Everyday Service Stuff

EXPERIENCES

The territory included the large Catholic church in the center of town. I was a bit apprehensive at first, not being used to preaching at churches. But we went about the preaching just like it was any other block. At first we started just talking to various people hanging around in front, while the other two sisters went over to ring the intercoms that go to the apartments above the church. ( Remember that a lot of the houses in our territory have intercoms, and we give our presentations through them. Unfortunately that makes it even harder to understand people)

We got not five minutes of preaching in before out comes the Padre, the Priest of the church, really mad. The sister that I was working with was in the middle of a conversation via intercom, when the Padre comes storming down the corridor, yelling at us and then directly into the intercom to the householder, telling them not to listen to us. The sister calmly continues her conversation, and the great thing is that the householder (who is undoubtedly catholic) kept listening and didn’t hang up as she was told. This further infuriated the Padre. So the other sister who recently left the Catholic church along with her entire family to become Witnesses, calmly yet firmly with lovely righteous indignation, tells him not to get so upset because we are doing nothing wrong; we are teaching people about the bible and God’s name, which is something the Catholic church never taught her family while they attended and if the church wouldn’t teach them, then someone had to. The great thing was that this was no rehearsed, politically correct, or defensive response, but just her honest reasoning on the matter. It seemed to make such sense to her and didn’t understand why the Priest didn’t get it. Well he didn’t calm down at all, so when the conversation with the householder was over, we decided it would be best for the moment to move on to a new area. But I am sure that the many bystanders got a good witness.

That day I was working with an older sister in our congregation named Rosita. As I was walking her home on my arm after service, she was telling me how she’s going to cry when our money runs out and we have to go home. Then she looked up at me (she literally did have to look up, being about half my height) with these big wide eyes and asked if I could come in for “un cafecito” a cup of coffee. As tired and sweaty and gross as I was, all I could think about was getting home to my cool shower. But I knew that there was no way I could refuse. So I put on a big smile and said I would love to. And of course I had a great time. She showed me all her pictures from an international convention in Chile in ’83 before I existed, and heard a millions of stories about her family and how she learned the truth. Despite many health and family problems, she is out in service all the time, and is one of the most zealous and bold sisters I have worked with here. So many of the older ones here have really hard times with health and physical ability without the medical care like we have in the US. They are sad that they can’t do as much as they use to, although they still do plenty. But the experiences they relate, all their years in the truth, and the zeal that the past decades showed is so encouraging. I think sometimes that that is what Jehovah uses the older ones for in the organization more than anything, is to keep us young ones encouraged and trying to follow their examples, something that only they can really do.

Apparently, there is an extra service meeting on Sundays up in the campo that I didn’t know about. So this last Sunday, I went and found that the only two people who met were David Caisedo and Panchito. You remember Panchito, the flute player. Well, the afternoon consisted of hours of walking, a little territory and a great time. It was just the three of us, and the territory was so far away, the majority of the time was spent walking and talking. I was questioned about my goals, not my goals now, but my goals in the new system. What my plans were and where I would live. Panchito described in great detail the model home he designed and built in anticipation for his home in the new system. I don’t know, is the paradise a reality to this guy, or what? Although we didn’t talk to that many people in the territory, it was such an encouraging day in service. At one point, both the boys said they needed a talking break because their cheeks hurt from laughing! And then they laughed about that for 5 minutes. Oh man, they are entertaining! We may not have “car groups” here, but the principle still applies to make our conversations uplifting, especially here where life is harder and encouragement is welcome.

Panchito is a good person to work with if you want to be more bold in service. He says the bolder we can be, the more people might listen, if nothing else because of the shock value of the message, which if understood properly is quite shocking. So his presentation today through the intercom was “Hello, I am here with an extremely time sensitive message about hellfire. Please come out for a minute so I can explain it to you. I won’t be able to come back for quite some time and you’ll miss the message” And out come the people… Then later he thought jokingly that he might try out a new line, such as…”i’ve got a hot message for you.” Or a “firey message to share.” And of course, that cracked him up for another half hour.

We worked until dark, and to save 20 cents, instead of taking a bus, they walked me ALL THE WAY home. And of course we had to make a detour to end the day with an ice cream. No proper service day ends without one.

And now we are off to our English convention in Guayaquil, the only English convention in South America. We have been looking foward to this for a long time. We get to speak and listen and sing in English! For a whole weekend! Then afterwards we are going to be spending a few days at the beach. We´ll let you know how it all goes.

Hannah