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!

About time, eh?!

My mam said people were asking her at the circuit assembly last weekend what had happened to the blog!! Well, here it is!! Every time I thought I'd sit down and blog lately, I ended up doing something else, and then didn't feel like sitting in front of the computer!

So, while it's still not even 7:30am, I thought I'd make the blog today's priority! Hope you are all doing well. I know those of you reading from the States have been through a rough winter and I really hope it is over for you really soon. I apologize in advance for all of the pictures of sunshine and pool-time that you may see in this post!

I'll try not to give too much detail of what's been going on this last month since it would make the post too long to bother reading! Things are going really well though.

We've finally been having some of the friends from our congregation over to the house. We do it on a Saturday after service. I get overwhelmed at the idea of cooking for everyone, so I tell them to have lunch at home, and then at 1pm we'll go eat dessert and swim at the house! It's been a great success. Here are some pictures from the groups of people we've had over so far. If you follow me on Instagram you'll recognize all of these shots!

Jenny (red shirt) and her family are progressive students. They came over on a Monday and we made spaghetti - that's what I always make for big groups of people and everyone seemed to like it despite the fact that I didn't serve rice with it. Yes, people eat rice with their spaghetti here!

Here are two families. Our young pioneer, Jose, and his dad and grandma. And then Maritza and her four girls. We had a fun time with them. Jose and his family were with us in the other congregation so they'd been over before, but we just had grass out back that time!

This is the Escobar family, plus Yader. They're such a nice family, and the kids are such a nice group of young people. All baptized, two oldest boys are ministerial servants, and they're just fun to be around. They brought a ball which we had a great time with! A lot of people here don't know how to swim, including the young ones, so they all hang out in the shallow end or the hot tub!

So, we're slowly working our way through the congregation, hoping by the end of the year to have had everyone over at least once. It's funny the things you don't realize that people aren't used to, like glass doors. Every time someone comes they almost walk into the glass patio doors, since it's just not common here to have a glass door at your house. But this time the young sister in the orange shirt really had an encounter with the door! I had closed it because flies were getting in the house, and she didn't realize and after she got changed to go in the pool, from upstairs I had a huge BOOM! Poor thing - she busted her lip on that door! She must have really been charging at it!

Ok, what else? Oh, since we missed our circuit pioneer session in November we had the privilege of going to the English one a few weeks ago. They had it in the Kingdom Hall down the road from the assembly hall and it was PACKED! I think they were expecting about 130, but since there were some "visitors" like us, they had 168. Charley stood up for the first hour or so, until they went and rented some plastic chairs! It was a FANTASTIC program. All based on the example of Nehemiah. I didn't realize how wonderful it would be to go to it in English! It's only the second time I've been to a pioneer meeting in English in the past 12 years, but it was wonderful. And since it was directed to a bunch of need-greaters then it was personalized to the challenges we face sometimes. We saw some friends we hadn't seen in a while, and made some new ones.

My favorite point from the meeting was what one brother said about distressing times. He said Jehovah didn't design us to cope with critical times, but he has given us the antibiotic to cope with discouragement - the Bible. He reminded us of the need to be deep students of God's Word. I had just never thought of it that way - Jehovah made us to live in paradise, so we aren't designed to deal with what we have to deal with today! Amazing point! That was the speaker in the English circuit who always gives the BEST talks ever!

Another point was from that same brother. He said that regular, unrushed Bible reading gets it into our minds, meditation gets it into our hearts, and then application of what we read is like sending it to our feet!! We've heard the mind and heart parts a lot, but I hadn't heard anyone talk about the feet! Nice way of putting it!

I also liked the phrase "Our outlook can affect the outcome" when talking about facing daily challenges. And a lovely interview with a sister who is serving here with her husband and their little girl who is about 2 I think. They're both pioneers, he's an elder, and she talked about how things didn't seem to be going according to plan at all. They hadn't planned on having a baby, they spent money fixing a car that then got wrecked, they couldn't find a place to live. It seemed like the odds were against them, but here they are, serving down here with their little girl and are such a blessing to their congregation. They're such a sweet family. I really admire those who serve down here with small children.

The multitude at the pioneer meeting. It was such an international crowd!

And then on Saturday we spent the day at the English Circuit Assembly. I wish we could have gone Sunday too, but we just have too much going on in our territory on Sunday's. But it was lovely to be there just for a day. We had a couple of friends who also serve in Spanish stay at our house for the weekend so we had a nice time with them too.

With Laura & Dillenis who spent the weekend with us. The other picture is of the Theocratic Ministry School. The variety of accents is so much fun - US, England, France, Nicaragua, Australia, and the list goes on!

Natasha serves in Granada English. She's such a sweet sister, and right now she's up in the mountains for a month serving in seldom worked territory in Spanish - go Natasha!!!!

Just last weekend we got to go help out at the construction in Managua again. I say "again" thinking that I blogged about the previous time we went, but looking back, I didn't! Well, we went three times to help with the construction, although I only went twice. Here are some pictures from those two times then.

Charley and I were up and down that ladder sanding down where they had welded the rafters, since the painters were coming along spray painting them.

As you can see it's come a long way since the previous time we went. It's pretty much done now, just outside work to finish and the bathrooms inside.

The floor got a good cleaning because a water pipe burst and they found the hall full of water. So we spent the morning getting all that out and get all the materials off the floor.

The older brother in one of these pictures has been in the truth about the time I've been alive. He lived through the war in Nicaragua and the ban. He's seen a lot of growth. It was lovely to hear his experiences.

So, maybe one of these days we'll get to see the hall completely finished and furnished. It's so nice to be able to help out. It's hard work, we did a lot of shoveling in the afternoon to mix concrete, but it's worth the aches!

We also had a great night a few weeks ago at a party for Brenda's parents. The friends danced Marimba, and then we danced the night away. It was a great time!

Brenda and her parents with the Marimba crew!

Service is going really well. Sometimes I have the tablet on me and get to show the Caleb videos to the kids in our territory, and those in the congregation who often haven't seen them either. These boys below were quite entertained by the videos!

Aren't they cute little rascals?!

I've had some great experiences lately. I got two studies from the Good News brochure moved over into the Bible Teach book and they're really enjoying it. One was surprised how easy the book is to study. I also have a couple of calls that I've been working on for months who are now more regular and we actually sit down and consider the brochure. And a new study called Carolina who practically asked for a study on the return visit. She has a store in the front of her house, so the first time I talked to her we had to keep pausing for customers, but we did a paragraph from the Good News brochure. When I went back she invited us in, and this third visit last week we did half of Lesson 10 in the brochure and she said how she's dying to know more about the Bible. She wanted to take a course but she couldn't afford it, so she said she figured that if God wanted her to learn, he'd find a way for her to do so!! So I said, well, here we are, and it's free, and in your house, at the time that works best for you! This week we'll finish that lesson, and then I already showed her the Bible Teach book and said I'd bring her one this week. There are so many people in our territory who still want to study. Sometimes it's just a case of offering.

For others it's all about the timing. I had the privilege of going on a study this week with one of our pioneers. This girl, Raquel, is so excited about her study. She grins all the way through it and it's so contagious! She said she always would say "I'm busy", but then one day she thought to herself, "I could make time if I really wanted to". So the next time a witness went by, she accepted a Bible study! It was such a lovely reminder of why we keep working the same territory over and over again. You just never know who will decide to listen.

Well, I said this post wouldn't be as detailed as usual, but I think I failed!!! Once I start writing I start remembering stories to tell!

Charley has also had some good experiences lately and has some good, new studies. So we're keeping busy. And we've started putting out a public witnessing table now on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and I think maybe we'll add another day. It's been going well but I haven't had the tablet with me to take a picture of that.

We had to go renew our visa yesterday. I always get nervous when we go because they can decide not to give it to you if they feel like it! But we got another 90 days, so we're good until May, at which point we'll probably go to Costa Rica for a few days and make a vacation out of it. At the mall where the immigration office is we got Subway sandwiches for lunch, and a dozen donuts that I got a special offer online.

And here is another group of friends that came over to swim for a bit. Nicole (far right) is serving in the congregation we were previously in. Her sister, next to her, was visiting for 6 weeks, and the other two are young sisters who are currently living with Nicole. I love how people here get in the pool with all of their clothes on! 

We have some good times coming up. Circuit Overseer's visit next week, and a friend from Indianapolis arrives for a couple of months this Sunday. She'll be serving further north where it's cooler, but I'm sure we'll manage to persuade her to spend at least a few days with us too! 

Well, time to get some meeting preparation done. And maybe time for a cup of coffee, and another donut - breakfast of champions! 

I'll try not to let another month pass before the next post. Take care!

The simple things in life

Well, another week or so has gone by very well. The studies are continuing. Sonia, who I talked about in the last post, is doing really well. She's been to all the meetings for two weeks now, basically since we started studying. She did the Bible reading for the Theocratic Ministry School last week and had pages of notes, and all kinds of questions that I had to do some research on to be able to answer accurately! 

Charley gave the talk at our sister congregation on Saturday and did a very nice job. So we didn't go to our meeting on Sunday afternoon. Sonia called me that evening to make sure we were okay. It's so nice when your studies call to check up on you!! She even calls to make sure that we're having our study! I'm having a great time with her!

And this past weekend I started to study with Anai. She was raised in the truth, but then the family wasn't real regular for a while. Now she's in her early 20's and has a little boy. We did a review of the first couple of chapters of the Bible Teach book and got to know each other a little. She's a lot quieter than Sonia, but that's not necessarily a bad thing!

I also finally had a couple of studies that I've had a hard time finding this month. They're both really smart young women, and we have a great study when we do manage to get together. Unfortunately one of them is moving out of our territory in about a month, so I'll have to make the most of the month that she's still around. She was one of my very first return visits, actually I think my first, when we moved to this congregation.

The last time I blogged we were getting ready to have our congregation pioneer meeting. Our two elders did the meeting, obviously, and it was very nice indeed. Here is a picture of us all, it didn't turn out that well, but you get the idea. I realized later that I had a big smudge on my lens, therefore the smudgy faces behind me! I look really funny in this picture, like a strange shape or something. Can't put my finger on it, but oh well!

Pancasan's regular pioneers. Front row - Reyner & Jael and us, obviously!
Back row - Rut, Erica, Matilde & Jose

Jose is our youngest pioneer. He's 14, but he's been pioneering almost three years already! Matilde is our older pioneer, as you can see, but she's SUPER zealous. Always out, got tons of studies. Her husband isn't a witness, but she's always busy in theocratic activities. Reyner & Jael are the newest pioneers, starting together at the beginning of the service year, although Jael has pioneered in the past too. We worked out that between us all we have about 50 years pioneering, ranging from 7 months to 17 years. 

One thing I remembered the other day that I kept meaning to blog about, or maybe I did already and I forgot, is about the kids here. There's a sister I go out with almost every week in the afternoon, and she has two young kids aged 8 and 11 I think. Their cousin lives next door, and she's about 9. One evening I was over there while Charley was in a meeting, and they got out a little puzzle, maybe of about 30 pieces or so. It was a picture of a little tiger. So we had a fun time putting that together, then we played a little card game with this tiny somewhat worn-out set of cards. Both the puzzle and the cards were from an American sister who has been serving down here for years and brought these presents from the States. The kids had a great time, and I did too, and I was thinking how nice it is to see kids enjoying such simple pleasures. That's something I really appreciate about the kids here. Hardly anyone in our congregation has a computer, the kids don't have video games, if they're fortunate they have a bike and a few little toys, they've probably never been to a cinema to see a film, but they're so happy with the little things. They play outside all the time, and climb trees and invent games, such a simple life that I think a lot of kids in the developed world don't get to enjoy anymore.

Last Monday a friend and her little girl came over to hang out. And then in the afternoon we spent a bit of time at the Lagoon with Brenda and her family. Her mam and dad are here visiting, so it's been nice to get to know them a little.

Caleb, Brenda, and her mam and dad

Laguna de Apoyo. I love the warm, calm water here!

Loida & her little girl, Kitlis. You may remember them baking at our house in previous blog posts!

And with Brenda's parents came a lovely gift from my father-in-law. We love our new 2014 books and pens, and the friends are loving the bookmarks he sent. Thank you, Mike!!!

Also here's a picture of the house. They added some decorative stone out the front and it looks very nice, adds a nice little detail to the house.

Well, I think that's all for now. We're going to see a movie later on today. We get to see it in the VIP theater which has big, reclining chairs and you can order food and have it brought to you. And since the showing is before 2pm, it's only $4.50 each to get in!

Time to go bring the clothes in off the line, they dry pretty quickly here!

Ok, no more for now!

Well, time is zooming by and we're in 2014 already. Things are going really well here. It's been a busy couple of weeks, but we've had some time to rest too.

I had a super productive morning, so I treated myself to just curling up with the digital version of the Yearbook this afternoon. They're shorter now, so they don't take as long to read. Wonderful experiences. Look forward to reading through it again.

So, a few weeks ago Charley and I were out doing return visits in the afternoon, again, and I was complaining about not having many reliable Bible studies yet to keep us busy. But later that day when I really thought about it, I realized what was missing. I hadn't been asking Jehovah for Bible Studies. So, I started in earnest to pray about it.

Well, this week I had to ask for a pause for now, no more studies please! They all just sort of fell from the sky after I started praying about it!!! I started a couple of studies myself, and then a sister told me she wanted to take me to a family where she studies with the mother. She said the daughter wanted to study, but that's all she told me. We went, and it turns out the family have been around the truth for quite a while, and the daughter is determined not to loose any more time. She was at two days of the convention, and has been to one meeting already. We've had two studies, just reviewing the Teach book without really studying it since she has a good basic knowledge already. She's got the cutest little boy, Salomón, who is starting to warm up to me know - thanks to my tablet and the videos from jw.org!!!

That same week, another brother asked me if I had time for another study. It's with the adult daughter of a brother in our congregation. She's studied before but wants to start up again, so we'll see how that goes this weekend. 

And then a progressive study in the congregation got a Bible study for me with a girl who lives just around the corner from her. We've only had one study so far, but hopefully tomorrow we'll have the second one. She really wants to learn more. We started in the Teach book right away in Chapter 3 since that's the subject she chose to start with.  It's funny how that all happened too. Charley and I had been at the hall hiding from a sudden rainstorm, and we found some large print books that we decided to take to this progressive study, Rosa Elena, since she uses large print publications. When we went to drop them off she was outside, so we were chatting, when this neighbor of hers walked by. Rosa Elena introduced us and said she wanted to study, so we made plans right then and there! Talk about being in the right place at the right time - or angelic direction perhaps?!

We had another lovely example of how Jehovah provides just what you need, when you need it, especially if you ask for it! A couple of Sunday's ago I got up so tired, I just didn't know how I was going to make it through the day. Sunday's are a long day since we go out in service, often for 4 or 5 hours, then get changed somewhere and go to the meeting at 4pm. Since we live out of the territory we don't go home until after the meeting. And on Sunday's it's a bit harder to find lunch since a lot of the places we usually eat are closed.

So, I prayed that morning for strength to not just get through the day, but to enjoy it. I also mentioned to Jehovah that it would be really nice if someone could invite us to eat lunch at their house!!! Well, when I got done accompanying another sister on her studies that morning, I met Charley at the house where we meet for service. I went to use the bathroom, and the sister asked me if we'd had lunch yet. This is the first time she's offered us lunch, and just the very day that we needed it the most!! (she later thanked me, yes, she thanked me, for not saying no to her food!) So we had lunch there. Her and her husband are so sweet. Neither of them have the best health, and they barely make ends meet, yet they were willing to share the food they'd made to go sell with us that day. And since then almost every time we meet at their house (4 times a week) they give us some kind of fruit. So we were able to eat lunch, and then continue on doing calls and didn't finish until an hour before the meeting was due to start! It was a wonderful day.

That same day we were also invited by another sister to have lunch at her house the following Tuesday! Invitations fell from the sky, kind of like the studies!!! Now that the friends in the congregation are starting to discover that we eat the same things they do, they're starting to feel more comfortable about inviting us over! There's this idea here that foreigners don't eat Nicaraguan food, so I've been explaining that we come from a culture where we're used to eating all kinds of types of food, so we're pretty open to anything. People here tend not to eat "outside their box" so they assume we don't either!

So, we still eat lunch out, we don't expect people to feed us daily! But it is nice when every now and then someone provides us a little lunch or something. The friends here have so little, yet they are so generous. So, now I have lots of "thank you" banana breads to make!

Well, we have our pioneer meeting with our local elders this evening so I think it's time to start making some effort to get ready for that. I made a couple of banana breads to take. There isn't a lot of good sweet, bakery products here (in my opinion!) so it's easy to impress everyone with banana bread. They love it! And I love it because it's so easy to make. 

Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the 2014 Yearbook.

More turtles!

Since I had so many pictures from our day at the beach with the turtles, I decided just to make a video of them instead of posting them all in a mile long blog post.

It was an amazing experience to see the wisdom of Jehovah in his creation. The only detail I don't have pictures of is the amazing starry sky we saw that night. With no artificial light around, the sky was just bursting with thousands of stars. What a wonderful sight.

Below is the video, or if you can't view it for some reason, click here to see it.

Let's try that again!

Not sure if the blog email went through properly. I'm subscribed and I got a rather strange email today, so perhaps everyone did.

So here is what I was trying to share below or click here to see what wonders of Jehovah's creation we enjoyed on Monday.

The wonders of Jehovah's creation

More later on this, but for now, here's a video of the amazing day we had on Monday!