Monday, January 9, 2012

Keith, Brandon and myself just returned to Belize In December and have been here about a month so far. I wanted to update everyone so far on the Placencia Congregation. I suppose I can start by saying that in September after having our CO visit the CO recommended the Placencia Group as a congregation. This was very exciting news for everyone that has seen the group start out in a brothers living room to having the Branch recognize the group as an official congregation. The next step is that the congregation is still meeting at a community center for the village which is not suitable for the growing congregation, we ask that those of you who know about our congregation pray for a suitable place to meet. What we do know is that we will soon outgrow the community center and will need a place of our own, we have all been praying fervently and looking for Jehovah's direction on the matter. As far as meeting attendance goes we have been averaging about 60 for the Sunday Talk and Watchtower study and around 40 for our Congregation Bible Study and Theocratic School. There are now 32 publishers in the group and the average for ministry per publisher not including pioneers is 16.7 hours and average studies per publishers is 2. Now time for some field ministry experiences.


This one's from Derrick:
I was walking out heading into the field ministry and was saying hello to people as I was passing by which is the custom here. However as I was passing by one of the scuba shops a woman hauled for me and asked, "you got one of dem yellow books fo me?" I went over and spoke to her and described the bible teach book to her and she said, "yes dat is di one, I gave my one to my mother!" I told her that I didnt have a bible teach book with me but I promised to bring her back one. Next week as I was passing by to enter into the territory again I heard the lady holler for me again saying, "you bring me my yellow book?" I immediately apologized for not bringing it to her earlier and showed her the picture on pg. 83 and said this is the world we live in today then I flipped to page 35 and told her that this is the world that God wanted us to live in, which one would you want to live in. She immediately pointed to the picture on pg.35 and said, "Of course I want to live there, everyone is so happy and there is nothing bad going on there!" I sometimes find it hard to think of good ministry experiences to share on the blog because these are conversations that we have with people every single day, it really is encouraging that so many ones here are willing to discuss these wonderful truths about God's Word and that sometimes they are the ones that are calling you over to share a scriptural thought with them.

This one's from Brandon:
I have one experience that is just to good to keep to myself. One of the studies, began studying about a year and a half ago. Brother Martin and myself double teamed the study until he left for England i took over the study and we made it through half the Bible teach book studying about 3 times a week, he made it to all the meetings and was progressing quite well soon though it came time to leave back to the states but i was hopeful that the study was in good hands. Derrick studied with him for a wile after i was gone however he moved away. About a year goes by with no word about how this zealous study was doing until the district convention. Derrick, before the convention had begun, walked right past Anthony as if he didn't even recognize him, this was understandable sense before he had long hair in corn rows but now had cleaned himself up looking sharp as a tack! Indeed a brother had been studying with him in the place where he moved to ( About 5 hours from were we live in Belize) and made it all the way through the bible teach book and into the Gods love book. But the good part is yet to come. He was still living far away when i arrived here in Placencia about a month ago, or so i thought. On the night of the CO visit during the first week of our arrival after the final talk and prayer i turn my head around and there sitting 3 rows behind me is the Study! On the same exact day that we bussed into Placencia so did the study! One of my prayers to Jehovah was to see and study with him again, needles to say we are studying together and he is doing just fine! The power of prayer is simply wonderful!


This one's from Keith:


The territory here in belize is definitely bearing many fruits! With a growing number of publishers and the help of many zealous visitors, the english territory is being well covered and all are given a chance to here the "good news of the kingdom". So that has given many of us a chance to preach to some of the many spanish speaking people that are living within our territory. So here is an experience from preaching in a spanish speaking village.
While I was preaching door to door in a spanish village called Santa Cruz, we came across a house where a man was hammering at some wood and another man was sewing. Our spanish is very limited but we approached and tried our best. The man wasn't very open with us at first. In fact we were sure that we weren't going to get anywhere with our presentation but we kept trying. The man sewing seemed the friendliest so we tried speaking to him first. We introduced ourselves and and he told us that his name was Migel and his friends name is Steven. We opened up the truth tract, and while we were discussing a question, Steven stopped what he was doing and also began to listen. Before we knew it several kids and other woman gathered around to hear! After maybe 15 minuets of limping our way through a spanish presentation and conversation, Steven, realizing that were struggling with our spanish, speaks up and tries to speak to us in his best english. He tells us that he really loves the bible and has several questions for us! He then goes into his house and gets a New World Translation that he received from whiteness' he met while in the stats many years ago! With Jehovah's help we spent about an hour there answering questions and as we left we were giving hugs and promised to return in a week. Since then we have been returning every week, answering questions and discussing paragraphs in the Bible Teach book. Its been a challenge because our conversations are half in spanish and english but its very exciting to see people eager to hear bible truths and extremely appreciative for our efforts in speaking to them in there mother tung. Gracias Jehová!!





All work and no play makes us sad boys! Here is a pic of us taking a hike in the jungle!



This is a traditional dance done by the Garifuna people. It has much to do with the slave trade and they are actually dressed up as white people.


Ever ate Armidillo? This is one of the animals that the locals used to live off of several years ago, tastes pretty good!


Always check to see if your eating somebody's home, we found this worm living in our pepper we were going to use for salad.



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