The Love of the Brothers, Circuit Assembly and Service Experiences

Welcome Party

A few weekends ago we were given a surprise welcome party.  We were told it was going to be a congregation get-together. It was scheduled to start at 7:00 pm on Sunday evening.  One brother warned us not to bother coming until 7:30 pm as they usually start late.  I'm glad he did warn us as only 6 brothers were there when we arrived at 7:30 pm - and they were still working on getting a light source in the large, windowless room being used for the party.  By 9:00 pm most of the brothers had arrived.

I was sick that night with a bronchial type cough that was triggered every time I started to talk or whenever I got up to dance.  Thus we were thinking of not attending at all but we decided we would attend because we didn't want to be rude and then leave by about 9:00 pm.  Our plans were spoiled with the late start. But were we ever happy we attended.

The surprise came at about 9:30 pm when the MC announced that the party had been arranged to say goodbye to a brother that had just completed MTS and was being sent to another assignment and to welcome us to the congregation (we had gotten our 1 year VISA and now were official in the country and thus official in the congregation too).  We were invited up to give speeches.  They even made Rachel go up to say a few words.  Of course with her level of Spanish she was too afraid to speak audibly so instead she put to use her new found sign-language skills.  We share the K.Hall with a sign-language group and when you can't understand Spanish very well watching the signers helps a lot.  So she signed a few words to one of the brothers who translated into the mic.  Everyone was very impressed.

After that two sisters sang us a welcome song.  It was beautiful!  Don't ask me what it was about ... but it was beautiful.  Now that I think about it maybe they were singing to the single brother that was leaving - it does sound like a 'broken heart' song!  Then the dancing started.  We stayed for about 45 minutes more.  At that point I was starting to explode.  My lungs were becoming an external organ.  It was totally my fault, I couldn't stay off the dance floor.  I especially loved the Bolivian version of the Bird Song which is the "Gorilla Song".  The dance that goes along with it is a LOT more entertaining than the bird song.  I didn't have the presence of mind to record it as I was laughing too hard, but I promise that at the next get-together I will remember.  As we were trying to escape at about 10:30 pm we got stopped by one of the sisters.  She had prepared a special dish for us which they hadn't had a chance to offer us as the meal hadn't been served yet. She wanted us to take some to go along with many other treats.  I may have been half dead and missed the next few days of service recovering but our hearts were overflowing from the love the brothers showed. 

Circuit Assembly - 1350 attendance - 11 baptized

Me and my gang.

This assembly was a lot more difficult than the last, for a few reasons.  One, this was my first time with an assignment. I was an assistant overseer in the cleaning department.  Here the brothers do a LOT of cleaning for an assembly. Let me give you an idea of what they do here;

As it is common for them to run out of water they have four large water tanks outside each of the four sets of washroom locations. When there are water shortages the idea is you take buckets of water from the tanks to flush the toilets. We were fortunate this time that the arena had running water for MOST of the time we were there (from 8:00 am until 9:15 am the day of the assembly there was no running water).  Upon arriving to clean the day before the assembly, we realized the patrons of sporting events used the water tanks as trash receptacles for leftover food and food packaging.  Thus we had to drain the blackened, scummy water out, remove the trash, scrub them clean and refill the water tanks.

The washrooms are SCARY when we first arrive. To give an idea of the condition of the washrooms, they don't flush toilet paper here (common in Mexico, Central and South America) and yet the management does not provide trash bins for all the washrooms.  Thus the odor when we arrive is quite pungent.  The brothers and sisters are amazing. Using the most rudimentary cleaning equipment (squeegee on a broom handle, a rag the size of a doormat and a bucket of water with cleaning solution) they go to work cleaning the filth.  They don't even have proper mops so they need to soak the rag in the bucket, wrap it around the floor squeegee, scrub the floors and then rinse it and wring it out by hand.  I know!!!!  It's disgusting.  Yet they put on gloves and willing throw themselves into the work.

As part of the process of making the arena suitable for the brothers, the cleaning department bought nine (9) toilet seats to install in the women's washrooms so that MOST of the women's toilets would have seats ('MOST' only because of budget constraints).  The men's washrooms we didn't worry about putting toilet seats, whatever were there was good enough. The cleaning department also bought 20 garbage cans to make up for what the facility did not provide.  We needed 36 garbage cans.  Thus in the remaining 16 stalls we taped garbage bags to the walls.

They don't have paper towel or toilet paper dispensers, so we put a piece of packaging (box) tape through the center of a toilet paper roll, twist it a few times and attach it to the wall of the bathroom stall. This creates a makeshift dispenser. We would do the same with the hand towels but our cleaning budget is very small.  Thus throughout the entire day 5 shifts of 2 sister / brothers are assigned to each washroom to hand out paper towel (1 piece per person) and reattach new rolls of toilet paper and keep the floor clean and dry.

In addition, on the pre-assembly clean the brothers scrape gum off of seats and floors, remove trash from between the concrete benches and the wood slats bolted on top of them, sweep and wash seats and floors throughout the entire arena, paint over the many foul language graffiti slogans, etc, etc, etc. And here is the kicker, apparently the brothers have to PAY to rent the facility the day before the program begins so that we can clean it!!!!

In addition to the workload during the Assembly, what made the Assembly even more difficult was that our cleaning station was situated in an alcove.  Because of the concrete construction this alcove was like a reverberating chamber, an echo tunnel.  We struggle at the best of times to understand the assembly programs as the different brothers have slightly different accents, they speak quicker to try to include more material or they don't enunciate clearly because of nervousness.  Thus, whenever I wasn't running to bring supplies to the different washrooms, I resigned myself to trying to understand and note down the scriptures used during the program.  Even that proved to be difficult.  Thank goodness for the provision of the Assembly audio recordings from the sound department - one of the many wonderful changes our organization has implemented in recent years!

Service Experiences

Recently we decided to cull RVs from our digital 'book of life'.  We were up to 61 RVs that we had placed literature and set up for a study in the Good News brochure.  The problem was we could never find some of them at home again and we were doing way too much traveling around. Another issue was we were not scheduling a specific date and time to return for most of the calls but just waiting until we were in that area in the ministry again.  This was too haphazard and inefficient.  So we took a few hours one evening to map out all our calls and make specific times to return.  With the ones that are never there we left notes with their family or in their doors giving them our contact information and putting the onus on them to contact us if they wanted to study.  Then we deleted them until we receive further contact.  We have really seen blessings from arranging our calls this way.

Finding sheep in the ministry!

Yesterday (Sunday) is an example of our recent service experiences using this method.  We started off expecting one of our new calls at the meeting.  He didn't show so after the meeting we scheduled a visit to him later in the week.

Rachel had worked hard and cooked a meal the night before so we went home and enjoyed a meal with a couple and 2 single sisters from our Hall.  We were able to enjoy a nice relaxed meal and some association, clean up and do dishes, rest for a bit and then get out in service by 2:30 pm (the benefits of a 9:30 am meeting).


We had 8 potential studies scheduled for that afternoon.  The first call was not at home.  Two days earlier we had contacted her in the ministry and she had poured out her heart about all the problems she was having in her family.  We had offered to return with the new brochure "Your Family Can be Happy", so we left it in the door with a note.  The next call was a no show as well.  We left our contact card with his family and informed them if he wanted a study he would need to call as we would not be returning otherwise.  At that point we phoned our 3rd study (always a good idea to get phone numbers).  He said he was happy to hear from us and would wait for our arrival.

This was our first real visit with him since the initial contact.  Upon our arrival he asked us to pray for him.  Thankfully this wasn't the first time we encountered this so we used the suggestion from the 'reasoning book' showing that we like to follow Jesus instructions for preaching (Matt 10 - which we read with him) and we don't pray with people at the doors like other religions. He wasn't offended at all but appreciated the biblical answer. He invited us in and told us his life story for the first 15 - 20 minutes. Then we started talking about the subject 'are all religions pleasing to God.'  He brought out his bible and we used ours without any other publications for the discussion.  At the end of the study he invited us back and confessed that he felt God had helped us meet.  We met him while witnessing on the minibus on our way to another study about a month earlier.  We ended up being there for almost one and a half hours as he kept asking questions - not good seeing as we had 5 more calls! As we left he walked us to the bus stop, asking questions all along the way. He helped us get on the correct minibus to go to the next call.

Finally on our way we decided to reschedule our next appointment as we were already very late.  Fortunately the appointment after that wasn't home either. I say 'fortunately' as this allowed us to arrive at our 6th call just on time.  This time we got the young man we had originally called on in the ministry, rather than his brother whom we had been studying with regularly at that house.  Grover was appreciative to see us again and mentioned that his brother had been sharing the points from the studies with him. So we continued the study with Grover rather than his brother.  He accepted the teachings a lot more readily than his brother and asked many questions.  So many that we were 30 minutes late for our next study.  After an hour there we peeled ourselves away. We had to cancel one more study for that day as it was now 6:30 pm and we were supposed to be back at the K.Hall for an appointment at 7:00 pm.

The last call of the afternoon, ended up being with 2 teenage girls. The original interest was with their mother but when she isn't available her daughters are happy to study and relay the information to her later.  This time their younger sister, about 8 years old, also came out. The first thing she did was start petting and pulling on my arm hair and the brochure.  Rachel tried to distract her while I conducted the study. This little, precocious girl was non-stop questions. She started with why were we so white, why did Rachel have blue eyes, why was her hair so short, where are our parents, where does god live, is he friends with Santa Claus, do we know the words to Feliz Navidad?... Through all this Rachel didn't think the girl was listening to me conduct the study but when I asked the other girls what hope is there for bad people when they die, based on John 5:28,29, she turned and shouted, "infierno" (hell)! She she was shocked when I said 'no'.  She didn't quite get the point of the study but she was sort of paying attention. We were only planning on staying 15 minutes but a half hour flew by and we had to go as it was already 7:05 pm and we were still 10 - 15 minutes from the K. Hall.

We caught a minibus and went straight to the Hall where new CUSHIONED chairs were being delivered.  We helped bring them in and unwrap them. What a treat to have nice cushioned seats. Our pampered, sore, Canadian butts thank the brothers that decided to get better chairs. We are sure the existing chairs had been designed as some form of torture device. Only 80 chairs were delivered to our hall.  We usually have about 110 in attendance at our meetings.  Am I ever glad most are late for the meetings as it means we will easily get the good seats by arriving early, or even just on time.

We left for home by 7:45 pm, picking up a 13 Bs ($2) KFC style fried chicken dinner for one which we shared.  A glass of wine, deep fried chicken and french fries - what a wonderful way to cap a full and rewarding afternoon in the ministry.

Since Mexico I haven't felt such excitement in my ministry, the surge of holy spirit that comes with having study after study of willing, eager students.  It's something I always want to be able to enjoy in this system. We got home after 4.5 hours of Sunday service and it took about an hour to 'come down' from the spiritual high - to use a crudely inadequate metaphor.  As King David sang in Psalms 27:4 - we too want nothing more than to be able to dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of our lives, to gaze upon the pleasantness of Jehovah - what a kind and loving father he is! And we would add, we want to always be able to enjoy the privilege of serving his kingdom interests full-time in such a rewarding assignment such as Bolivia.

Thanks for reading.  Until next time may the blessings of Psalms 20:1-4 be upon all of you!
(Yes, I'm in Psalms for my daily bible reading).

It's not ALL sunshine, lollipops and rainbows.

Sunshine, lollipops and RAINBOWS

I'm sick in bed once again. Part of the package deal of being here. This time I have company. Friends of ours went back to England for 3 weeks, so we are looking after their 2 cats.  It's a bit of a love/hate relationship. They are affectionate and there is nothing like a purring cat on your lap. But they also keep us up at night meowing and playing.

Rachel, Paul (Pablo) and Barnabus

We have had some good experiences recently, which 'almost' makes it worth while enduring the sicknesses. For example, on Tuesday we had our first afternoon group. We only worked one block in the territory. It took us an hour and a half. There was only one NH, the rest all accepted some literature and we started 3 doorstep studies.

The reason we have afternoon groups now is Troy asked the service overseer why the congregation doesn't have afternoon arrangements? The next meeting a new service schedule with afternoon groups was posted on the back board at the hall. Troy is responsible for 3 groups per week now. Of course they forgot to mention to Troy it was starting that week or announce it to the congregation.  But, oh well, we have afternoon groups now! The first group had an unsurprisingly small turn out considering the lack of notice given, just the 2 of us. But on the plus side, the territory assigned for Tuesday will be considered done. They don't keep track of NHs, so a territory is considered done after it has been scheduled to be worked. So we decided to work it as a personal territory, something they don't do here. We are working it like we would back home, keeping track of all the houses and working it thoroughly. This is what led to the great results. This territory has so much potential.

I wish my Spanish skills were coming along faster so I could take advantage of the potential. Often in the morning I work with the sisters. Some are great and know what I am trying to say and fill in the blanks when needed. It is more of a challenge with some others. They don't understand me and they are shy and quiet. As well, some who are newer in the truth are not able to overcome some issues that come up in the ministry, like the Trinity. A couple days ago I placed the magazines with a woman, then she started saying something about us not believing in Jesus. So I explained that we do believe in him and that he has an important role but that he also directed attention to Jehovah. She seemed to like that but she kept talking and lost me. It may have been about the Trinity. The newly baptized sister I was working with could only say 'read the magazines and you will learn'. That is true, but I so badly wanted to say more, I just didn't understand or speak enough Spanish!

There are those amazing moments, though, when it feels like Jehovah is helping me find the words. For example, last week I was with the same young sister that doesn't seem to understand me at all. One woman I called on I showed the 'Why Study the Bible" video. She was really excited and nodded along. Then I showed her the questions on the back of the "Good News". She picked "Who is Jesus?" I wasn't prepared for that one so I offered to return. Unfortunately she said she was moving to another city the next day. I was all out of copies to leave with her so I decided to go through part of it with her.  Despite my bad Spanish, no preparation and unhelpful assistant it actually went fairly smooth. It really felt like Jehovah was helping.  At the end of the doorstep study I encouraged her to continue with the Witnesses she would undoubtedly meet in her next city, Potosi. I really hope she does! She seemed to really appreciate the study.

Learning a language has been the biggest lesson in humility. Some see us as here to help and express appreciation while others, I can tell, consider me as a child. For example, there are times when I ask my partner in service how do I say ... I've been told don't worry about it just give them a tract. One sister explained that I should ask a question, share a scripture and then leave the magazines. I controlled myself and didn't say the sarcastic comments that came to mind. I just smiled.

Troy and his 8 year old friends

The other day I arrived in the territory by myself, Troy was home sick. The brothers and sisters asked how he was. Whenever we say we are sick the response they give is always the same. "It's the climate." A foreign sister last week had a stomach infection, the other sisters told her she let her stomach get cold. The 'belief' of everyone here is that any sickness is brought on because it is hot during the day and cold at night. That likely is a contributing factor, but not the main one. I feel like I am the only one aware of the lack of hygiene here. Every day I see men, women and children peeing in the street (yes, women too), which is disgusting enough.  But then you realize they obviously aren't washing their hands. Those are the same hands we shake. The day before Troy was sick he invited three 8 year old boys from our congregation over for lunch at our house. They were all over him and the next day he had a cold. Coincidence?  I don't think so!!!  We walk in service along open sewers and travel in buses with people that smell like urine. I don't consider myself a germ-a-phobic person, but I have many "ewwh" moments in a day.

Troy walking by open sewer ditch

Many things here could do with a good wash. The children for example. The other day one little girl wanted to climb on me during a study, but she stunk like pee. It's bad of me I know, but with a smile I pushed her off. I'm not sure which of the girls at the house was the mother. There are many young girls here, I would guess as young as 12 or 13 years old, carrying babies wrapped in colourful blankets tied onto their backs. I realized the other day that some of the women here who are grandmothers are probably my age. But I'm digressing. Lets get back to the topic of the dirt factor.  Many of the dogs are badly matted, I was told it is good luck for the owner. Yeah, good luck not getting some disease from your filthy dog.  Daily I see dog fights here, which are upsetting to see. A pack of dogs attacking a smaller dog. Dogs with disgusting injuries or ones dead in the street, the sewer ditches or even on peoples roofs. And we see a lot worse things I won't share because they're too disgusting. Yet I'm surprised by the fact I'm already getting used to it as a part of life. Now I just turn and look the other away.

Bringing it back around to the positive, another positive aspect of our life here is we have a healthy diet and plenty of exercise. Almost everything is bought fresh and boy do we ever walk a lot in service. Of course when we are sick like I am right now, it is a diet of instant soup, crackers and tea. Those are some of  the only packaged foods we buy.

Speaking of food, shopping here sure is different.  During the past 13 years I have been in charge of all food shopping, but now it is a joint effort.  We take our grocery bags and backpack and catch the minibus into town. Then we walk from block to block looking for the different items from street vendors who sell local produce. My most exciting purchases lately have been a cake pan and a cookie sheet. I can make 6 cookies at a time in my little oven.  It reminds me of a child's 'easy bake' oven, and brings me just as much joy to have real cookies.  While shopping Troy deals with the money and, like a faithful burro, packs all the groceries through the streets. I get the job of picking out what to buy and complaining I want to go home because I'm tired. This is part of our Monday routine.

Monday is our usual one day off from field service, but it isn't really a day off. It takes a long time to get the shopping done. Then everything is washed in a bleach solution to "get rid of the little beasties", as the missionary sister in the JW video said. Then the house is cleaned, shoes are polished, clothes are washed and there is always something that needs mending. In between all of this there are 3 meals to make. Then it is time for family worship followed by study time, if I'm not too tired. Although I don't have a job now, I feel more tired at the end of the day. But it is a good tired, knowing we are doing all we can.

Many times it seems like I am able to cope with more and do more than I thought possible when living our comfortable life in Canada. When the answer to our prayers for direction on where to serve where the need was greater ended up being Bolivia, I was nervous and surprised. But it seems like Jehovah gave me what I needed to make it possible and enjoyable. We have a sunny and safe apartment. There is a special pioneer sister living across the hall in the same building as us that speaks English. And although I had allergies to the wheat in Canada I find that I can eat the bread here in Bolivia, a definite bonus!

TTFN. Signing off from Bolivia.

Service experiences

Update - it was announced last Thursday that we were added to the pioneer ranks retroactive as of November 1 (although we were pushing for September 1 they would only retroactive it back as far as the 1st of the month we became recognized as citizens rather than tourists). 

We had a horrible start to the month because of immigration paperwork and sickness.  We only had 12 hours by Nov 15th.  Fortunately, even though there are no afternoon groups, we were able to get our time.  58 hours in the last 2 weeks.  It helps that we are getting quite a few RVs and BSs.  We are now almost self sufficient.

Service Experiences -

Confession time - I know public witnessing should be arranged through the body of elders.  I made excuses that our congregation had no arrangements and we just used a sign, not a booth or a table or anything else like that - "just a sign!"  Still the elders lovingly said something and asked us not to use the sign.  We decided to still do public witnessing - we need some way of witnessing after everyone goes home at 11:30 am, especially as territories are only available to group overseers for the morning field service - but by approaching people in the parks and wherever we could find them.  This led to an amazingly productive avenue of service.  Let me explain.

We usually just sat in the plaza during lunch doing public witnessing.  There is some pedestrian traffic, but only about 4-8 people per minute. We realized we couldn't go to that same plaza every day and approach people because soon we will be witnessing to the same people over and over.  So we thought about where there might be more people. 

Within our territory, 2 days per week, there is a used car 'mercado' where everyone parks on the side of the road waiting for someone to inquire about their car.  There are literally 400(?) maybe more cars parked with their drivers inside or close by.  We decided to go there instead of the plaza and preach car to car.

I catered my presentation to the audience mentioning 'I realize they may have a little free time on their hands and I wanted to leave them something brief to read in their free time'.  Then I would offer a tract.  If interest was shown I went through the tract with them.  Almost everybody allowed me to go through the tract.  We were there for about an hour on Saturday afternoon.  Unlike the morning service that same day, we had no "not-at-homes"!  We now know where all the people are on Saturdays.

The last call we did was amazing.  We had passed by about 5 cars without witnessing to the occupants.  Then I saw a lady sitting alone in a large 1 ton truck for sale.  I felt I couldn't let another car go by without witnessing.  Am I ever glad we didn't pass her by.

The lady's response to the question will we see an end to suffering one day was "yes".  I commented that she must be a bible reader because most who don't read the bible say 'no, suffering is a part of life'.  She said yes she's a bible reader but she doesn't go to a church.  Her children just started going to the Mormon church but she didn't know where to go and she was 'searching' for the right religion.  She didn't know what to use as criteria to determine what was the right religion.  So we shared 3 scriptures on how to identify the right religion (use Jehovah's name, preach, be no part of the world's politics, wars, moralities).  She was visibly affected by the scriptures and asked where our meetings are located.  We gave her the directions as best as we could (for over a month we've been asking for printed meeting invites but there haven't been any at the meeting, so I went home and printed my own the next day after the meeting Sunday). 

Although she didn't show up the next day at the Sunday meeting (we even prayed Jehovah remind her that morning so she could make a conscious decision to come or not) I still have high hopes that we will see her next Saturday when we return to the auto market.

Update on our call with the man who makes statues.  He seems to be the ladder we climbed to reach his brother Milton.  We have made appointments with Grover (the statue maker) a few times but he stands us up.  Last time his brother answered the door.  So we used the Good News brochure and he picked "what does the bible teach about the future of religion".  At the doors we usually only do about one or two questions (subheadings) within a lesson before the householder has enough.  This day was so blustery that our hats were almost being blown off our heads, his metal gate was being banged around and we weren't really wanting to stay standing on the sidewalk talking for very long.  Yet every time we finished a section and asked him if he wanted to go on to the next he said 'yes'.  We did the whole lesson. Then, unlike usual, we had to excuse ourselves because we were late for another study.  We were there for almost an hour.  As we were leaving he picked the next topic and asked us if we had any videos that we could leave for him.  We offered to bring some with us next time.  His interest seems really genuine as often he can't even understand the question I'm trying to pose in spanish yet he tries hard to answer from his heart.  We can tell some of the things we were saying (such as when we read Ezek 18:4) are very difficult for him to accept, yet he reaches the right conclusion based on the scripture, with prodding, and you can see the gears working.  We look forward to studying with him again next week.  Hopefully the weather will be nicer.

I wanted to share a final experience that I've been encouraging Rachel to write about.  She doesn't like blogging though.  Her and another sister were out in service when a young boy started to follow them around.  At the same time he was stuffing his dirty little face with a sandwich.  He kept asking them questions.  At one house they knocked on the gate.  There was enough of a gap under it that this little boy decided to be helpful when the householders delayed too long in answering.  So he laid down and stuck his head under the gate and started yelling "we see you are home".  Meanwhile their dog was barking at him, likely more interested in getting some of his sandwich.  The little ones here are fearless of dogs.  He just continued slapping the dog and yelling at the homeowners.  Finally they came to the door a little perturbed and chided Rachel and the sister for allowing their son to behave so badly.  So after explaining they didn't know the boy they were able to continue with their presentation.  It's not unusual to have stray children follow you around in the ministry.  It's not the first time since we've been here and likely will not be the last.

Sorry for the lack of pictures this time.  We will try to get more next time.
Lots of love from us to you!