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

Fun with friends

Here's a few random pics of friends :-)

Aaron and Eunice our CO and his wife.  They are a sweet and funny couple.  The serve Spanish, English and sign language congregations!  There truly is a need for qualified brothers here!

Bonnie and I.  Bonnie is serving in sign language and is from Hawaii.

Celeste (Texas) and Brittany (California) are now serving in Granada. We are in the ministry near Lake Granada in this photo.

This is John (NY).  His wife Christine was playing "hostess with the mostest" somewhere when we took this photo.  He is with Angie and Bella.

Cindy, Claudia and I

Lisa (Michigan) and Steve (NY).  Hurry back Lisa, we miss you!

One of our favorite families- Natalie, Bella & Max.  They just went back to Cali but we hope they come again soon.