about to finish his tour of duty as military liaison in Guyana, a small Caribbean country, but as a Christian, he couldn’t shake the feeling of desperation he had for the physical and spiritual condition of Guyana’s people.

Guyana’s HIV/AIDS crisis is second to that of Haiti’s in the Western Hemisphere. The government’s attempt to combat the situation decidedly excluded any abstinence programs. Fitzgerald found that conclusion unacceptable and in March turned to the Internet. His search landed at True Love Waits, the faith-based abstinence program produced by LifeWay Christian Resources that encourages students to be sexually abstinent until marriage. He’d heard of the success True Love Waits was having in curbing HIV/AIDS-related deaths in Africa. There has been more than a 30 percent decrease in Uganda alone in HIV/AIDS in the 10 years True Love Waits has been the officially recognized method of combating the epidemic.

Fitzgerald exchanged a flurry of e-mails with Ernest McAninch of LifeWay’s international department. A solution was found that potentially could change the future of Guyana much as Uganda’s has been. True Love Waits has no budget to send someone to a foreign country to teach. But the church where True Love Waits was pioneered more than a decade ago, Tulip Grove Baptist Church near Nashville, accepted a unique challenge: be pioneers again, this time in another culture.

"Tyler hoped government officials would use the True Love Waits model to promote abstinence," McAninch recalls. "When the group decided it would not adopt an abstinence approach, Tyler did not give up. He offered to organize church leaders to promote an abstinence-until-marriage movement and received commitments of support from Baptists, Wesleyans, Methodists, Youth with a Mission and the Full Gospel church."

McAninch, a member at Tulip Grove, approached Ken Clayton, the church’s pastor, with the challenge of helping. Clayton saw the opportunity for the church to support overseas missions and asked Alec Cort, the church’s current youth minister, to consider going to Guyana to teach True Love Waits to the coalition Fitzgerald was building.

Cort had serious doubts. During his 10 years of vocational youth work, he never felt an overseas calling. "My wife, Allyson, and I prayed about the trip and sought God’s guidance and decided we would go," Cort said.

Cort has taught True Love Waits to Tulip Grove’s youth for four years. Clayton told the church Cort and his wife were prepared to go. The church’s members responded by funding the April trip through a special offering. The Corts arrived in Guyana within six weeks of Fitzgerald’s initial inquiry.

Cambelville Baptist Church hosted the training that drew more than 150 people of diverse backgrounds including public school and government officials, representatives of non-Christian non-government organizations and churches and Christians from several denominations. Cort found the schedule that Fitzgerald and Cambelville pastor Charles Van Dyke had developed to be quite ambitious.

"I had planned on presenting two 90-minute seminars each day for two days but saw I was scheduled to conduct two 3-hour seminars both days," Cort said. "Tyler dismissed my concern, smiled and said, ‘You will do great!’"

There is a great deal of racial and political violence within the country as two factions war for control of the republic of almost 700,000 people. There is an eclectic mix of Christians, Hindus and Muslims that fosters a great deal of prejudice. Marxism is prevalent, and few people own land. Good jobs are hard to find. The poverty overwhelmed Cort as he found a people lacking hope. He learned that many people turn to sex searching for fulfillment.

Cort used the Bible to define marriage and sex. The attentive audience asked dozens of questions and spoke openly of personal situations. The clock was of little regard.

"I was amazed at how well we were received," Cort recalls. "We later discovered that the Guyanese are a culture that is non-sensitive to time constraints. Historically an agrarian society, the factory whistle has never industrialized them. There is little movement due to the heat. Few own cars or can afford cab fare. Since there is very little to do in Guyana, the seminar was a major event."

Attendance rose to nearly 300 by the end of the first day. Cort realized from the questions being raised about sex that no one had ever taught about these particular issues. He saw people hungry for the knowledge they were receiving.

"I had my doubts, but again God did His thing," Cort said. "At the end of the first day, young petty officer Jason Benjamin from the Guyana Defense Force (GDF) stood up to give his testimony. The GDF is directed by the political authorities to help in HIV prevention.

"Being a new Believer, Benjamin wanted to attend the seminar but was unable to because of his work assignment. During the morning while the first session was taking place, his superior told him that his duty was changed. He was to attend the True Love Waits seminar, gathering information and making notes.

"The information he took back to his superiors has led the GDF to change its entire stance on ‘safe sex.’ Prior to the seminar it had supported condom distribution and safe sex programs. Now, because of officer Benjamin’s report, it has adopted ‘abstinence’ as their primary promotion in the prevention of HIV. God is good."

The second day was devoted to how to teach TLW to parents and teenagers. Nearly all 300 people signed the accompanying True Love Waits commitment card, pledging to live according to the biblical model of sex and marriage. Cort used that evening at the community bandstand to publicly relay the message of God’s plan for marriage and purity to the youth and their parents gathered there.

"It was a very special time," Cort said. "True Love Waits and biblical values are taking root in Guyana."

Cort hopes to return to Guyana with a mission team from Tulip Grove to encourage and assist pastors. Of 24 protestant churches in the country, two have paid pastors.

"With help, the church has tremendous potential to stand up and break the cycle of sin and oppression," Cort said. "The people are so hungry to hear about True Love Waits, and they are hungrier still for more biblical truth. We can give them resources, teach and train the people to serve beyond what the pastor is able to do, excite and encourage them and in so doing, reestablish hope in their hearts."





© 2001-2003 LifeWay Christian Resources

River Church

 
 

Ministry Letter / Guyana River Ministry

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Dear Friend,

Thank you for your interest in Guyana River Ministries. The need in Guyana is great but more importantly, Kathy and I feel the leading of the Holy Spirit to minister there. This is Kathy’s home country. These are the people to whom I was called to minister in 1990.

Guyana was subjected to 25 years of rule by a communist Dictator starting with Independence from Britain in the early 1960s thru the late 1980’s. The years since have seen a move towards freedom but corruption keeps Guyana among the poorest countries in the world. The size of Florida with a population of less than one million, Guyana is sparsely populated. The majority of people live in the Capitol city, Georgetown and a narrow strip of land along the Atlantic Ocean. The inland areas are populated with widely scattered Amerindian villages and gold mining camps. Malaria, typhoid and a dozen other unpleasant diseases make life in the jungle difficult. Along the Border with Brazil, small towns and cattle ranches dot the high grassy plain.

The worst thing in Guyana is the downfall of moral restraint. The major religions, Christianity (Roman Catholic and Anglican), Hinduism and Islam, have all lost their grip on the population they once held so tightly. For all practical matters, government does not exist. Police protection and judicial recourse are openly for sale to the highest bidder. For the poor there is no protection at all. As a result of these things, the people have lost all moral restraint. It is no surprise that the World Health Organization reported that no country outside of Africa has a higher incidence of HIV / AIDS than Guyana.

The chief focus of Guyana River Ministries is to preach the Gospel. Second to that, we pledge to teach the basic facts on AIDS and encourage abstinence outside of, and faithfulness inside of marriage. We believe that it is the Love of God that brought about the Biblical teachings on sex and marriage. Those who live by those rules have almost no chance of contracting AIDS, even in Guyana.

Mission Trips to Guyana are in the works. I want to teach English as a Second Language in the Spanish and other non-English congregations in Lee county. I also want to preach whenever possible as a part of our deputation work. Now we are planning our First Annual Banquet, our first fund raiser. If you would be kind enough to help just let us know. Again, thank you for caring.

In Christ,


Dave and Kathy Rice

The Fear In Their Eyes

THE FEAR IN THEIR EYES
David A. Rice

Lehigh Acres, Florida
Thursday, October 06, 2005

It is not the words they speak that bother me; the words are confident and reassuring. It is the fear in their eyes that disquiets my soul.

First Katrina, then Rita hit the Gulf coast and the oil industry. Even the best experts could not downplay the damage or make it seem insignificant. They could, however, avoid panic by downplaying the long-term effect on the economy and raising a unified voice proclaiming our ability to recover. For all their brave words, they could not hide the fear in their eyes or control their body language. Perhaps some were blinded but I saw the fear.

According to one recent poll, twenty five percent of Americans believe that the storms were a direct and calculated judgment from God. I am in that group; I believe that this was the Hand of God moving in judgment against an arrogant and unrepentant nation.

Some have pointed out the Gospel story where Jesus told of a tower that had fallen, killing some people. He said that the incident was not judgment and that those killed were no worse sinners than any one else. To be fair, not all catastrophes are judgment nor were those killed in the storms greater sinners than those spared. That story that Jesus told stands alone in the Bible against hundreds of passages that speak of the heavy hand of an Almighty God moving in judgment. Looking at those storms, many signs point back to the hand of God.

Oil is at the center of everything. I am glad that President Bush is against the Homosexual Agenda; I’ll vote for that. I am glad he’s against abortion; I’ll vote for that as well. Iraq is a different thing. Let no one deceive you, Iraq is about oil. Iraq is about a greedy super power trying to secure its future at the expense of others.

I’m no fan of Saddam Hussein, and I believe that Mohamed and Islam are responsible for the damming of more souls than any other single person or movement in history. The fact is that the government in the Sudan and a dozen other countries make Saddam look like a saint and the former Iraq look like paradise. If we were trying to liberate a people, Iraq was far down on the priority list. In an elaborately devised scheme, we were convinced that Iraq had or was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction. I am convinced that neither the President nor any of his people ever believed that story. Even if they believed that, Iraq is a strange target. North Korea, India, Pakistan and several other countries have nuclear weapons. Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons is well documented. Why, then, attack Iraq.

The answer is that, in words and in his attack of Kuwait, Saddam was a constant threat to our supply of petroleum. Without oil, it is not an overstatement to say, we would cease to be a superpower. If you stop the supply of oil, you reduce the United States to Third World status overnight. The President, with his connections to the oil industry, knows this all too well. It is this struggle for oil that will lead to Armageddon.

It must have looked easy to the powers in Washington, Superpower against Third World Dictatorship. Even the people of Iraq hated Saddam and his government. It would be a simple thing to walk in and replace the government with one more to our liking; one that would not threaten the flow of oil. They were blinded by greed and power. They were secure in their faith that Americans, as the smartest, bravest and most powerful people in the world, would quickly prevail.

They did not understand the spiritual side of the issue. They did not understand Islam. They could not comprehend that Muslims in Arabia see the worst of America and equate it with Christianity. How could they have known that the people of the Middle East would see the war as a Christian attack on Islam?

We are a secular nation. We have, with great purpose and determination, walked away from the God of our fathers. We have convinced ourselves that we are a nation of superheroes. We have come to believe that it was the ingenuity and intelligence of our founders that allowed them to bring forth this nation. We have believed that it is by our own strength that we have come this far. Unlike the generation of WW2, we are not right and just in our cause. Unlike that America, our leaders do not have divine guidance. We have come to believe that “might makes right”.

And so, we attacked Iraq. Now we are in a great war of religions. If it were truly Islam vs. Christianity, Christ would win. It is, instead, Islam against a secular nation they mistakenly believe to be Christian. They have the strongest demons in hell on their side. We stand alone and naked. We do not even begin to understand the war in the heavens being played out on the earth. The debacle in Iraq is a self-inflicted judgment against the United States.

God is neither on the side of Islam nor that of a secular United States. God does bring judgment on the strong who misuse their strength to rob the weak and defenseless. God also brings judgment on those who forget Him, not to destroy them but to cause them to seek Him. God’s judgment is specific, never random. First, we are losing in Iraq; second, we are hit by two sequential storms that strike at the heart of America’s oil production. Suddenly, our supply of oil is less than before we attacked Iraq. The consequences are yet to be seen but I see the fear in the eyes of the “experts”.

We cannot pay for the war in Iraq. We are borrowing money everyday to pay the bills. Saddam could not have cost us this much money if he had been able to cease all petroleum exports from Iraq and Kuwait. His terrorists would find it almost impossible to kill as many Americans as we have lost in the war we started. Now we must pay for Katrina and Rita with more borrowed money. Meanwhile, the economy is being hit with an oil shortage and the highest fuel prices in our history. I do see fear in their eyes.

End times prophecy places the center of power and money in Europe and the Middle East. In the end, there is an attack by forces from the North and the East. I don’t find America anywhere. Is it possible that America won’t repent? Could we be seeing a great nation reduced to nothing? Will it take one more blow or is this the start of a tailspin from which we can never recover? I can’t answer those questions. I believe that there is time and opportunity to repent. I know that the God who birthed this nation can rescue her now. Unfortunately, I cannot see repentance or deliverance in the near future. When I put this together with the lack of references to America in prophecy, I cannot predict a bright future for this nation.

I could speak of how Mississippi has moved from faith in God to faith in casinos and the obvious judgment that has fallen on those who put their trust in gambling but that is for another article. Needless to say, the judgment was swift and specific. They are already working to rebuild their fallen idol; that is frightening.

Many are predicting a return to the first century for the Church in America. It is already happening in Africa, in places where the suffering is unimaginable and the standard of life untenable. If you are a Christian looking for the power and miracles of the First Century Church, take heart, it’s on its way. Please understand that it will be accompanied by First Century suffering and persecution. A powerful Church will rise from the ashes of judgment, and with it persecution and trouble. “Let not your heart be troubled,” there is enough fear in the eyes of the godless. “American” Christians will suffer greatly. Christians who are “pilgrims and aliens in a foreign land” will fare much better. Now is not the time to confuse “American” with “Christian” Faith in America is faith misplaced. Those who trust in the Government have fear in their eyes.

Dr. David A. Rice