>So… lots to catch up on… again 🙁
I’m sorry for always waiting so long between updates. It’s just that being somewhere where the need is great is well, just that, a place where we’re needed = lots of time spent filling the need.
This one will have to be in point form, otherwise, if I wrote it the way I feel it, it would be a novel 😉
- Update on my study, Anabel: After she returned from her trip to Italy and Greece, she confessed she had not taken along her books, so did not look over the info on death, soul, spirit, etc. However, we’ve since gone over it together and she now accepts the truth about where the dead are. Later, during a study on the resurrection, she had issues with Judas…feeling that he was predestined to betray Jesus and therefore not accountable for that sin. After returning to her with my 2 hours of research material and going over it, she now understands that his was a wilful act and therefore in Gehenna.
Another day I brought her a bible story book and a Learn from the Great Teacher book for her neices who live in the same house with her. She was turning the pages in the Bible Story Book and suddenly said “This looks familiar…did this book used to be yellow?” Turns out she remembered her older sister reading it to her every day when she was a little girl. I don’t think I’ve ever related how I first came to study with Anabel. One day Richie and another brother in our group, David, were doing followups from the census work and went to Anabel’s store looking for the man written on the follow up slip at that address. Anabel said there was no one there by that name. David asked if perhaps he lived on one of the floors above the store. She explained that the whole building is her parents house and no one by that name had ever lived there…then asked why they were looking for him. They explained what we do and she immediately said “If it’s ok, I would like to study the bible in English!” So they asked me if I would like to study with her. It’s going on a year now since then and it just gets better and better! She is so earnest and meek! - A sister in our group, Charie, was living at Sisa Pacha for a couple of months, but decided she wanted to move into Otavalo, so we were keeping watch for an inexpensive apartment for her. One night after the meeting we hopped in a cab and the driver asked us (in Spanish) if we had any friends who might be looking for an apartment in Otavalo. When we said we did he gave us his phone number to arrange a viewing. Charie loved the apartment and the landlord and his family were so kind and friendly. He took us all in his cab to the bank so she could get money to give him the downpayment, but the machine wouldn’t give her any money (some error message), so while Rich took her to find a different bank machine, (the next one ate her card…another story 😉 ) I sat in the cab with the landlord. After an awkward silence, I remembered I had a Spanish ‘Truth’ tract, so I handed to him and said we were ‘Testigos de Jehova’. He thanked me profusely, and said his next door neighbour is one also…he seemed very excited and pleased to know that we were. He immediately started reading the tract and once in a while gave me the thumbs up, saying ‘Muy Bueno…muy bueno!!’ When he was half way through he asked if I had one in English, which I did and handed it to him. He excitedly showed me how he could learn English by comparing them side by side as he read.
When he finished, he again expressed his delight in what he had read, so I offered him the latest magazines in Spanish, which he gratefully accepted.
About a month later, Charie and I were in service and needed a cab… her landlord just happened to come along in his cab (there are literally thousands of cabs in Otavalo), so we hailed him and enroute to our destination, he reached down between the seats and picked up the two magazines I had given him… well worn, I might add, and started expressing how much he had enjoyed them. I said to him in my limited Spanish “Tu necesite un estudio de la Biblia” (you need a Bible study), to which he replied ‘Ci! Ci!’. So, Charie has now arranged with a brother from the Otavalo Spanish congregation to study with him! I’ll keep you posted on how that goes. - I have 13 bible studies now! I really needed something to help me keep everything organized with my schedule, so I ordered a smart phone from Ebay and had it shipped to a sister in our group who was visiting family in Florida and she brought it to me when she came back to Ecuador. It’s wonderful! I can keep track of everyone in organized directories and add notes and stuff. It’s such a problem here with studies not being there when you go on the scheduled day, then it has to be re-scheduled, and on and on… so this is a real help for that. It’s also nice because most of my studies have cell phones too, so I’m able to text them messages with scriptures, etc.
- One day Rich and I were getting copies made and had to stand in line behind another ‘Gringo’ who had stacks of stuff to copy. While we waited, she started talking to us…where were we from…etc. She had a German accent, so Rich was interested in that, etc. She was from Austria, but said now she is a buyer for a company in New York who sells Andean fashion accessories.(theandeancollection.com if anyone’s interested) So, she lives in Quito, Ecuador, but spends a lot of time in Otavalo and told us the name of the hotel she stays in when here. Anyway, when she was finished her copying, she handed me her name and number on a piece of paper and said to visit her. At that point I realized I should be informal witnessing, so I said “Thank you…I’d love to…what we like to do is discuss the Bible. Do you have an interest in the bible?” She immediately replied ‘I do actually…I’d like that’.
The trouble was, everytime I went to the hotel, she wasn’t there. I didn’t have a cellphone of my own yet, so couldn’t call her when I was in service. But…once my smart phone arrived, I was out in service and near the hotel she stays at. She wasn’t there again, then I remembered… hey, I can text her now! So I did…didn’t get an answer that day, but the next day, while we were doing door to door census work, a message arrived…it was from her (Chiara is her name btw). It said ‘I would love to get together. Is tomorrow ok?’. We arranged to meet at a restaurant.
Right from the start she has shown a humble and meek attitude. She genuinely wants to get ‘back to God’ and asked things like whether her lifestyle would be a hindrance to her relationship with God and when shown answers from the bible is genuinely sincere in her acceptance of them and wants to start making changes. Often she’d say ‘Now that makes a lot of sense!’. We’ve had another study since and she is eager to continue. - Another day, I was at my bible study with ‘Marisol’ (the one who left the Catholic church because she wasn’t getting anything out of it). Near the end of the study and younger woman dropped in. She asked Marisol to ask me if I was a ‘Testigo de Jehovah’. When Marisol said yes, she said ‘Ask her if she’ll study with me too’. I told Marisol that I couldn’t unless she could speak English. When Marisol relayed that, the woman said to me in plain English ‘I can speak it but I can only understand if you speak very slowly’. So, now I’m studying with this young woman also, who, it turns out used to study a long time ago with a Spanish witness couple. For our first study, so she could show me how to get to her house, she actually picked me up at 9AM at my house. It also turns out, she is Marisol’s sister.
- I don’t think I’ve ever related how I came across another of my studies. One day during phone witnessing at our house on Fridays, I found a man who was interested, so I arranged for Richard to visit him. When Rich and I went to his home, which is on one of the main streets in Otavalo where, on Saturdays they have the street blocked off to traffic and they become lined with tables where the local folks sell their wares, he wasn’t there, but a man who has a store under his apartment, pointed to one of the Quichua women at a market table and said ‘That is his daughter’. So I went over to her and tried explaining in Spanish that we were looking for her father because he had asked for us to come and see him. She then told me that she speaks English and asked me why we wanted her father and when I showed her the Truth tract and explained what we do, she told me she had studied the bible with the Witnesses before and that she would like to start again. But since her husband is opposed, she wanted to just have short sessions right at her booth on Saturdays. So, that’s what we’ve been doing! She and her father both speak excellent English because they lived in Seatle Washington for 6 years when she was a teenager. Her father still spends 6 months of every year there, so kind of hard to get a study established with him.