So proud!

We are so proud of our nephew, Noah. He's only 10 years old and he gave his first number 3 talk on the school last week to an audience of about 80 people. Click the link below to see the video on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U9OjHW2Y7U&feature=youtube_gdata_player

It's moments like this where one gets just a tiny bit homesick!  Thank goodness for technology!

Yet Another Free Photo Book!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly offers exclusive photobook layouts so you can make your book just the way you want.

I got another irresistible offer from Shutterfly. I didn't think I had anything to make a book of, but once I started to look at the pictures from the last few months I realized they would turn in to a rather attractive album! 

Two days in a row!

I should just keep a little list of things I want to blog about, because when it comes to sitting down and writing I always forget the little stories I was planning on telling!

The first one that comes to mind though is about the pool! I've finally been making myself take advantage of the available exercise and for the week that our friend Cherub was here I swam every night. I took a week off, but started again this last two days. I'm not a strong swimmer, probably never will be. I have a bit of a fear of water, which is why I haven't managed to make myself jump in the pool yet! Anyway, I'm quite proud of the progress I've made. I started out only being able to swim about 10 lengths, which is only about 70 meters since the pool is small. But as of today I'm up to 32 lengths - that's about 220 meters, or just over 4 lengths of a standard olympic pool.  I'm hoping I'll have really buff, muscular arms soon!

We had our CO visit at the end of Feb/beginning of March. It was a lovely month of activity with 11 auxiliary pioneers for February, and I think we have about the same for March. Our three young sisters who were baptized in November & December pioneered for the first time and made a success of it, despite the fact that two of them were back in school most of February.

The visit was really encouraging. We have 68 publishers, 37 of whom are conducting 131 Bible studies. We had one new publisher and 5 baptized and have an average Sunday attendance of 88. The support for the ministry was really good every day, morning and afternoon. We had at least 30 out for every arrangement, and Sunday pretty much the entire congregation was out. We worked all of our territory by Friday and had to start it over again!

His final talk was really nice. Talking about how Jehovah is greater than our hearts. How he sees more than just what we are, he sees what our potential is, and takes into account our DNA, external factors that affect us like upbringing and current circumstances. He knows us better than we know ourselves. It was just a very encouraging talk, knowing what a struggle it is for so many families in our congregation just to provide for their families and still find time and energy for spiritual activities. We had 132 at the meeting Sunday so there's lots of potential for growth.

My study Carolina, who I mentioned in a previous post, is doing really well. We started the Bible Teach book this past Friday and I just come out floating from her study. She's SOOOO excited to finally be learning more about the Bible. She'd read over the chapter which I could tell right away because she kept referring to things that we hadn't got to yet!! I think once we finish the first chapter I'm going to teach her how to prepare since she's already half-way there anyway! She's a joy to study with.

Rut is also doing well. She's one of the calls I worked on for months, and now we're in chapter 2 of the Bible Teach book. I'm teaching her to how to study her book, highlighting the answers, and she's really getting the hang of it quickly. I really appreciate her because she's really setting the time aside for her study now. This week when I arrived I could tell that she was still a bit busy, and tired from a busy day, and they had people at the house, but despite all that she set everything aside for her study even though I offered to just go over the last page of the Watchtower together. She is developing a real appreciation for what she's learning it seems. Hopefully she will come to the Memorial next month.

We put the public witnessing table out on Friday this past week at the same place where we've putting it on Tuesdays. We now have an official sign to hang up next to it, and thanks to a sister's brother who is a welder we have a lovely sturdy stand to hang it on. I'll have to get a picture of it this week since I forgot to on Saturday. The sign drew a lot of attention.

Plans are coming together for the Memorial. We were going to do it all together with the other two congregations that meet in our hall, on the same big piece of land out the back of the hall where we did it last year. But then the CO encouraged us to do it separately and somewhere in our territory since the hall is a 15 minute walk for some in our territory and that can prevent people from coming. So, it looks like we're doing it at a house that belongs to a bible student in our congregation. It's a great big place, loads of room to do it outdoors, so it'll be fun to see how many our congregation has for it's first Memorial together. Charley has the privilege of giving the talk and when we took a trip to Pricesmart (Nicaragua's Costco) on Monday we went ahead and got the wine too. And an extra bottle to make sure it tastes good!

Well, I'm sure there are other stories to tell, but I can't bring anymore to mind at the moment. Oh, but I am going to add a few links to blog posts lately that I've really enjoyed. I follow blogs of a lot of other needgreaters and even a missionary (she is an AMAZING writer who will make you laugh and cry!). Here are a few experiences that I really enjoyed lately. Enjoy!

Matthew serves on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua and posted this fascinating post this week about a tiny island I'd never heard of before. Read about it at http://pioneerabroad.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-secret-island.html

Linka and Peter are missionaries in Guinea (Yes, a country featured in this year's yearbook) and she posted this lovely experience about making sacrifices to further Kingdom interests - http://ilynca.blogspot.com/2014/03/are-you-sleeping-brother-john.html

And this experience from Kat who is serving with her family in DR - http://thedrsurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2014/02/new-missionaries-needgreater.html

Picture overload!

This post will mostly be pictures. Maybe tomorrow I'll get chance to post some of our recent service experiences and talk more about CO visit. If you follow poet879 on Instagram then you've already seen a lot of these pictures!

First, we went to the beach a couple of weeks ago, and on the way we stopped in at Casares to see how the finished Kingdom Hall looked.  A couple of pioneers live next door so they let us see inside it too. We had the privilege of working a couple of times on this construction project so it was nice to see it all finished.

Then we spent a lovely afternoon at the beach in La Boquita. We went with our friend Caleb, his parents and our fried Cherub who had just arrived from Indianapolis the day before.

Our lovely lunch at the beach - fish complete with eyes!

It was a really relaxing, lazy day!

My friend Cherub, one day in to her Nicaragua adventure.

The gang. We missed Brenda - she wasn't feeling well that day

We stayed until the sun set.

We had CO visit and Cherub stayed with us for the week. The visit was really encouraging, maybe I'll write more about it later. It was fun introducing Cherub to Nicaragua. She has a blog too if you want to check it out - http://www.querubina.org/my-blog.html 

She took some cool pictures out in service that I have been posting on Instagram. Here are some of the shots she took of our territory.

Amongst these pictures are a couple of me with my bible studies. And the big group shot is the pioneer meeting with the CO. We have 8 regular pioneers and a big crowd of auxiliary pioneers, quite a few of whom were at their first ever pioneer meeting. It was very encouraging indeed.

Pancasan is the name of a neighborhood in our territory, and also the name of our congregation. And there is a picture of me crossing my favorite bridge in our territory!

In the middle we are with the CO and a family whose house we were invited to lunch at.

I love this shot!! I was showing Isaac the story of Abraham going to sacrifice Isaac. He didn't know the story of his namesake. He seemed to be pretty interested in it!

Saturday afternoon we had the privilege of having the CO and his wife over for lunch, along with a few others, and at their request we made pizzas! We also discovered that our CO plays guitar and sings pretty well!

CO chillin' in the recliner!

Pizzas galore!

This Saturday that just passed, which is usually our short day in service, we ended up being in Masaya for over 12 hours. Charley went to help on a project at the Kingdom Hall trying to get the water sorted out because the CO's water tank keeps emptying out and he has no water. He was going to help for a couple of hours, but it turned into an all day affair. But the CO has water now, so all is good!

About 4 brothers throughout the day dug that whole tunnel by hand! And the further they went, the deeper the water pipes got! Charley has blisters all over his hands.

We also went to Esteli, about 2 1/2 hours north of here, to drop Cherub off. She's going to be there, enjoying the cooler climate, for about a month. I didn't take a lot of pictures, and those I did take were out of the car window, but here's an idea of how hilly, and pretty it is north of where we live.

We decided these were rice fields, because in dry season everything else is brown as you can see in the other pictures!

And to finish off, some more random pictures from field service that I've taken over the last week.

My youngest bible student, Anai, on her wheel swing!

Public witnessing table on Friday. That lady in the blue skirt is reading the Good News brochure.

Nicole was rather engrossed in the brochure!

Walter Jr couldn't figure out how to get that shirt off his head!

Well, there's your picture overload. Hasta luego friends!