Service Experience and Pictures.... And a Car Towing

Ok, I have been convinced to exert myself and write my service experience. It's nothing so very outstanding, but it was encouraging for me. So as you know by now it's not always easy finding the English speaking people in our territory, especially the foreigners. So this is a little story about persistence...

Last week Elsie and I and another sister, Ximena, were all working together, doing the census on a big block filled with aparment buildings. But they are not like the aparment buildings back home. They are all behind locked gates, with an intercom at the bottom of each building with bells for each apartment. So we had spent most the morning working our way around this block, doing intercom after intercom, not finding any English. These apartments are not particularly nice, and that fact (which usually means no English) combined with not having found any the whole morning, we were tempted to just move on to the next area. But as these territories will not be worked for another year or two, at least, we decided that we needed to be as thorough as possible. So we pressed forward.

No, no, no English. Next Elsie asks a man at a little tienda, and he says...wait for it...no. But to be as thorough as possible, Elsie asks him if he knows of any foreigners in the ares, or anyone else who speaks English. And for the first time that morning we heard that one exciting word. Yes! He points to the last apartment building, the only one that we have left to do, and he says he thinks a foreign girl lives there. So off we go.

We get to the intercom and scroll through all the names, and all of them are Spanish names. Well we just start calling each one and are halfway through and no one has answered. Then a woman comes out of the gate, so we ask her if she or anyone in the building speaks English, but she says no. We say, are you sure, someone told us that a foreigner lives in this building. But all we get is another no. So she leaves, goes down to the tienda we were just at, and we keep ringing. So we get done with all of the bells, and no one admitted to speaking English. But just before we leave, that same woman comes back over to us and says that after thinking about it, there is foreginer who lives in her building. But before she lets us in, she wants to know what this is all about, I guess we looked a little suspicious. After explaing our purpose, she let us in and lead us through another locked gate (talk about hard to reach) and up to the third story and points out a door where someone might speak English.

There is where I found Maria, and young woman from Italy. She learned English in school, then lived for a few years in the States. After just a minute of talking, explaining how we found her, and got through the two locked gates and right up to her door, she says, "I don't mean to be rude but, what is this all about?" Basically, get to the point. So i say that we are sharing some literature in English, as well as inviting people to our English meetings that talk about (I paused dreading the point of no return) ..... the Bible. Often after saying that last part the foreign population close up and don't want to talk. But she said, "Oh about that Bible. Thats great!" So then we talked about how her family is Catholic, but she does not agree with the institution; she is more interested in the Bible than in religion. So, long story short, we had an interesting discussion, she accepted the magazines, and showed her appreciation for the information with a generous donation.

As of yet I haven't been able to find her at home again, but I was very glad to have that experience. And that taught me a lesson in persistence. You never know what the next door or intercom will hold. But if we are thorough in our ministry, we will be blessed with good results.

Now on to another service day. Last Saturday we made a trip to Gualaceo, a town about an hour outside of the city, to look for English speakers. There were 13 of us from our congregation, and we met up with some of the brothers and sisters from the local congregation who helped us out with the census that day. We had a lot of fun, found a few English speakers, including 2 girls from Germany and a couple from Pakistan. Here are some pictures from service.

oh yeah, the tow Hannah mentioned...

Yesterday in service, it was pretty eventful. Mateo, a good friend of ours had his parent's car yesterday for service and took us to some return visits. He decided to leave the car on a yellow curb, which we had a long conversation about. Me, thinking it meant parking was not allowed, and he thinking it meant only short-term parking permitted. We were gone no more than 3 or 4 minutes (RV wasn't home) but when we got back, they were already lifting the car onto the tow platform. He and his sister ran over to try and convince them to leave it, but to no avail.

When asked where they were towing the car to, they pointed down the street. It would be towed exactly one block away and could be retreived as soon as the fee was paid.

So the rest of the service day was spent waiting in line at the tow lot. I have pictures but can't load them for some reason. Will keep trying...