Be courageous & strong.....

Well our visit with the Fink's has come & gone, as most of you probably know, since they are back in Lewistown now. Telling tales of their journey with us, I'm sure. We had a good time and it was nice to see some familiar faces. Unfortunately, the day they left, wasn't a good one for me.... no, not because of grief that my friends were leaving, I think I had food poisoning. Or one sister said she thinks I had the flu bug that was going around. A lot were sick around that time. But either way, I had shrimp tacos the night before, and in my mind that is what made me sick. So I don't think I'll ever be eating them again! I don't even know how I made the 40 minute, bumpy, windy trip from our rental house to the airport without being sick. The rest of the day I was in bed. Then Sunday, I felt a good bit better so I went to meeting. Then Monday, I woke up very sick all over again. It was strange. But I am better now.

 

For our meeting on Sunday we had 24. The Martinez Family was there, and my study Erica came again with her two kids. She is the one that answered when she came the first time. Well, she didn't answer this time, but she said she really enjoyed the meeting. She is getting a lot of persecution from her neighbors, but isn't giving up. We have had a few talks about it, and she sees that it is strange that all of a sudden everyone is trying to get her to go to their churches and are telling her bad things about Jehovah's Witnesses. I told her that Jesus said that his true disciples would be persecuted and she said "yeah, I know". I think she is really thinking about it. Also, Justin is studying with a man named Allen that has been coming to the meetings with his wife & 3 kids. His wife studies with a spanish sister and he was starting to study with a spanish brother, but it wasn't going real well since his first language is English. So he called Justin the one evening we were out to eat with the Fink's and asked for "classes in English" as he called it. We told Fink's "look how much interest there is down here, people are calling us asking for bible studies". A lot of the men around here that want to have a good job and make decent money, go out on fishing boats to Africa. They are gone anywhere from 1-3 months or more. So unfortunately, that is what Allen does. He will be leaving soon, so Justin has been studying with him twice a week.

 

With Erica and her 2 kids Ashley & Ashton

 

Justin & Hose Martinez (he helped him put up the K. H. sign)

 

We had promised the Martinez girls that we would have them over before school started back up. Down here, their break is over the winter, not the summer. So, Danjah is starting school on Monday, so we had made plans with them to take them home with us after our day in service on Tuesday and keep them overnight. I wasn't real excited, seeing as I had just got over some sort of deadly sickness, but I didn't want to disappoint them because they were so excited. So we had a good time with them, and they really enjoyed getting out I think. Pandy Town is a small place and I don't think they get to leave very much. On Wednesday we went to an iguana park. It was pretty small though, not a lot to walk around and see, but I still liked it. The iguanas were pretty cool. They just let them walk around free inside the park and there are tons of them! A worker gave us leaves to feed them... that was crazy! They started swarming me and were all around me and under me... they even tried to eat my flip flops. They didn't bite me though. I think they are tame and used to humans enough or something. Then we took the girls to meeting with us in Coxen Hole that evening. They had never been to a midweek meeting or to the nicer bigger Kingdom Hall. It was good for them to get to see the whole congregation and the nicer building. There are some young girls just their age too. They loved it and would really like to come back. It is just kind of hard, because they live almost an hour from the hall, so it would be a long trip to get them and take them home each week. Hopefully someday soon we can have both meetings in Oak Ridge.

 

 

 

 

Dennice feeding her candy bar to the monkey (I wasn't watching, I hope the poor thing didn't die)

 
 

 

On Saturdays, we meet for service here in Los Fuertes, at the old Kingdom Hall right by our house. I'll have to get a picture of that one sometime. We usually work in territories right close by. So today we were working right in Los Fuertes. It is mostly all Spanish though, so we were doing search work for English speaking people. We found a few, but not many. It was fun though. Since we've been here, our Spanish vocabulary is slowly growing. So I finally learned a few weeks ago that 'fuerte' means 'strong'. So we live in the town of 'The Strong' or Los Fuertes. And there is a story I learned behind the name. You see, a man used to own this whole big hill. Then some Spanish folks moved in and settled on his land. He tried everything to get them to leave, even setting their houses on fire... but nothing worked. They were strong people, determined to stay. And slowly more and more came, until it is a whole town now. So it is rightly called the town of the strong.  So, that's were we live. Hopefully we can have some of that same endurance and strength, only ours will come from Jehovah!