Pictures Galore!

Here are the pictures from the District Convention. I had chance to upload them today since I took the day off. Charley took about a dozen from the congregation to help on a Kingdom Hall construction project that we were invited to in Managua. Since I've been the last three times, I gave up my space in the truck to let someone else go - that's my excuse I'm sticking to it!! 

Oh, and I'll share a funny story before I post the pictures. I like to entertain the congregation every now and then, and I did a really good job of it last night. It was SOOO embarrassing! Charley asked a young sister and I to do a demonstration on the service meeting. I could have sworn he told me we'd do the demonstration after paragraph 6. So, when he was done getting comments on paragraph 6 he said "So, how can we respond to someone who says they don't believe in the Bible. Let's see...". Doesn't that sound like a cue for a demonstration to you?!?! So, as I was sitting in the front row, when he said "Let's see..." I was almost about to step on the platform, when I suddenly realize he's saying "...what paragraph 7 says" and he starts to ask the question. I was mortified!!!! The congregation was CRACKING up laughing at me. After he took some comments in paragraph 7 then he said "Let's see a demonstration". One of those moments I'm sure nobody will let me forget!!!!

Now for the pictures!

Ready for our first day of convention. I invented a new hairstyle for myself, which I failed to repeat on Sunday when I tried so hard to!!

Caleb being Chairman of the session

We went out to eat at a new Chinese place. Love this sign. It says "We don't have WiFi. Talk amongst yourselves"

They have some HUGE plates of food. Charley ate every last morsel of it!

Saturday morning

Adina, Brenda & Javiera

With two of the Escobar sisters. Most of their family is in our congregation.

Charley with Ismael, Yader & Yisak. At least one of them is wearing a new tie that was kindly donated by the brothers back in Indianapolis. I can't remember which ties they were, they may all be wearing a new one.

The youngest Escobar girls - Yasuara & Bicri - both got baptized on Saturday

Our dear friends Domingo & Francis, and Brother Taleno who is just adorable! He was at all three days of convention.

Darwin & Erica

Jocelyn, Itzel & Jenny. I have the privilege of studying with Itzel. Her and her mam are progressive studies

Jason getting baptized. This was the best shot I managed to get!

Our friend Justin's study, Jaime, getting baptized

Bicri & Yasuara's baptism

Our fourth new member at Pancasan, Paula

The lovely Escobar family, plus their little friend Abby!

The Escobar siblings, the youngest two now baptized servants of Jehovah.

The girls with their mam and dad. Happy day for them all - don't let their serious faces fool you!

Brenda and I on Saturday. I wore my "oldie-but-goodie" skirt. It used to be my mam's, as was the belt. Its estimated to be about 25 years old! Love it!

The lovely Brenda & Caleb

Charley being chairman on Saturday afternoon

With my friend Jael, who calls me her Barbie doll! Her dress was a kind gift from a sister back in Indianapolis. If anyone in East Spanish Indianapolis sees this picture, please show it to Ester Perez and tell her it was greatly appreciated as were all the clothes she sent. 

Jairo & Rosario with two of their three kids. Jairo was also wearing new shirts and ties at the convention courtesy of the friends in Indianapolis.

Our lovely girls, Bicri, Yasuara, Lucinda & Jennifer. All but one baptized in the last 3 weeks.

Our coordinator was chairman on Sunday morning

This little girl came up to me and said she wanted a picture with me. Then she vanished before we took it. Turns out she went to get her mam and baby sister. Now I have to figure out a way to get a copy of this to her!

I think I've managed to finally upload videos to YouTube too so here goes. Just a couple of 20 second clips of the convention.

Highlights from a wonderful weekend

We had our "La Palabra de Dios es la Verdad" District Convention this past weekend and what a wonderful three days we enjoyed.

I don't have my pictures together yet since they're spread about between my tablet, point and shoot, and DSLR! I'll get to that eventually! But for now, some highlights.

The attendance jumped massively each of the three days! We had 1676 on Friday, 2500 on Saturday, and Sunday afternoon were just 72 short of 3000 people!!!! It was PACKED on Sunday. The assembly hall has just over 2600 seats I think, so they had to bring in a lot of plastic chairs too. 

On Saturday we had the privilege of seeing 47 new brothers (14) and sisters (33) get baptized. The youngest was a nine year old girl, the oldest was a 79 year old brother. Also a sister in a wheelchair was baptized. With the support of her husband's shoulders she was able to stand up to answer the questions. We now have one new brother, and three new sisters in our congregation, ranging between 13 and 20 years old.

Charley had the privilege of being chairman of the program on Saturday afternoon. And of course we enjoyed the releases of all the same publications that all of you readers received. 

There were some lovely interviews. Quite a few who were around back in the days when the work was very difficult here. One brother they interviewed was around when there were only 338 Jehovah's Witnesses in Nicaragua. As of the last annual report in August 2012 there are now 24,480 Witnesses in the country. He certainly has seen the fulfillment of Isaiah 60:22 in his lifetime.

They also interviewed a pioneer sister who until recently was in our circuit. Her name is Johanna and she was raised in a Christian household and baptized back in 1986 when she was a young girl. She talked about how the work was banned at the time, and literature only came in secretly. They used to have one Watchtower that they all had to make their own copy of. And they were assigned to preach in twos so as not to attract attention, but her partner often couldn't go out, so she often went preaching all by herself as a young one.

Those are just a couple of the wonderful interviews we listened to. It was faith strengthening to hear of all the challenges our dear friends here have overcome to remain faithful to Jehovah and put his Kingdom first in their lives.

The dramas were also very well presented. I don't have any pictures, but you've all seen it anyway, well, most of you reading this. The Esther drama on Sunday was very well presented, good acting on the part of Esther and Haman in particular!

There weren't a lot of congregations in our circuit assigned to this convention, so we got to make new friends from Managua. We enjoyed getting to know a missionary couple who are serving in a congregation in Managua. They've been here 20 years, and spent quite a number of years in circuit work down here. They were so much fun, and had such great stories, very refreshing to be around. We tried to make dinner plans with them but it never did work out. 

We did get to enjoy the company of Brenda and Caleb the whole weekend. They came and stayed at our house since it's much quieter here. It's really noisy around their house at the minute since it's the holidays and people have some noisy traditions this time of year, and noisy traditions that they carry out at 3am when you're trying to sleep! Thankfully none of that goes on where we live, so we all slept very peacefully all weekend! And then last night we enjoyed Pizza Hut with them, our friends Justin & Adina, and our Circuit Overseer and his wife. It was a relaxing, encouraging, entertaining evening, providing a lovely close to the weekend.

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully soon I'll get my pictures together. Hope you're all doing well. 

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Talk about busy!!

It seems like a long time since I've blogged. It's been non-stop hectic since my last post. 

We helped some friends move recently. I think that might have been a while ago but I only posted pictures of that on Instagram. Here are a few shots of moving, Nica-style!

This was just the trip from the store to the house they were moving out of

Then we loaded up their futon too in addition to the fridge, stove and bed already on there!

So the only place left for our friends was the little shelf behind the driver and passenger! These girls are both pretty tall too! Good job it wasn't a very long drive!

We had company over the weekend, so Thursday was a 12 hour day getting all kinds of stuff done, including quite a bit of food preparation!

Two banana bread loaves

Lentil soup for dinner that day, egg salad sandwiches for lunch the following day

If I do say so myself, this potato soup was DELISH!

And made from scratch spaghetti sauce for Saturday's dinner

We had our dear friends, the Robleto's, stay with us for the weekend since the assembly hall is just a few minutes away and they were all going to the District Convention together. They almost all had parts on the program, unfortunately we had so much going on we couldn't go with them to the assembly at all. But we had a good time in the mornings and evenings with them! They had 1800 at their convention on Saturday, but 56 got baptized!! Philip gave the talk and he said he didn't realize how many he was addressing his talk to until about 5 rows of people stood up!! 

Left to right - Mario, Luisa, Mario Jr and Wanda Robleto

I suggested Philip use my apron to keep his white shirt clean - spaghetti can be a messy business. 

We also had a clothes giveaway this past Saturday. Friends from English and Spanish back in the States donated clothes, the suitcases to put them in, and the funds to take them on the plane with us. So, Saturday we invited the friends over to someone's house in the territory to pick out whatever might fit them. It went well, and the friends were really excited and grateful. So, thank you to all of you who participated in that. I wish we could have taken more, since there were others who wanted to donate, but there just wasn't space.

Some of the friends going through the clothes.

There's nothing you can't transport on a motorbike down here!

What else? Hmmm......we went to help out with the construction of a new Kingdom Hall in Monte Tabor. It's the town we almost ended up serving in when we came for three months, since it's near El Crucero where we visited the first time, and it has furnished apartments. But then we got offered this house and so we ended up in Masaya. They had been meeting for a long time in what was basically designed to be a small store, and they wouldn't fit and have to sit outside too. So, it's exciting to see them finally getting their own Kingdom Hall. I don't know if I was just tired when I got there this time, but it felt like much harder work than the two days we went to Casares a few months ago. I'm still a bit sore from it!

They had to chop up quite a couple of big trees on the site

Left to right - Cristina, Jennifer, Jose & Jason

Construction methods are a lot different than in the US. It was fun watching how they splatter the concrete on the walls

Jason working on the last set of blocks up top

Jennifer and I moving the pile of gravel from here to there! No such thing as heavy machinery on the Kingdom Hall sites down here! It took us most of the day to move it!

That's Josue up on the ladder, and Wilber (our COBE) with the striped shirt. He used to be on the full-time construction crew when he was single, so he always does welding when he goes. Seems like much easier work than the rest of us get!

This is what Charley did all day. His shoulder is all bruised up from lifting the buckets of gravel and sand up to pour into the mixer. He also had to carry the 94lb bags of concrete from around the other side of the hall!

The pile of gravel slowly moving over!

The hall from the front.

Service was good this week. My new study, Dinora, the one that energized me that one day I was so tired, is going to be a really good one! We had a lovely study again on Wednesday - finished the chapter about suffering. She's amazing. And we got to chat for a while and get to know each other too. I feel an instant bond with her. I think it's going to be a lovely friendship, so hopefully we'll study again this Wednesday morning, starting the book from the beginning now. And her little 5 year old girl brought me a glass of water - just of her own accord. So sweet!

I also had fun on Sunday watching the Noah video with my little friend, Anai. She's the cutest little thing. Charley is studying with her dad, who doesn't know how to read. I think probably since his mam is deaf, he likely had to work from a young age, and since she doesn't read, he never learned to either. Since I took the tablet to show Anai the Noah video, I took advantage of the chance to take a few pictures. A lot of our new territory is very poor, and I got a chance to take some pictures so that you can see what I mean by that.

Charley's study Walter, and his wife, Mayra who we haven't convinced to join in yet!

Walter Jr - 6 months old

This is where they sit for the study. That little rocking chair that Walter is in is a kid's one. They tried to have me sit in it last week, but much to my dismay, I couldn't get my hips in it!!! Hahahaha, not embarrassing at all!

This is the rest of their "house". Basically it's just a room with two beds in and a dirt floor. 

Anai and me taking a "selfie"! 

We left District Convention invitations on this block on Sunday. It's right in the city, but there are still a lot of people with dirt floors, and makeshift houses.

It's not unusual to see pigs, even in the city!

Well, I can't think of any other stories right now although I'm sure I had some other ones. I finally sat down the other day and worked out how much we earned in the States, and was pleased to discover after all the calculating that we made enough for 9 1/2 months, which makes a full year really. 2 1/2 months working, leaves 9 1/2 months in the year. Jehovah always provides just what we need. I would like to say Thank You to those who made it possible for us to earn that, since it wasn't all just what we made at work, it was also due to the wonderful generosity of our dear friends and family.

We couldn't be serving down here without the support of our wonderful family and worldwide brotherhood. Thank you for helping us live this amazing life. 

Well, I am now sitting in absolute pitch blackness. Amazing how quickly it gets dark, and how early. I still can't get used to darkness at 6pm year round! Charley is in Masaya doing baptism questions. We have 4 or 5 candidates so we'll see if we manage to have 56 baptized at our convention next weekend too! Although we went already in English, we're really looking forward to hearing the program in Spanish. I'm sure I'll have plenty to share from that next time I blog.

Goodbye for now.