The location of the assembly is a small basket ball arena. The bathroom situation for almost 900 people was quite interesting. There are 2 bathrooms. (In the picture above it's the small shed on the right against the far wall, yep that's all of them) The mens restroom is only a small drain, probably 1-2 inches in diameter, so there are signs posted everywhere that you should only urinate there. However, Andrew, a brother in our congregation assigned to cleaning, was forced to handle the actions of a brother that evidently could not read the signs posted all over the little room. I hope that describes the situation without actually spelling it out for you. But I guess, in defense of the brother, if you've gotta go you've gotta go. This story really highlights some of the unique situations that come up here that likely wouldn't happen at home.
I've included some pictures and perhaps Vanessa will blog a bit later.
So we've arrived in Jinotega and have been crazy busy for the last several days. With the visit of both the C.O. and the D.O. there have been meetings every night. I feel real compassion for our one elder in the congregation, he has to be stressing about the workload. I'll include more about our traveling overseers in the next post.
Field service has been our bread and butter up till today. 9 out of 10 doors that I've talked at I've had good calls. Most of the people are quite friendly about our terrible Spanish and help us along. We do lots of business witnessing. You just go into the store, ask for the owner, and then hit your presentation. This is not something that we do in Scottsville very often and so I was a bit hesitant at first but the territory is quite used to it. This morning I went with another brother into a clinic and we asked to speak to the doctor. We wound through the little compound into the doctors office, (by the way, the place was called something like “The New Day Christian Clinic”, I have no idea what religion they were, so I was thinking, “Yikes! What's going to happen here?”) when we arrived in her office the personnel of the entire office entered as well. This was in total 7 persons. The brother I was with spoke for about 5 minutes, using several scriptures, about the time when all doctors will be out of jobs. I'm not sure if that's taking personal interest or knocking the job of the poor doctor, but it went well enough and the brother didn't have enough literature for everyone in the office. He featured the brochure about God permitting suffering and it seemed to go over quite well. Wonderful huh? I can't wait until we're able to communicate effectively to the people in the field and start adapting our presentations.
Our D.O. And his wife are truly wonderful as well. I don't think I've met a D.O. Couple that was as warm as they were in my life. Amazing couple. They have a small apartment in Managua and own a small Nissan 4x4 station wagon. (Eat your heart out Judy!) He has been in the traveling work for something near 20 years and is from Nicaragua. Probably a contributing factor to him being used in that capacity as he was loaded with jokes and stories that, evidently, only Nicaraguans could understand! He has had Malaria 5 times in his service as a traveling brother. He was a real teacher. Full of illustrations and both of these brothers were incredibly effective in the field. One of the brothers, while encountering a self righteous individual who indicated that she could learn nothing from the witnesses anymore, she had surpassed them, was handled in a most interesting way. In stead of just walking away, the brother listened for several minutes as the individual rattled on about how much she knew, blah blah blah, until finally she was done. Then the brother in a very mild mannered way turned to Revelation and indicated how much he too appreciated the deep things as well, and wanted to know her opinion on the first and second death! She was finally speechless and asked for a return visit. I pity the poor brother that has to make that R.V. Can you imagine discussing that in the field ministry on a 2nd call? :)
This is a perspective of our organization that I had never considered in the past. I'm sure the brothers don't get many green handshakes here in a country were few congregations have the money to even own or make payments on Kingdom Halls. But you can tell Jah's blessing on the whole thing. We have around 67 publishers and our attendance on Sunday was 180!!! Can you imagine that? For memorial this small group gets around 300! All this with one elder! There is certainly work to be done here! That's all for now, hope things are going well for you!
I also wanted to tell you about a Return Visit that I have and what happened to his family. A few years ago they moved to Jinotega and found a house they wanted to buy that the owners were in a hurry to sell. Which I say house but it's more like an outbuilding that you would see in Buckingham with a dirt floor.
The majority of the people we spoke with in the field can't read and don't own a bible, but they have much respect for it. We spoke with one lady that was on the verge of tears when we read Revelation 21:3-5. But how can you place literature with someone who can't read? In addition, how can we just leave an interested person that we won't get back to in another 2 years if they have no spiritual food to build themselves up? I'm waiting to see how Jehovah handles that situation. I know people DO come into the truth. After all where do the aforementioned isolated groups that the C.O visits come from? Somewhat frustrating for me and when you ask the friends what to do, many just shrug. Of course that could also be that they don't understand a word I'm saying... :) That is a real possibility.
Before we took off, though, we managed to have some of the local friends in for dinner. We took some of the other friends advice and stuck with traditional Nica food, beans and rice and the not so traditional desert of Chocolate chip cookies. The friends loved the visit, even though we couldn't talk about too much.
The family was so thrilled that we had them over they decided to have us over for lunch a couple of days later. We went out to the farm where Leo works and Andrew and I managed to till the soil with their oxen. We're sure they were laughing inside at us, but outside they didn't show it. They treated us like honored guests. Nessy made fresh corn tortillas with the ladies in the kitchen.
Shane: What do you think, how does Jehovah feel about the man that has no legs down the street, does he feel compassion for him?
Student (in Spanish) : The man was probably a sinner and God has been punishing him by taking away his legs... I'm sure this is the case.
Vanessa(smiling sincerely): Very good. That's right! Let's read this scripture....
and on the study goes.... :) I'm really hoping that this is not the case but we're not really sure at this point. Again, if Jehovah can use the rocks we've gotta be worth something.
There are currently two congregations that meet in our hall. Ours has, as I've mentioned before, one elder and about 6 servants counting me. The other has around 80 publishers one elder and one servant. We managed to go to a dinner gathering with some friends with the elder from the other hall visiting. Luis, the elder there, was really trying to draft us over there. There is such a need down here! We'll see how that goes.
We've also had the privilege of hosting a large group of friends from Spain. It's really nice to be a destination that people want to visit. We're having a whole bunch of them over for dinner. It's been nice to have them here because, unlike the local friends, they actually listen to what were saying at the door and help out. I
The following day after visiting with the Moore's and saying good by to Ryan we headed off to the branch. I was a little bit nervous about getting around Managua because 1.) I hadn't yet occurred to me to get a map. I figured taxis, buses, little red three wheelers, etc. know how to get everywhere so I don't need a map. (In retrospect, I've seen the need to adjust this viewpoint.) 2.) Everybody says that there are many areas in Managua that are quite dangerous, especially for 6'7” white guys wearing a tie. I briefly considered removing my tie and smearing dirt on my face as an attempt at camouflage, but then realized I could do little about my height without inflicting great pain on myself and so continued on as I was. So I was a bit worried, in addition to that, many people warned us of the dangers of getting ripped off by taxi drivers. We don't yet have the handle on Spanish to haggle effectively (I.e. using insults about the cab drivers mother, etc) to deal with that situation. So off we went.
Unfortunately there is more to tell and I'm cautious about keeping these things too long. Maybe I'll post again this weekend. Hope everyone is doing well! As a side note, (and as an attempt to appease our offended congregation mates :o) ) Andrew and Jenny are going away to Esteli (poke around on the map you'll find it to the NNW of Managua) for pioneer school. We will miss them terribly. Though we'll be miserable without them, we hope they enjoy it!
Roses:
October 3rd was our 5th anniversary. Shane thought to buy me roses. And the story is funny. When he gave them to me he said there were supposed to be five, one for each year. Which is so incredibly sweet. But there were only four. He bought them from a woman selling on the bus. The “Bus General” ( The Bus General, as we call him, is not the driver. The driver only, well, drives. This man is in charge. He collects all the fares, keeps order and scales the outside of the bus while its moving to get down peoples chickens and bicycles before their stop.) had already told her it was time to get off. So Shane quickly asked how much they were. Five cordobas each. Shane opened his wallet and the General and the lady 'whoa'd. He only had 100's. The General quickly made change and the lady asked how many. Hurried, Shane tried to say five. But the General shouted “four,” paid the lady and kicked her off the bus. Leaving Shane bewildered with 4 red roses in one hand and a pile of change in the other. That definitely makes these the most special roses he's ever got me.
Andrew and Jenny:
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