Hi everyone, good to see that everyone has remained fairly regular with the blogging. Of course, we'll have to somehow coerce Rick to join in again. I'm dying to read another blog about how "Life is fun, is it not?"
The assembly was great, this past weekend. I noticed that there was a great emphasis on being careful with what we choose for entertainment, and also limiting how much time we spend on recreation. That was just one of the things I got from it anyways. Good reminders to consider, seeing as its easy to start focusing on having enough time for relaxing instead of focusing on the ministry.
Ian is starting regular auxiliary pioneering this month, so we're excited about that. It'll be nice to work together in the early morning, since its usually just Andrea, Matt Chapman, and I. Plus it'll be a good boost to my time too. I'm not nearly as behind as I have been in past years, but still a little behind.
We can't wait to come and visit you guys, Evan and Sabine. Hopefully sooner rather than later. We're working on it.
We sold the 2nd floor condo this week, so that's a weight off our shoulders. We're confident Jehovah will make things work out so that we're able to continue having as full a share in field service as possible. Its a little scary though, since now that we've sold one, we have to commit to selling all of them. We can't just try and sell the whole building outright now. So it'll be interesting to see how things work out.
That's a great experience you had, Evan. Its so exciting to be able to speak with someone while you're at work. Its a nice break from the typical monotony of it. Every once in a while my boss will bring something up. I've given him the All Scriptures Are Inspired book, and he seemed to really like it. Sometimes I really wish I could preach to the people on the phone though, because they're in pretty rough condition most of the time. Sometimes I can see on their profiles from the doctor that they're Jehovah's Witnesses, and I wish I could say something to them, but with all the HIPAA craziness, I wouldn't want to lose my job over it at this point.
We heard a lot of really great experiences from our Portuguese C.O., Frank Furtado and his wife Sandra. He was visiting last week with our group. He and his wife just came from visiting a small group in Bermuda. They only have about 12 publishers, but many studies and interested ones. He gave a funny experience about when he went to visit a Portuguese group in Japan, and he ended up working with a brother who only could say one thing in Portuguese-Como vai? (How are you?) and he said it with a little bow and heavy Japanese accent. So they went to a door and met a woman who was Japanese, but brought up in Brazil, so she could speak both languages. Frank would share a scripture and thought in Portuguese, and then the other brother would try and see where he was and he would find a similar thought in his bible in Japanese. And at the end of the visit the woman said "Its amazing, you're both speaking in two completely different languages, but saying the same thing!" Then we heard an experience about the Sign Language group forming in Springfield (that Nathan is part of). They needed to do a mold remediation on the Kingdom Hall, but the two congregations meeting there were the two poorest in the area (I think one English and one Spanish) and it was going to cost $200,000.00. But because they were conducting the learning class for sign language, they were able to get government funding, so they only had to come up with about $25,000.00. Isn't that amazing? So now the Sign Language group is able to get all the special media equipment they need for their meetings, and they are going to be sponsered by the Spanish congregation. Its so great to hear about things like this happening so close to home.
Anyways....I've rambled on enough...someone else's turn.
Much love to everyone.
Tchau.
