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!

Pictures Galore!

Here are the pictures from the District Convention. I had chance to upload them today since I took the day off. Charley took about a dozen from the congregation to help on a Kingdom Hall construction project that we were invited to in Managua. Since I've been the last three times, I gave up my space in the truck to let someone else go - that's my excuse I'm sticking to it!! 

Oh, and I'll share a funny story before I post the pictures. I like to entertain the congregation every now and then, and I did a really good job of it last night. It was SOOO embarrassing! Charley asked a young sister and I to do a demonstration on the service meeting. I could have sworn he told me we'd do the demonstration after paragraph 6. So, when he was done getting comments on paragraph 6 he said "So, how can we respond to someone who says they don't believe in the Bible. Let's see...". Doesn't that sound like a cue for a demonstration to you?!?! So, as I was sitting in the front row, when he said "Let's see..." I was almost about to step on the platform, when I suddenly realize he's saying "...what paragraph 7 says" and he starts to ask the question. I was mortified!!!! The congregation was CRACKING up laughing at me. After he took some comments in paragraph 7 then he said "Let's see a demonstration". One of those moments I'm sure nobody will let me forget!!!!

Now for the pictures!

Ready for our first day of convention. I invented a new hairstyle for myself, which I failed to repeat on Sunday when I tried so hard to!!

Caleb being Chairman of the session

We went out to eat at a new Chinese place. Love this sign. It says "We don't have WiFi. Talk amongst yourselves"

They have some HUGE plates of food. Charley ate every last morsel of it!

Saturday morning

Adina, Brenda & Javiera

With two of the Escobar sisters. Most of their family is in our congregation.

Charley with Ismael, Yader & Yisak. At least one of them is wearing a new tie that was kindly donated by the brothers back in Indianapolis. I can't remember which ties they were, they may all be wearing a new one.

The youngest Escobar girls - Yasuara & Bicri - both got baptized on Saturday

Our dear friends Domingo & Francis, and Brother Taleno who is just adorable! He was at all three days of convention.

Darwin & Erica

Jocelyn, Itzel & Jenny. I have the privilege of studying with Itzel. Her and her mam are progressive studies

Jason getting baptized. This was the best shot I managed to get!

Our friend Justin's study, Jaime, getting baptized

Bicri & Yasuara's baptism

Our fourth new member at Pancasan, Paula

The lovely Escobar family, plus their little friend Abby!

The Escobar siblings, the youngest two now baptized servants of Jehovah.

The girls with their mam and dad. Happy day for them all - don't let their serious faces fool you!

Brenda and I on Saturday. I wore my "oldie-but-goodie" skirt. It used to be my mam's, as was the belt. Its estimated to be about 25 years old! Love it!

The lovely Brenda & Caleb

Charley being chairman on Saturday afternoon

With my friend Jael, who calls me her Barbie doll! Her dress was a kind gift from a sister back in Indianapolis. If anyone in East Spanish Indianapolis sees this picture, please show it to Ester Perez and tell her it was greatly appreciated as were all the clothes she sent. 

Jairo & Rosario with two of their three kids. Jairo was also wearing new shirts and ties at the convention courtesy of the friends in Indianapolis.

Our lovely girls, Bicri, Yasuara, Lucinda & Jennifer. All but one baptized in the last 3 weeks.

Our coordinator was chairman on Sunday morning

This little girl came up to me and said she wanted a picture with me. Then she vanished before we took it. Turns out she went to get her mam and baby sister. Now I have to figure out a way to get a copy of this to her!

I think I've managed to finally upload videos to YouTube too so here goes. Just a couple of 20 second clips of the convention.

Highlights from a wonderful weekend

We had our "La Palabra de Dios es la Verdad" District Convention this past weekend and what a wonderful three days we enjoyed.

I don't have my pictures together yet since they're spread about between my tablet, point and shoot, and DSLR! I'll get to that eventually! But for now, some highlights.

The attendance jumped massively each of the three days! We had 1676 on Friday, 2500 on Saturday, and Sunday afternoon were just 72 short of 3000 people!!!! It was PACKED on Sunday. The assembly hall has just over 2600 seats I think, so they had to bring in a lot of plastic chairs too. 

On Saturday we had the privilege of seeing 47 new brothers (14) and sisters (33) get baptized. The youngest was a nine year old girl, the oldest was a 79 year old brother. Also a sister in a wheelchair was baptized. With the support of her husband's shoulders she was able to stand up to answer the questions. We now have one new brother, and three new sisters in our congregation, ranging between 13 and 20 years old.

Charley had the privilege of being chairman of the program on Saturday afternoon. And of course we enjoyed the releases of all the same publications that all of you readers received. 

There were some lovely interviews. Quite a few who were around back in the days when the work was very difficult here. One brother they interviewed was around when there were only 338 Jehovah's Witnesses in Nicaragua. As of the last annual report in August 2012 there are now 24,480 Witnesses in the country. He certainly has seen the fulfillment of Isaiah 60:22 in his lifetime.

They also interviewed a pioneer sister who until recently was in our circuit. Her name is Johanna and she was raised in a Christian household and baptized back in 1986 when she was a young girl. She talked about how the work was banned at the time, and literature only came in secretly. They used to have one Watchtower that they all had to make their own copy of. And they were assigned to preach in twos so as not to attract attention, but her partner often couldn't go out, so she often went preaching all by herself as a young one.

Those are just a couple of the wonderful interviews we listened to. It was faith strengthening to hear of all the challenges our dear friends here have overcome to remain faithful to Jehovah and put his Kingdom first in their lives.

The dramas were also very well presented. I don't have any pictures, but you've all seen it anyway, well, most of you reading this. The Esther drama on Sunday was very well presented, good acting on the part of Esther and Haman in particular!

There weren't a lot of congregations in our circuit assigned to this convention, so we got to make new friends from Managua. We enjoyed getting to know a missionary couple who are serving in a congregation in Managua. They've been here 20 years, and spent quite a number of years in circuit work down here. They were so much fun, and had such great stories, very refreshing to be around. We tried to make dinner plans with them but it never did work out. 

We did get to enjoy the company of Brenda and Caleb the whole weekend. They came and stayed at our house since it's much quieter here. It's really noisy around their house at the minute since it's the holidays and people have some noisy traditions this time of year, and noisy traditions that they carry out at 3am when you're trying to sleep! Thankfully none of that goes on where we live, so we all slept very peacefully all weekend! And then last night we enjoyed Pizza Hut with them, our friends Justin & Adina, and our Circuit Overseer and his wife. It was a relaxing, encouraging, entertaining evening, providing a lovely close to the weekend.

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully soon I'll get my pictures together. Hope you're all doing well.