Memorial Day!

Very interesting memorial we had! The turn out was very good. Even though we are around 35 publishers, our attendance for the memorial was 78!!! A lot of new faces in the hall. 
The interesting thing of our memorial was that when we all got to the hall, we found out that there was no electricity what so ever!! Not in our hall or the houses surrounding us. Good thing is that nobody panicked or went running out of the hall, except, oh yeah, us! We had to run home and get flashlights and batteries for the CD player for the music.

This is how dark it was. The brother who gave the talk did a great job! Everybody looked up the scriptures, even the people invited, using cell phone light and a couple with flashlights. The kingdom hall has fans to keep the place a little cool, well, without electricity, those were out too, but thanks to Jehovah there was the most amazing breeze that came thru that made the whole meeting very comfortable, and that we know it had to be Jehovah! The reason is because the past weeks it has been very hot and no breeze at all, but that night there was. So everything was a success and also a memorial we will never forget!!

...and of course after the memorial, it was picture time!! These are some of the brothers form our hall. The bottom picture is the picture of the group from the "ruta". each of them have amazing stories!! 
The brother on the top lest, his name is Josue from Costa Rica. He is so zealous in service and can explain anything and everything with tons of scriptures. His sister not to long ago died from cancer, which in his family was a very big tragedy, of course, but he was not going to pass out the opportunity to serve Jehovah where there was more need!
The girl next to him her name is Jaquelin, also from Costa Rica. When she was a little girl, her parents divorced, her and her sister grew up with their dad, who is not a witness. Her aunt, who is a witness studied with her and her sister, they are the only ones in their family who are witnesses, and they are both regular pioneers. She has a heart condition, but again she was not going to let that stop her from giving her full to Jehovah.
The next girl to the right, her name is Gretel from Costa Rica. She comes from a very strong spiritual family. Her brothers, aunts and uncles are all, you name it, Circuit overseers, pioneers, elders... She also reflects the spirituality of her family.
The next brother, his name is Diego, from Costa Rica. His family is also strong in the truth. He has two more brothers and a sister. Very zealous young brother!
To the bottom left, her name is Yanis from Costa Rica. She came in the truth about three years ago, but you should see her zeal!! The only one in her family in the truth, but she has so much love for Jehovah. She started pioneering almost immediately after baptism. She has been as volunteer in Bethel in Costa Rica, before it came part of the branch of Mexico. She has been in the "ruta" several times and in her free time she takes care of 2 little older sisters, which were special pioneers before and one of them is annointed.
The next sister by her to the right, her name is Angelita, also from Costa Rica. She is engaged! Which when you talk to her about her wedding, it's not the party she talks about or about her dress, but of the spiritual goals they both have, that gets her excited!!! She also has lupus. Her Dr told her she should not be a pioneer, but again, her love for Jehovah is so great that she does not let that stop her from pioneering and coming to serve where there is more need. Of course she does take the necessary precautions.
Last sister, her name is Rosi, she is from Mexico. Very zealous pioneer!! She has in the last 3 months she has been here, almost 10 studies. You can see her out in the middle of the day, when the heat is more intense out preaching or doing studies. Her dad recently died of a tragic accident, but you should see how joyful she is preaching that makes her faith that she will see her dad soon, even stronger!!
All I can say that these young brothers and sisters are truly truly an example of how to use your youth to the fullest!! And I know that it's something that Jehovah sees and just makes him soo happy. It's the best career they have all picked. I know Jehovah has big and amazing plans for them. We will miss them so much!! They all go back home Sunday. They have made service for us so enjoyable. I know we will see them soon, if not in this old system in the new system we will all be together again!!

Our new home!!

Well we are all moved in to our own place. Even though Guarare is known for not being an easy town to get a home for rent. Once again we saw Jehovah's hand in the matter. There is a couple here serving that happened to be offered this home, but they have to move to another assignment so they passed in on to us, which thank you to Jehovah and these brothers we are so grateful!!

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 One thing I love about his home is the huge mango tree we have in the front of it. It's getting full of mangos!!! Yummmy!!!!!!

 This is our little kitchen, perfect little size for us.

 and this is our little living room/dining room. Excuse the mess we are still trying to put things in order.

 Our little bedroom. Our bed is a very comfortable air mattress. It truly is very comfy for us!! :)

Last but not least our bathroom. Small but great water pressure. After a hot dusty day in service it feels so good to get into a cold shower, oh yeah! Here there is only one knob in all the showers, no option for hot water, which truly you do not need at all!!!
One thing you definitely need in a hot place like this is an ac unit, so maybe that will come next, but for now we are enjoying our service and getting to know. even more, how loving and helpful all our brothers are. We love them!! Amazing amazing stories of what our brothers have endured and are still enduring. So stay tune!! Next blog will be some of these amazing brothers and there stories!!! Thank you for taking this little tour with us!! 

Preparing Kingdom Hall For Memeorial

Today was a very busy day at the Kingdom Hall. Our little Kingdom hall needed a little face lift in preparation for the memorial. We all chipped in, as you can see thru the pictures, and after a couple coats of paint inside and out, this is the end result. It looked so good! Huge difference!! Amazing what a little paint can do!! It went from being a blue Kingdom Hall to now a cream colored one. It actually makes it look bigger! We worked all day in it, so as you can imagine we were all beat, but we loved to be able to be part of making Jehovah's place of worship beautiful!!

 

 Even this little boy, (bottom picture not Justin) after coming back from kindergarten, he is suppose to take a nap. His mom was telling me that he was laying in his little hammock and kept turning to his mom saying, we have to go to the hall and help paint. So she brought him over and he immediately asked me for a little bucket of paint and a brush and started painting. SO cute!!!!!! Hard little worker!

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...and this is the end result. Oh yeah we are still missing the top part, but that will be for later in the week...

Meetings, service and interesting machinery!! :)

 So here is our little kingdom hall in the inside. Our meetings are about 60 people. It's been great with the brothers of the ruta here. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the brothers from the ruta are brothers that apply thru the Mexico branch to go serve where there is more need. They come from Costa Rica, Mexico and here in Panama. At the moment we have about 10 brothers from there. They are here til the end of the month and then another 10 brothers come. It runs until August. So every month we have different brothers and sisters here!!! It is so nice because the majority are very young brothers and sisters, but the love they have for Jehovah and service is amazing!!!!

 This is one of the towns that we meet for service. It's called "Agua Buena" It's a very pretty and hilly little town. As you can see with the picture below, some of the homes are way up on a hill. A couple of "young brothers" went to that home! :)We were able to preach to most of the town on Saturday with the campaign. This little kiosk is where we do our service meeting. We are here, waiting and waiting and waiting for the brothers to arrive. One thing we learned here is that Panamanian schedule is different from U.S. schedule!!

 This is a little carpenter shop. Panama is known for beautiful wood and leather furniture. These are the little shops they work out of.

 This picture down here is a very interesting equipment that the sisters were telling me about. They make sugar cane honey out of it. The big thing that the sister is turning around is actually where a horse would be turning it for 3 hours!!! Poor little horsy!!! Interesting fact though. Did you know that they have to put a cloth over the horses eye during the whole time so he won't get dizzy and pass out???? Huh! Who would of thought!!!

 ...and this is the big fire pit where they prepare it.

Service and Kingdom Hall

Service here has been great! We arrive home very tired, because we walk a lot! Our feet are filled with dirt had a blister here and there, but it's worth it. We enjoy the brothers conversations as we walk to the territory. I don't know if I mentioned before, but service here starts at 8am. That's the hour they meet in the hall, which is actually perfect, because it gets pretty toasty by 12pm!! We went to our first "rural territory" yesterday, one of many that this congregation has! The town is called Sabana Grande. We went and left invitations to the memorial and several people assured us they would come. So that was pretty exciting. Today they mentioned to us that there are territories that are out that they have not touched in over 4 years!!!!!! So we are super excited to be able to reach those people soon!

This is our little Kingdom Hall. They have an average of 45 people come to meeting. On Sunday they have meeting at 9am. That's the only day they have meeting!! Yes, they do all the meetings that day!! So every Sunday it's like a little mini assembly! Which is different, but I think we will enjoy it!! We have other pictures posted also if you would like to see them you can go to this link
http://sdrv.ms/Y2agq9

First Day In Service

So today was officially our first day in service. It started as a very interesting day. They meet for service at 8am. So we decided to get up pretty early to get all prepared and ready for our first day. Little did we know that someone else wanted to prepare for service with us. Yes, it was a scorpion!! That happened to want to go with us in service and snuck in Justin's pants, the bad thing is Justin had the pants on!! Oh and yes it stung him!! We were freaking out!! Didn't know if we had to take him to the hospital or what. So Fleurette called a sister who came over, by that time Justin's pain and burn had started to go away. The sister told us that it is very common here and that she had been bitten several times. So that gave us some relief, some... Next step we hunted down the little critter, because it was still in our room. Well about 15min later, venom spray and a sandal the scorpion was no more. Victory!!! So we headed out to service. 

Our service day though was awesome!! Our very first house we knocked at was this older man who was so humble and so excited to talk about the truth. Then he goes on to tell us that he has the best book explaining about Jesus and that he has read it several times. He brings out the book and you can tell he has read it a lot!! It turned out to be the "Greatest Man"... book!! So we offered to come and visit him on Friday and bring him the teach book and he was so receptive and said "yes I will be here!" So Justin is starting his first study and I have another call that might be a study. So after all the ordeal this morning Jehovah blessed us with a wonderful service morning!
In the evening we went to take a walk in the beach. Which was very peaceful and serene and best of all scorpion free!!

Made it to Guarare!!

So we have made it to Guarare. It's actually a very quaint little town, very colorful and so friendly!! Love the people here. Everybody says hi to you on the street and even stops to introduce themselves! We had a lady yesterday when I was out with Fleurette say how happy she is that more Witnesses are moving into town. Oh and the fruit! Wow!!! Amazing and they grow in your backyard!! Love the friends here too. They invited us yesterday to their home and had half of the congregation over to meet us. We loved that! We are looking for a home now. Praying to Jehovah to find the one we need. We trust he will guide us! So here are some pictures of this cute little town, that for now we will call home!!

and of course after all that hard work a little siesta in the hammock!!