Introducing........Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner

Well, another month has flown by. Just 5 more weeks and we’ll be in Indianapolis seeing all of our family and working. Looking forward to the seeing people part – the working part, well, it has to be done!

Since my last post we’ve been as busy as ever. For a month now we’ve been going to the assembly hall on Thursdays to help with maintenance and cleaning. I have to admit I wasn’t too excited about the prospect, but I’ve really been enjoying it. Twice now we’ve got to paint, which I like, and clean windows which was kinda fun too! This last week was the first week we didn’t get to work together all day, but it was nice getting to know the young sister I was working with who has been going weekly for about 18 months now. And they have a mango tree on site with HUGE mangoes. The assembly hall overseer’s wife picked about 3 dozen on Thursday so we got to bring a dozen delicious mangoes home. I’m loving mango season this year – really got addicted to them!

Working at the assembly hall, cleaning out bat poo, and then painting the frame for the suspended ceiling. Behind the assembly hall is the former branch, which is now an educational center. The first Nicaragua class of SKE is taking place right now, with two more to come this year.

We were also thrilled this month to get JW Broadcast in Spanish. It’s so exciting to know that so many others are getting to enjoy it now. Nobody (except one family) in our congregation have internet, and I think only two families even have a computer, so we had a couple of families over to watch the May broadcast. They thoroughly enjoyed it. And now that’s it available to download in JW Library it becomes portable, which is even better!

We don’t have any way to watch videos easily in the Kingdom Hall, so, on this trip back I’m bringing some handmade Nicaraguan bags to sell, with the idea that the funds will purchase a projector. Yes, this is a shameless plug for selling bags! I’ll also be selling tract folders that a brother makes. Closer to the time I’ll post on the blog and Instagram to let everyone know when and where they can come buy them if they want to.

Watching the May broadcast on www.tv.jw.org

This month also meant a lovely 5-day trip to Jinotega to visit our friends, Aaron and Tasha, who are serving up there. We used to be in the same congregation in Indianapolis and I’ve known them both for years, since before they even knew each other, so visiting them felt almost like a visit back home. We really enjoyed the days spent there. There are four congregations in Jinotega, in the city, but each one has an enormous rural territory too. Aaron and Tasha, along with about 3 others, are working a couple of small rural communities every week and have a ton of studies out there. They had the first Memorial in the area this year and 50 attended, including one lady who walked an hour and a half each way to get there, walking home by herself in the dark. Since then they’ve had Sunday meetings and every week at least a couple of studies from the territory have come. So Charley gave the talk in the group on Sunday at 2pm, then we hopped on the bus to go to the 5pm meeting with the congregation in the city.

The two meetings - above with the group, then below in the Kingdom Hall

I really fell in love with Jinotega. We’ve been before, but this was the first time we’d had chance to go out in service. We did a long day on Tuesday with them, doing their return visits and studies in the small communities of Santa Carmela & Las Latas. It surprised me how many people live out there, but Aaron and Tasha can’t stop to talk to everyone door to door, otherwise they’d never get their studies done. The weather is a lot cooler which we also really enjoyed. And the town has most of the conveniences of a bigger city, but without the hustle and bustle of a big city like Masaya, where we live.

This past weekend was our pioneer session with the pioneers of the circuit and our circuit assembly. There were 289 in attendance at the pioneer meeting. Lots of encouragement to keep up with Jehovah’s celestial chariot. It was an encouraging day. Then we all stayed afterwards to help clean for the circuit assembly. Ours was on Sunday. We had about 1920 in attendance and 6 baptized. None from our congregation this time. It was so nice to see almost everyone from Pioneer School and catch up with them. Seems like everyone is still hanging in and pioneering.

All but one of our regular pioneers. Two of them just started this month.

A couple of points I really liked from the circuit assembly. The CO made a good point, that we shouldn’t confuse our freedom to make decisions, with the right to decide what is right and wrong, a right that only Jehovah has.

The brother who gave the baptism talk used an excellent illustration about a butterfly. He told a story about a man watching a butterfly trying to get out of its cocoon. It was struggling to get out of a tiny hole, so he decided to use some small scissors to cut it open. But the butterfly came out with a big, swollen body and small wings and all it could do was go around in circles. He said the fight they make to get out, is what forces the fluids out of its body, into its wings, making the body smaller and the wings big and strong. But since the cocoon was cut open, the butterfly couldn’t do anything.

In the same way, he said, newly baptized ones will face challenges, but they have to be allowed to work through them, otherwise they’ll be weak spiritually and just go around in circles. He said that we have the help of the elders, but Jehovah hasn’t given them the scissors to cut us out of every tight spot we find ourselves in. They will give us scriptural advice, but we have to fight, and if we do, it will make us stronger spiritually.

The only pictures I took at our assembly. Don't we have the cutest little girls in our congregation?!

Well, that gets us all up to date again! We have friends coming to visit next month, so before we know it we’ll be heading off to Indy, where we will hopefully see a lot of you. 

Oh, and the title of this post. Here is Gordon. If you google his whole name, as spelled out in the title of this blog, you'll understand why we chose that name for him. He's our new pet!