Just a quick one

Just a quick post to put a few pictures out there for anyone who hasn't already seen them in Instagram! Things are going well here. It's been really busy lately, and we've had a full house with our landlady, her daughter, and her brother here, so it feels like we've been even busier than ever this last couple of weeks.

The ministry is going really well. I have a lot of studies now, it's a challenge to keep up with them all, but it's a nice problem to have!

The congregation is really flourishing too. As I think I mentioned before, in the first 9 months we just had one new publisher, although we had 5 baptized. But all of a sudden we've had a bunch of new publishers. All little kids and old ladies! Another of the little girls we spend a lot of time around was approved for this past month, and her brother is about to reach that goal too. And another young teenager too. And then three older studies. Two of them are almost 80, the other is a little younger, but she's blind. One of the almost 80-year old's has back problems so she can't walk too well. So she set up a table outside her house. It's a busy street, and she knows everyone, so I think she placed over 40 pieces of literature her first day sitting there! The other almost 80-year old was at the group on Saturday for her first time out, although I haven't had chance to talk to her yet to see how it went.

I hope to have some pictures soon of all our new publishers. It's so lovely to see older ones coming along like that. We have at least 6 more studies that are over 50 too, and are at all the meetings, so maybe we'll have another growth spurt in the next 6 months or so. It's lovely to see the growth. It's like the congregation has finally settled, we're all getting used to each other, and so now the growth begins!

We also had a man from our territory come to the meeting for the first time a couple of weeks ago. He's been in the territory since always, and a lot of people have talked to him, and everyone was really pleased and surprised to see him at the Kingdom Hall for the first time. He was sick this past Sunday, so we'll see if he comes this coming weekend. Our friend Cherub met him out in service and set things up for us to take him. Here he is below, chatting with Charley outside the hall. He said afterwards that the really enjoyed it. He was impressed with how well organized we are, how well everything was explained, and how the kids all participate too.

Don Oracio at his first meeting. Charley's not asleep, just squinting from the sun!

And here are some more random pictures with brief explanations below each one.

Here we are on Sunday getting our Memorial location cleaned up. They painted over the graffiti! We'll be having it outdoors again, but this time on a piece of land owned by a study in our hall. It's nice because it's in our territory, unlike our Kingdom Hall, so hopefully we'll have a lot of people come that evening. 

We spent a lovely evening down by Lake Nicaragua in Granada with some friends who serve nearby, and some others who serve in English in La Ceiba, Honduras. If you're thinking of serving in English somewhere, they would love your help. There's only about 12 publishers and lots of territory. There you go guys - I told you I'd plug La Ceiba!

Caleb's parents were here visiting so we had them over for a nice, relaxing afternoon. I think Caleb played volleyball for 2 hours straight! Charley was testing his new goggles!

Some friends from the congregation where we served in our first three months came over. Hardly anyone here knows how to swim, or even float, so we had a good laugh trying to teach them. Not sure we got anywhere, but we had fun!

One of Charley's studies, Johnny. He doesn't read well, but he pays rapt attention!

We had the privilege of meeting this lovely family who came for three weeks, and their friend who is here for 6 months. It's so much fun to see more and more people coming down here, spying out the land!

And here are our newly adopted nieces and nephew. They call us Tio Charley and Tia Rachel now, which I love, since that's what we did growing up - everyone in the congregation was Aunt and Uncle. Isaac is well on his way to becoming a publisher, his cousin Roxana next to him is my newest Bible student, his sister Jael just became a publisher, and Roseli just was on the school for the first time a few weeks ago. They're such sweet kids.

Well, time to start getting ready for the meeting. Oh, and one other thing, we booked our flights today for our trip home - July 1st to August 11th so to those of you in Indy, see you soon! It was so fun booking tickets without giving any credit card info - we used half the credit we got last time we flew!

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!

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!