Our first outdoor Memorial

Well, our first outdoor Memorial was a beautiful experience. The weather was great, the place looked lovely, and the attendance was very good too. We did it together with our sister congregation, so between us we have about 190 publishers. But we had 541 at the Memorial on Tuesday night. Charley and I had four of our studies there, assuming that we saw them all. We also had a few studies there who we aren't counting among the four since their families are Witnesses so they would have been there anyway!

So, the day started at 8am at the Kingdom Hall. Some were already there sweeping when we arrived. At first I wasn't sure how you go about sweeping dirt, like, how do you know what dirt to sweep and what dirt to keep! But we soon got going and I did a lot of shoveling of piles that others had swept up. Then around 11am we started working on the decorations of the platform which Charley had been put in charge of. A sister in our hall provided some beautiful curtains. It appears she bought them just for the occasion which was very generous of her. Apparently in previous years they've just had a bunch of random different curtains that people provided, so it was nice to have something matching this year.

Just getting started in the morning

Sweep, sweep

Cleaning the back wall, which is the CO's apartment

This is Esban lifting his mam up so she can reach the top of the window!

Isn't he cute?!

Looks like Henderon's carrying that pile of chairs by himself doesn't it?!

They were being carried in twos though. We rented 600 chairs for the occasion

Scarlet, Rebecca and me getting started on the first layer of three layers of curtains

That's the third curtain hanging now. Just adding the last few pins to stop it from blowing too much

After doing that, we went off to the market to pick up the arrangements. They weren't ready so we got a little something to eat and then went back to get them. It was fun trying to get through the maze of the market with such huge flower arrangements! Here's what they looked like. The florist did a nice job with them and they matched the curtain nicely too.

So, around 2:30 we headed off home to get ready. We were home for about two hours, and then went back to the hall. We got there an hour before it started and there were already people there, including one of Charley's studies.

Charley with his study, Don Wilfredo

Next ones to show up were my study Dulce Maria and her neighbor Elvia who Brenda studies with. They had both been to the Memorial once or twice before, but I was really happy to see them there.

That's Dulce next to me, and then Brenda's study Elvia next to her

I study with Noelia (blue dress), her mam who isn't a Witness (black dress) came too. Her grandma & sister are both Witnesses. 

The stage all set up and looking lovely!

The lights weren't really different colors, they just came out that way in the picture!

Still with 45 minutes to go. All those seats soon filled up.

Caleb did an excellent job with the talk. He didn't even let the drooping microphone and the wind blowing his notes away throw him off! We all really enjoyed his Memorial talk.

Charley had the privilege of saying the prayer over the wine. He's that blur in the corning heading towards the podium!

Tamara & Noelia

Noelia, me, Javiera (my study there for the first time) and Marlene

My study Socorro (blue top) with her son and his girlfriend who have studied in the past. They said they're all coming to the meeting on Saturday so hopefully they'll make it. I think this was Socorro's first time at the Kingdom Hall.

Raquel in her new dress

Fatima & Franci

Some of our little girls - aren't they cute!

Veronica with Xochilt and her family

Isn't she adorable?!

Esban was looking very handsome

With Loyda & Kitlis

Brenda & Veronica

The Cerda family - Dilan, Javier, Juanita & Rebecca

Heidy & Henderson

The girls - Brenda, Scarlet, Jaimy, Rebecca and me

And last of all...

So, we had a lovely night. It was an exhausting day, and we could hardly get up the next morning, but we managed to drag ourselves out in service for the day! It was so lovely being able to enjoy the Memorial outside and watch the full moon as it moved through the sky. I didn't even get any bug bites, which is quite amazing. I did end up with one on the end of my tongue and stuck to my lip, and one got stuck in my hair, but no bites!!

United in getting ready for tomorrow

Isn't it lovely to think that every Jehovah's Witness all around the world is preparing for the Memorial of Jesus death tomorrow after sunset. It's a very uniting feeling to think how every one of the more than 100,000 congregations worldwide have been working hard this month to invite people to the Memorial. 

This will be the first time I've attended a Memorial outside of the country I'm a resident of. Of course I've been to Memorial in England and the US, but never anywhere else. And this will also be, for Charley and me, our first outdoor Memorial! I don't suppose the snow in Indianapolis right now would make for a very comfortable outdoor event would it?!

So, I had to rearrange my studies that I usually have on Tuesdays since I realized in the last couple of days that the Memorial is an all day event here, so to speak. Since it's outside, we have to prepare the place the day of. So, tomorrow at 8am, we'll all be in the land out the back of the Kingdom Hall raking, and tidying, and setting up the rented chairs, and hanging curtain behind the stage, and probably throwing water everywhere to calm down the dust, and whatever else is involved. I'm looking forward to the experience. 

Somehow Charley was nominated to be in charge of decorating! At first we were clueless, but with the help of the locals, I think we have it under control - more or less! The flowers are ordered, vases are in our possession, curtain has been located. That's about it we think! 

I'd never paid much attention before to the trees we have on this piece of land out back. There are quite a few mango trees. Hopefully none of those mangoes decide to fall on anyone during the Memorial!

Most of my studies say they're going to come, so it will be interesting to see how many actually make it. I'll be happy if just one of them is there. I'm not sure how many we're expecting but we're doing it together, the two congregations who share our hall, so it will be quite a crowd I guess since between us we have about 190 publishers. 

I can't think of anything else that we've been doing. Just busy with the usual. I have a really nice new Bible study called Aydalina. She's in her 20's and is a very straight forward kind of girl, which I like! You don't have to say a lot in addition to what we read in the Teach book since she usually gets the point pretty quickly. We had studied some of Chapter 15, which is the theme she chose, but this past Friday she decided we'd just go back to Chapter 1 and start from the beginning. We did the first 10 paragraphs and she was fascinated to read James 1:13 and discover that it's not accurate to say "It was God's will" when tragedies happen. 

Before we finished I asked if she had any questions, and she said Yes I do, they're in a notebook. And she hopped up to go get her notebook. She had quite a few notes but just one question which was easily answered. She has been reading the Bible on her own lately. She asked how often she should read it. She said someone told her it didn't matter if you didn't ready it daily, as long as you read it once a week. So I had her read Psalm 1:1-3 and Joshua 1:8. She saw Jehovah's viewpoint on the subject and set herself the goal of daily Bible reading! She's very keen. So we'll see how she comes along.

I still have a lot of fun with Mirna & Yuliana's study. We watched the Bible video last week, the one about the 7 world powers of Bible prophecy. Yuliana took notes all the way through it, and they asked if they could get a copy of it. They love documentaries, and were both absolutely fascinated by this video. I really hope they come tomorrow, but I'm not 100% sure that they will. We'll just have to wait and see!

Well, that's all for now. I hope you all have a very good Memorial and look forward to hearing experiences from it. Maybe on Thursday I'll get the chance to share the experience of our evening. Hasta luego.

You tell me!

I was thinking the other day that many of you perhaps haven't been reading the blog since back in 2010 when we came the first time, and I doubt many of you have time to read through all the blog posts from 2010 and from our 3-month stay in 2011-12 if you weren't following us back then!

Since this is our third time here there are probably everyday things that I don't talk about as much in the blog, because they've just become "normal" to us now. Therefore, I thought I'd open it up to you, dear readers, to tell me what you'd like to know!

If you're reading this online you can post a comment asking a question or questions. Or if you have my email address, email me. And if you're reading this through email subscription, just hit reply to this email and we'll receive it too.

Once I've collected a few questions, maybe in a week or so, I'll post a blog in response to them all so that everyone can read them. Don't worry, I won't mention your name in the blog unless you tell me you want me to!

Before I go, although many of you might be jealous I'm going to say it anyway, it is HOT down here. And when I say HOT, I mean HOT!!!!! Ugh, the heat is really just getting started they say. Apparently April is the worst. This is the first time we've been here between March & September so it's all new to us. Masaya (the city we serve in) is really hot. And when I look online and it says it was only 95 degrees today I think they're wrong. I think they meant 115!!!! I'm sick of feeling slimy all the time.

Well, maybe tomorrow I'll post more of a newsy blog. Just wanted to put that idea out there if there's anything you want to know about life in Nicaragua, what it's like to serve where the need is greater, anything you'd like to ask, feel free!

Anybody want a mango?!

So, we had our Special Assembly Day yesterday and what a wonderful day we had. It went by so fast. We didn't have a visiting speaker but our CO did a GREAT job with the final talk of the day. He told a really great experience when he was talking about the need to meditate on what we study. I'll start a new paragraph for it.

A missionary made plans to take a sister on a Bible study since the missionary was still struggling with the language in the country she was serving in, so she needed some help. When the missionary arrived at the sister's house she apologized and said that she wouldn't be able to go with her. The missionary begged her to come, or for someone else to come with her to help her. So the sister said her son would go with her. The missionary looked at the 6 year old boy and said, "Well, better than nothing I guess"! So off they went.

On the study the missionary told the lady that if she had any questions to feel free to ask. The woman said she did have a question. Why didn't Jehovah give Adam five wives instead of just one. She said that if he'd had five, then maybe the others would have been able to persuade Eve not to eat of the fruit. So the missionary is battling with this question, trying to find the words, and figure out how to express herself in her new language, when the little boy who came with her put his hand up. The missionary looked at him and said "Do you want to answer the question?". "Yes", said the little boy. So the missionary told him to go ahead.

He said "Jehovah didn't give him five wives because that would have left Adam without ribs"!!! 

Turns out the night before, in their Family Worship, the little boy had learned about how Eve was created from Adam's rib. But he didn't just stop there, he'd obviously continued meditating on the subject, to be able to come up with an answer like that!!! We had a good laugh, but he also really made the point too. How important it is to continue thinking about what we study!

There were so many good points brought out about the conscience but since some of you maybe haven't been yet I won't spoil it by telling too much!

Our circuit in Masaya is split into two sections. 1500 were there on Saturday, and we had just short of 2000 on Sunday. 14 were baptized on Sunday, including 3 from our congregation. And I managed to do a pretty good job of taking pictures. Get ready - there are LOTS of them!

Listening to the music, waiting for the program to begin.

Assembly theme - Safeguard Your Conscience.

Josue, from our sister congregation, getting into the baptism pool

And there he went

Our new brother, Josue

Carla (with green towel) and her sister Tamara (behind her) waiting their turn.

They were baptized together. Tamara (left) getting ready, and Carla (right) coming out. A brother supervising stood right in front of me when Carla went under, so I only got her coming back out!

Tamara making a splash.

Our two new sisters, Tamara & Carla

Vilma getting ready

I think you know these two!

Our buddies, Brenda & Caleb

Noelia, Kitlis, Loyda, her niece & Laura from CA who serves in San Jose de Masatepe

Laynori (my little study who I play "preaching" with) and Noelia, one of our young ones.

Our new sisters Carla & Tamara, who are also fleshly sisters.

Interviewing our CO and his wife, Elizabeth & Felipe Olivares.

Interviewing Javiera who goes to our sister congregation. The brother giving the talk looks like a little boy but Charley said he was at the elder's meeting.

New friends Cynthia & her mam Ana. They are studying and sat in the same row as us.

Franci and I showing off our new dresses courtesy of mam.

William and Charley. Someone from back home sent him ties, but for some reason he chose his old "Century 21" tie for the assembly!!! Typical bachelor I guess!

The twins!!! Aren't they the cutest?!?!

Jaimy & Junior are always so coordinated at assemblies.

Tamara & Gloria with Abrahan & Jessica and their daughters Xiomara & twins ( I forget their names!)

Our other regular pioneer sister, Carolina, with her son Edward.

Julia, Tania, Raquel & Gema (Tania's progressive study). And little Jael and hmmm.... I've forgotten Gema's son's name!

Our other new sister, Vilma, with Raquel who studied with her. Raquel's mam was studying with Vilma before, but she died of cancer just less than a year ago. She was a regular pioneer who everyone remembers very fondly.

One of our regular pioneers Nelson (with glasses) and Eduardo our literature servant

Our beloved Rosibel & Domingo.

 It was nice to get to hear the CO and his wife interviewed. When asked how long she'd been in full-time service she said, "only 20 years"! And he talked about how when he became a regular pioneer he was a teacher in Mexico (that's where they're both from). He won a national prize for his skills, and they even wanted to put a plaque in the local park in his honor, which he wouldn't let them do. Then he was invited to special pioneer, so he left his job and off he went. His colleagues thought he was insane, but he's happily served in full-time service for the last 28 years now. He was a regular pioneer for a year, special pioneer for 6 years, then a CO 10 years in Mexico, and now 10 years as a CO in Nicaragua.

So, those are just a couple of highlights from our day yesterday.

And what about the title of the post? Well, it's mango season. And it's not hard to tell. There are mangoes everywhere you turn and it's time to figure out what to do with them! I like to eat them, but you can only eat so many mangoes in a day! On Saturday two people gave us about 25 mangoes between them, and then yesterday someone gave me two more! Some we've eaten, and today I learned a new skill. Jam making! I just used six mangoes to see how it would turn out, and well, YUM!

Home-made bread courtesy of Charley, with home-made mango jam courtesy of Rachel!

Afterwards I decided to strain it because it was a bit stringy. And then I had an empty jar to put it in. It made almost a full jar! I'm so proud of my very first jam!

I wish I could send you all some mangoes! I have a feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg! Look out for more blog posts on ways to consume mounds of mangoes!

Oh, and I also finally went to the market in Masaya for fruits and vegetables this past weekend. I took a local with me to help me get good prices and not get lost! It went very well. I think I saved about 30% over buying them at the little stall near our house. Some things were a little cheaper, others were WAY cheaper, but nothing was more expensive. Check out what I got for $8.00.

One dozen tomatoes, 5 onions, 10 small green peppers (called chiltoma here), 4 heads of garlic, 10 potatoes, 4 huge carrots, 7 ripe plantains, 3 pineapples, 1 giant papaya, 13 oranges, 12 bananas, one cucumber & 15 super ripe bananas perfect for banana bread. Not bad eh?!

Ok, well, I need to go sweep and mop for the floor now. Bye!