2014 In Review

A fellow blogger reviewed her year and I thought it was a nice idea. Let's see if I can sum it up as briefly as she did - you know I have a hard time being brief! If you click on the pictures you can see them a bit bigger.

We had lots of fun in the first half of the year in our old house, inviting people over to swim:

 

We got to help on a couple of construction projects:

We had our first Memorial as a new congregation, Pancasan Masaya and Charley gave his first ever Memorial talk:

 

We got to spend some time with our friends' parents visiting from the States:

    

We also spent fun times with old friends, and made some new ones along the way:

We had a zone visit from Bro. Losch (it was still called that then!)

















Our friend Cherub visited, and took some awesome pictures as she went!

 I had my first ride on a motorbike, we moved into a new house, and then we got our own motorbike!

We had some fun times with our congregation, old and young alike.

And we were able to go back to the States for the convention season, attending the English International Convention, and then the giant Spanish convention, both held in Lucas Oil Stadium. We had a great time with family and friends, old and new, from near and far:

On returning to Nicaragua I attended Pioneer School for the third time, and Charley had the privilege of coordinating the school.

We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary as a couple, and with dear friends:




















And we had our Regional Convention, Charley and I both having our first parts on a convention program down here:

And somewhere in between all that we did actually go out in service!!!

One last post for 2014 - Why not, eh?!?!

I just posted this experience on Instagram, but I thought I'd go ahead and post it here too. And maybe add an extra detail or two.

Here's a picture of a family we studied with today:

Eunice, Rachel & Sergio

We had the BEST study with them. Charley started studying just with Sergio about 3 or 4 months ago. He taught him how to prepare, and now he prepares for his studies most weeks.

Then 2 or 3 times his wife Eunice has joined in since she's on vacation from working in a school.  

And this week their daughter Rachel joined in for the first time. I shouldn't be able to forget her name, eh?!

This was the first time my schedule worked out to be able to go with Charley and it made my day, week, month actually! December is a rather frustrating month for studies, since most people are too busy working or partying! So it was a delight to find a family who actually have more time to study in December because they're all off work and school.

All of them joined in and readily accepted what we studied about the condition of the dead. After the study they mentioned they'd been studying Chapter 10 in the Bible Teach book together, as a family, and learned about the angels and wicked spirits. (Yeah, they're doing Family Worship already!) When he mentioned that he learned that there are millions of angels, his daughter corrected him, and said "thousands of millions"! She was definitely paying attention - and that was in the footnote!

He also said that last night he went looking for a church to go to but couldn't find one open. I guess he wanted to confess his sins for the year or something. Then this morning he realized we had our meeting last night but he hadn't looked at the invitation Charley gave him! He said "That's what we get for not looking at things that people give to us!"

They can't come this Sunday but they decided that they'll come as a family next Tuesday night! Hopefully they will! It turns out they studied with a couple from Spain who were serving down here years ago, and they even went to a meeting when their daughter was really little and didn't let them concentrate! We showed them the video about the meetings and the wife commented that she remembered that about the hall, that everyone is very welcoming and don't look at you funny like other places she's been to.

So, we'll see what happens in 2015 with this family. Just shows that sometimes a seed planted can take a decade or more to start growing! 

Well, I'd say that's my last blog post for 2014. Thanks for wasting another year of your precious time keeping up with my ramblings!!!

Until next time...

The things you discover...

I just remembered a little something I was going to share in the blog yesterday.

If you've been reading this blog from the early days, you may remember that I discovered that pancake syrup is easy to make. Brown sugar, water, heat until boiling, add a bit of vanilla flavor if you like - simple! I will never buy pancake syrup again!

Well, I have now discovered that flavored coffee creamer is really rather easy! A friend of mine down here got herself hooked on French Vanilla coffee creamer, and then bought me some for our anniversary and got me craving it too! But, it's REALLY expensive to buy it close by to where we live. And then the one store that does sell it, didn't have any more.

So, I thought, let's look online! 1 can of condensed milk, 1 1/2 cups of milk and some vanilla flavoring and voila, we have ourselves coffee creamer!!! AMAZING!!!

So, I was wondering what things have you discovered that are actually rather easy to make instead of buying? Especially if you've moved somewhere and can't get your favorite things anymore, or cheaply enough. Please share in the comments if you have any.

Now if only I could figure out how to make peanut M&M's...

Instagram Killed the Blog Star!

It seems like since I started using Instagram, my blog motivation has dwindled! So, it's been another month. Probably monthly updates are about as much as anyone can take anyway!

So my last post was mostly about convention. Not much to report really since then. I have finally decided to accept that December is just never going to be a fantastic month in the ministry, especially not for studies! There is always more work available in December, so half of your studies don't study, and the other half only study once or twice in the whole month! So it's been a bit hard sometimes to find the motivation to stay out long in the afternoons, but overall it hasn't been too bad of a month.

Sadly this trend isn't just evident in our territory. It's also reflected in meeting attendance and support in the ministry. Unfortunately many get caught up in the opportunity of making some extra money in December and other things get pushed aside, things that should be priorities. But, the month, and year for that fact, are almost over so hopefully January will see a surge in activity!

The weather this time of year is simply delightful, most of the time. It's only been in the 80's most days, and it gets cool in the evenings and at night. Been even using a blanket some nights. Right now there is a lovely breeze blowing through the house. I really do enjoy the weather this time of year. It did suddenly get hot for a few days, but overall it's a good month for weather. January and February should be too, and then the heat begins again!

It's amazing how low 70's can feel cool! Our bodies are amazingly adaptable.

Serving down here has it's challenges and sacrifices, but we do also enjoy the perks too! We got a deal similar to Groupon and so we had Papa John's for dinner a couple of weeks ago! They're not quite as generous with the toppings here, but the garlic dipping sauce came direct from KY (who knew KY was where Papa John's dipping sauce is made?!) and it was deeeeelicious!

We also recently enjoyed a wonderful day at the Laguna Beach Club. We get a discount, so it's about $4 for the day, per person with unlimited free coffee, use of their grills and kitchen (you can take all your own food and drinks) and use of their kayaks. It's so nice to have a place like this nearby. Not the ocean, but I actually prefer it. We had a great day there with a bunch of other needgreaters. It's nice to use our Monday's off to do something like that now and then instead of just the usual chores.

The view from Laguna Beach Club

We finally got some more pictures hung, so the house feels a bit more like home. My parents are coming next month and bringing a couple of posters I got printed of pictures I've taken so that should complete the "decorating"!

Our new picture wall using string and decorative paper clips. Someone told me there's an Esurance commercial that looks a lot like this. I looked it up online - hahaha, they were right!

I really enjoyed the day's text the other day. It was talking about how Jacob must have been concerned as to whether his trip to find a wife would be a success. But then Jehovah told him in a dream that he was going to be with him. It then applied it to serving in a foreign land. And it's so true, Jehovah takes such good care of us down here.

There is one family in particular who take extra good care of us. The whole congregation does, but particularly this one family. We park our bike in the safety of their front yard almost every day for service, and whenever they can they feed us. They have very little. They live in a house which is basically one room divided into two. Probably their living space is the size of most people's living room in the developed world, but they always share with us, even when they barely have enough to cover their own needs. I had a specific example that I remember thinking I'd share in the blog, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was!

Wednesday was actually the day that the text I mentioned above was used. And the same day Jehovah reminded me how true it is! We did early morning witnessing with the public witnessing stand, and I didn't want to bother the young sister who lives nearby to ask for chairs. So we were standing, but I was so tired I said to Charley that I wasn't sure I'd be able to stand much longer. Literally 30 seconds later, the young sister appeared, and asked if we wanted chairs! Around 8am Charley was getting ready to head to the group, and another sister was coming to join me for the rest of the morning. I had thought to myself how awesome it would be if she showed up with coffee. We hadn't had any that morning, and there just isn't anywhere to buy a cup of coffee in our territory. I thought to myself, maybe Jehovah will take pity on me like he did with the chairs. And what do you know?! 10 minutes later the sister shows up with coffee!!! I must have looked really pitiful from heaven that day!! Hahahaaa!!! So yes, Jehovah takes wonderful care of us!

The daughter and niece of the family who are always feeding us! They dressed up as Charley and me! Roxana swore she could see properly with my glasses on! Maybe she needs them!

And here's a random sight from our territory!!!!! I'm keeping an eye out for the flat screen tv trees. Not sure what part of the city they're in yet.

Our fan quit working a couple of weeks ago. Charley never did get it going again!

This was our first Christmas season here at this house we're in now, so we were curious to see how much noisier it would be. We used to live in a super quiet residential area, but now we're in the city, and Masaya is notorious for being noisy and celebrating noisily every celebration you could possibly come up with.

We were pleased to discover that we live in a really quiet neighborhood. The fact that we live in an alley, not a main street, probably helps. We had half an hour of explosions at midnight on the 24th - that's what people do here. But no parties, no noise at all really. It was as quiet as where we used to live. So that was a relief! Some friends who live in a really noisy part of town spent the night and said they hadn't slept that peacefully in quite a while!

It was fun this month to see Nicaragua featured online and in print. There's a picture on www.jw.org homepage of Las Pilas, Nicaragua which is about 20 minutes from where we live. And in the Watchtower study last Sunday the picture of a brother at a public witnessing stand was taken right here in Masaya. The brother witnessing is a special pioneer in our circuit who a few months back graduated from the first ever Bible School for Christian Couples held here in Nicaragua. (He's also in a picture in the 2003 Yearbook that covers the history of Nicaragua) And the brother he's witnessing to is in his congregation and was interviewed on our convention about the lifestyle changes he made when he came in the truth. So it was pretty exciting to see that picture in the Watchtower!

Well, that's really all there is to say. I can't think of much else to report. Keep up the good work everyone and see you around!

I leave you with a picture of Charley and me at our friend's wedding: