SUBJECT: Teenage Mission Experiences
AUTHOR: Heidi Burgdorff, Age 15, lives with her parents, 2 sisters, and cousins in the village of Kaikan, Guyana, near the Venezuelan border.
DATE: January 7, 1997

Heidi Burgdorff

Dear Grandma, Grandpa, and family,

hi! How is everyone? We are doing fine here, except for Lina who has a temperature at the moment. First of all I want to thank you so much for mailing that package of books. We had just about finished reading ours here, and we were wishing for some more. They were an answer to prayer. I love that kind of book because its not terribly long, but its interesting. So once again, thanks so much! We really enjoy getting letters from everyone back home. Whenever the plane comes (on Wednesday) we all eagerly open any mail. Its almost like Christmas. I really like it here in Kaikan. It rains a lot (its raining right now) and its loud on the tin roof. Whenever it starts to rain we all madly run outside and grab all the clothes off the

[Swimming in the River]

Swimming in the River

clothesline. Its quite funny, actually! The weather is humid and it gets pretty hot in the day. Thankfully we live right next to a river so we can just jump in whenever we feel like it. We usually go swimming twice, and sometimes three times a day. Right now the river is kind of low and not very swift, but just a few days ago it was high (several feet higher) and really swift. We (all of us kids) are attending the local school here. It is for kids from about ages 4 to 15. They don't have grades here like in the US. Instead, because of British influence, they have forms. Here the school goes up to form four. When they pass that, they either go to Georgetown or stay home. I think most of the kids stay home unless they are lucky enough to afford it. We take our own school work and do it there. I guess the main point of going to that school is to intermingle with the kids. We've made a lot of friends here. Most of the girls are kind of quite and reserved. They

[Socials]

Village Social Saturday Night

probably think we are very loud. The people here are very nice. They've gone out of their way to make us feel at home. They've brought us things like bananas, coconuts, cassava bread, edos, white yams, okra, bread, a few pineapples, etc. We have been eating very well here. Thankfully we have some good, creative cooks. Usually it has taken us about 2 hours to make each meal, but the other day we got a stove from Venezuela. That should cut down on our cooking time. We have been treating a lot of people with malaria, though few were from Kaikan. We had one snakebite patient, and a variety of other patients. Right now my mom and Aunt Becky are treating a lady for something. Oh, speaking of snakes, we have been skinning several snakes and now we have some beautiful skins. We have also been identifying

[Banana Wrapped Gifts]

Banana Leaf Wrapped Gifts

birds. Uncle Ken is really making us earn our money's worth. We've seen several birds that have been very hard to identify. I am glad we are doing this because we've seen some beauties. We've only seen one type of toucan, but we hope to see more. So, whats the news there? How was Christmas? We had a nice Christmas here. Most of our gifts were homemade. We really appreciated Grammie's books (Christmas in my heart), along with everyone else's gifts. On Christmas day the whole villiage got together and played soccer and volleyball. I didn't play, but I had a fun time watching. Well, I hope everyone is safe in Chowchilla. Please tell me any news. Is Cheyanne still alive? I guess this brings my letter to a close. I can't wait to hear from everyone. Bie!

Heidi Burgdorff

You may write to Heidi at: gates@andrews.edu

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Last Updated: March 10, 1997