Fast Fab February

February just sped by like a fast train! Reason being partly because the winter is my slump period for business income so I advertised a special offer for website makeovers.  I was not prepared for the response! Nice for a little boost to the pocketbook, but unfortunately I ended up with too much work to do all at once!  As a result I pretty much just worked, went on studies, worked some more, ate, went to meetings, worked late, slept… with no time for anything else. Plus, since February only has 28 days it will be gone all that much sooner than any other month… today being the last day! I’ve been really trying to get as ‘finished up’ with work as I can before big month of March!

Tomorrow Rich and I both start auxilliary pioneering! There’s the 800 Memorial invitations to deliver, but hey, with 11 aux. pioneers (out of 17 pub.) plus 2 regulars we won’t be short on help! We have so much work to do just getting to all the return visits we’ve accumulated to try and encourage them to come. Then there will be the actual Memorial (Richie is giving the talk). We had 83 last year, so with all the cultivating that has been going on and the common knowledge around the island now that there is an English congregation again, we are expecting a lot more this year. After Memorial, of course, there will be the joyful work of visiting any new ones who will be there.

We were sorry to have lost Hadrian a couple of weeks ago – he went back to B.C. to save enough to go on his next ‘need-greater’ adventure. Luke stayed on here though for, he hopes, another few months. Plus his sister is arriving… wow.. that’s today! along with a couple of friends, so even more help!

Remember my study, Maritze? The one who had the baby back in August? Well, she is really progressing and loving what she is learning. One day she told me about her nephew who is 8 yrs old who is always asking her about the bible. Well, he is the boy named Jaime (pronounced ‘Hi-may’) that I am now studying with (see the January highlights below).

Also, she has convinced her husband (who was raised in the truth) to start coming back to Jehovah and now he is studying with Richard! A couple of weeks ago she asked me if I could get her a Spanish bible and Teach book (that worried me at first because I thought it meant she was thinking of switching to Spanish, her first language) to give to her mother. She took a trip over to the mainland to visit her and took the books along, placed them with her, and she says her mom started reading the Teach book right away!

Then, on another occasion when my ‘boys’ didn’t show up for their study (they accidentally sleep in sometimes) I went to their house and their mother was home (Maritze’s older sister) so I took the opportunity to tell her that I was enjoying studying the bible with her boys, then asked her if she had ever wanted to learn more about the Bible… she replied ‘When, what time?’ So, yesterday we had our first study and she responded very well to the first lesson and when I finished up with our last paragraph and said we would continue next time, she said ‘When? Tomorrow?’ Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of Maritze’s family embrace the truth?!

And so it goes here on Caye Caulker… we are forever shaking our heads in disbelief over how different the ministry is here compared to back home.

Richard has started many new studies this month! He’s still making his weekly sojourn up to the North island to study with Evan, who, if ever he does come into the truth, will be a force to be reckoned with! He is such a diligent digger… he investigates every last detail… like the Boreans he is ‘carefully examining the scriptures daily as to whether these things were so.’ Acts 17:11 He did study to be a lawyer, so that might have something to do with it… very analytical mind.

Then, there is Maritze’s husband George; a young man named Brian with a wife and 2 small kids; another young man who saw us coming from a house on service and asked him… “Are you guys Jehovah’s Witnesses?” He told us he had 4 aunts who were witnesses… 2 in Belize and 2 in Los Angeles!; Then there’s a middle-aged man named Baito who is Mayan… he comes to the meetings fairly regularly; There’s Christian, one of the Magana’s sons; a rasta guy named Kevin; and a few others that he’s just started the first study with!

Must admit, we have also lost some that we used to study with. Well, not even exactly ‘lost’… just that they got too busy to keep their study schedule because of having to work too much, or, in a couple of cases of mine, they had to move off the island for one reason or another. No one has actually said ‘I don’t want to study anymore.’ Lavita, the woman I started a study with here in 2007 is one of the ‘too much work’ ones. She lives in such bad conditions, I sometimes think I can’t blame her for wanting to ‘upgrade’ by making more money, but…then again

Other noteworthy items: Brother Buddy Magana bought a good sized motor boat, so today, Rich didn’t have to kayak up to Evan’s… he and Buddy went in probably a quarter of the time!

The Hendersons also bought a motor boat, but not as large as Buddy’s, but still handy for 4-6 people to go a short distance. They’ve also moved into the bottom floor of the house they are building. They’ll save a bundle of money not having to pay rent for the apartment they’ve been living in for the past 9 months.

Tomorrow also means we only have 1 more month to go before we’ve been here 1 whole year. And *that* means we can apply for residency and once we have that we won’t have to keep going every month and paying for extensions at $100. US per month…and *that* will be nice!

Here’s February’s meager photo offering: