My friends' good experiences :-)

I recently visited my friends Kelly and Bonnie who work in Spanish and sign language respectively, and was quite encouraged by them.  Sign serves several nearby cities.  Bonnie normally goes on her studies alone because 1 there are not many sign publishers and 2 local publishers don't always have the money to catch all the busses needed to get that far out.  Although I don't know sign, I told her I'd tag along (she taught me a few things :-) ).  We took an old school bus, then a van then hiked about several miles through hills and rural terrain over rivers and such.  It took us 2 hours just to get to the first study!  When we got there, I got to see Jehovah's love and the patience of this sister in action.  There is a nearby school for the deaf however, the family never had enough money to send the now 30 something year old woman so she never learned to sign.  Her mother taught her "household" signs-- making up signs for her.  So the sister is starting from square one teaching her not only how to read and write but also how to sign.  It was really something to see Jehovah's spirit at work as she taught her the sign for name, then her name and others family members names. Then she taught her "house."  From house she explained Jehovah has a "house" in the sky and he created all things.  So now she knows who Jehovah is!  She picked it up so quickly!  Little by little she is coming along and learning about Jehovah and his wonderful promises. 
The Kelly works in Spanish.  She showed me a picture of a lady who comes to the meetings now whom she is helping.  The woman was very, very smart graduating college at 15.  However, upon graduating, she was in a very bad car accident rendering her unable to move from the neck down.  She is also unable to speak, although her mental faculties are in tact.  She was learning the bible before her accident but afterwards, her mom stopped taking her to the meetings.  Her mother soon noticed that she would fidget and become anxious during the times of the meetings so her mom started to take her again and she seemed to be happy and comforted.  This is how my friend met her.  Kelly remembered having met someone back home with a similar handicap who had learned a language by blinking her eyes.  She prayed to Jehovah to help her remember the little she had seen and sure enough holy spirit brought it back.  So she is helping the young lady to communicate all the wonderful things in her very active mind!  That's two experiences for you :-)

Bonnie and I at the convention (I think I posted this elsewhere)

Kelly and I at the beach...I've really gotta learn how to swim!

Relaxing at a beach house after a long weekend of service.

Random pic of a gecko on the curtains.

I haven't forgotten the blog!!

Hey yall!

I haven't forgotten the blog!  Unfortunately, my camera died when I made my last post 2 months ago.  Although I was able to obtain a camera in the States (thank you to my bestest bud!), it's really tricky having things sent here since the country (including the postal service) is full of corruption.  I know too many people who have chanced it only to have items stolen or arrive for them to them half eaten (everybody loves chocolate).  But fortunately, we have a new couple here from Austria (currently living in the States) and they are having visitors come down this weekend so my mom is going to overnight the camera to them so they can bring it.  YAY!

So let's see. What have you missed in pictures?  Me with braids ( I think everyone here is now used to the length of my hair constantly changing!)  I've been really busy with bible studies some of which are totally English and others which are "Spanglish" (half English and half Spanish).  I have to prepare quite a bit for those.  I've been visiting a few other areas and seeing how great a need there is in Spanish.  (I'll publish a seperate post with a couple of good experiences I had with other folks.)  Over and over, I am encouraged to just jump in and move over to Spanish but at the moment I'm still on the fence.  Everyone else seems to see my improvement and I am able to converse in Spanish for the most part but, I dunno.  We'll see :-).  I will be VERY excited when December is over because the people here have an affinity for fireworks and live bands at all times of day and night.  From December 1-7 people in Granada celebrate the city's patron saint, Mary.  They place huge cardboard cutouts of angels in all of the streets slowing down traffic even more.  Every night, there is a live marching band that walks down a different street carrying a 7 foot tall image of Mary along with a smaller hand held version.  Anyone desiring a "blessing" sits outside their house and when the Mary's pass by, they touch the small one and give a donation for their blessing.  I'm not sure where the blessing money goes.  This goes on ALL night.  I was at a friend's house spending the night when the band came down the street at 3:30AM!  All month long, people set off fireworks.  The fireworks here sound like we are at war and being bombed.  They begin as the sun is setting and continue until sunrise.  They celebrate Christmas Eve here like New Year's Eve in the States.  Everybody is in the streets partying and at the stroke of midnight, all the fireworks go off.  I was leaving a get together that night and as we all piled into the back of my friend's pickup truck to go home, a crowd gathered around us.  The band suddenly appeared and got in front of us and started to lead an impromptu parade with us at the head!  This is not the first time I've been in a car when people randomly got in front of us with a banner and decided to start a parade with us leading the way lol.
I gave my first talk as a householder (assistant) in Spanish two months ago.  This was when my camera was dying so my friend recorded it on her phone.  Now as soon as I can figure how to transfer it off, I will post it (shaking my head).  I do have a couple of random pics that I took with my phone....

I think the baker was having a bad day.  I feel like the sad cupcake when everyone else seems to be picking up Spanish rapidly and I feel slow :-(

Ok.  I still don't think I can explain this.  I came out to wash my clothes when I realized Clemen beat me to the clothes line....to hang meat out.  At first, I just turned and went back in my room since it looked really gross and I didn't want to revisit that visual as I was eating dinner.  (Ignorance is bliss here with the food, sometimes).  But, I finally asked if she was defrosting it and she said no, it needed sun.  One person told me they salt it and put it in the sun because it is so fresh.  I dunno.  Like I said, I didn't ask too many questions!

Going Loca!

This pretty much sums up how I feel at the moment lol. I need to find something to do...

Isletas

These photos are from an area in Granada called the Isletas.  These are islands within the lake which until recently were only serviced by a floating kingdom hall (which I am supposed to help with tomorrow and hope to have photos then).  Now however, there is a simple kingdom hall structure recently built out in the Isletas which will be helpful to the handful of bible students there although there are currently no publishers (Witnesses to teach).  Five of us went there yesterday to put up barbed wire to keep the goats out.

We could only drive but so far then we had to hike the rest of the way.

Here is the Kingdom Hall!

The bathroom.  Seriously.  I'm sure they will complete it once people start to meet here :-)

We had to drive holes into the ground insert large sticks for posts then fill with rocks and dirt before running more barbed wire to keep the goats out.

Oh yes, your girl is good with the tools despite how Lenin is looking at me! Oh sidebar note-I can explain the lumberjack look... I failed to heed warning of wearing long sleeves and having a umbrella in service so I broke out in a heat rash so now I am all covered up.  They all just shake their heads at me since I was trying to be cute.  Now every time they see me scratching my arms the call me "Job" :-(. It's almost gone now though, ha!

The job was taking longer than anticipated (maybe because I was taking so many pictures).  And we had no food and no more water or powerade.  Out of no where one of the bible students came by with two huge bowls of food for us!  Praise Jah!  The sister I was with said to follow her to go wash our hands.  I though we were going to the student's house; turns out we needed to "wash" our hands in the not so clean lake (no running water, duh!).  She is laughing at the look on my face.  (I followed it up with some hand sanitizer lol).

We hurried back to the bowls, pulled back the banana leaves covering them to reveal....

OMG look at the teeth!  I have a hangup with eating things that are looking at me but dog-gone-it I had worked up an appetite so I had to "Fear Factor" it. Hey it was really good!  I was relieved when most did not eat the head, although I was gonna give it a chance since I don't like to seem wasteful.  We gave the bones and heads to stray dogs so nothing went to waste.

We walked back to the student's little shack and washed up the dishes and thanked her and her mom.  Wash water is in the blue bucket.

Stove

Other side of the kitchen

View from the little shack

Mama and daughter fishing

Headed home!

Floating Kingdom Hall

I had a chance to visit our floating Kingdom Hall a few days ago.  The city in which I live (Granada) has a large lake called Lake Granada.  Throughout the lake there are over 300 small islands created by a now inactive volcano.  We take a small power boat across the lake and stop where ever there are people.  From there, we climb up and talk to them.  There are several bibles being conducted in the islands and I came home with a book bag full of plantains and bananas from grateful people :-). The brother who organizes the island ministry explained to me that the witnesses have only been to the far side of the islands 3 times in the history of the Witnesses.  They went back 3 months ago after last having visited 8 years ago.  During the visit 8 years ago, there was one particular house where no one was home so the Witnesses left a book called, "The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived" which tells about Jesus' life.  On the trip 3 months ago, they were able to meet the man who lived in the house.  He was excited and frustrated when he realized these were the people who had left the book 8 years ago.  He ran and got the book which was now tattered and worn.  It had been read so much that the cover had fallen off and the book had been stitched back together.  He was frustrated because he wanted to know how they could leave something so wonderful causing him to have so many unanswered questions and then not return for so long.  He had lots of questions and wanted to know a definite time they would return so that he could gather all of his family and friends to finally have their bible questions answered.  Unfortunately, they were unable to tell him when they would be able to get that far back into the islands again.   While we have a small boat to get to the islands, gas can can cost upwards of $50 to go that far out which is a ton here.  The harvest is great but the workers are few :-( Matt 9:37.  With Jehovah's spirit we'll get his work done!

Ready to have some fun?!

Leaving the dock

Volcanoes all around

Are we there yet??!

It got really hot so umbrellas came in handy.

Brothers trying to look cool :-)

Lady rowing home. 

The water is very clean but looks green because of the volcanic rock.

More Volcanos

There's a house ahead!   I was excited to see howler monkeys sleeping in the trees here.  We didn't expect for them to be down from the volcano yet since the mangos are not yet ripe.  I'll try to get a photo of them next time.

We pulled ashore to talk to a lady washing clothes in the lake.

Taking a break to eat lunch before setting up for bible study.

This is the floating kingdom hall.  A man is nice enough to let us dock it at his property.  When he is not home, he allows us to have the meeting there on his island which is what we did on this day.

This is the island on which we had the meeting.  It looks big here but it is no larger than the property of my Kingdom Hall in Georgia; maybe smaller.

The man's house on the island.

Setting up for the meeting.

Check out our sound system- it will fit in the palm of your hand :-).  The brother just hooks up his ipod to it so we can sing the songs.   I just noticed how the rays of the sun are beaming on the platform. Interesting...

Sorry this is so fuzzy.  My camera started to act up.  This is everyone gathered for bible study.

Bethel

This is the last week that Bethel will be open here.  All but a few small departments are moving to Mexico and everyone is being reassigned.  I've included pics from a tour last week as well as from when I visited in December.

These are the smaller taxis that come down smaller roads.  This is the entrance to Bethel.

Front of Bethel

A sister's very accurate portrayal of the ministry here.

Mural in the dining hall depicting the rain forest (painted by same sister)

Corridor

Standing next to a ylang-ylang tree.  There are all sorts of tropical plants and trees on the property.

Wall painting in the front lobby.

Sitting area

Assembly hall connected to Bethel

Sitting tree outside of the assembly hall