This little piggy should have stayed home!

All work and no play makes makes for a boring life so happily here we can have lots of fun too. The congregation "Paseo" that we went to on Sunday was an excellent example. Lots of delicious food (mostly in the form of whole roasted pig), music, dancing, mixed in with everyone happily  making fools of themselves. It has taken me a day to get over it but a nice time was had by all.

You may wonder what these guys are making funny faces for - its a game called rubber band racing - hilarious!

One thing about having visitors - it makes us do the touristy things we have never done. We went on the tour bus ride of the city with Westley the other day - learned quite a few new things about Cuenca. 

Love this view

Westley takes in the view of Cuenca

Our remodeled KH

 We also had the privilege of going to the Kingdom Hall dedication. It was such a nice day, with a Bethel speaker giving the dedication talk. I can't remember the last time I went to a dedication so it was a nice reminder.

Any New Yorkers out there?

So the latest is - WE ARE BOTH GOING TO HOUSTON - Yay!!! The convention date is 20th to the 23rd June 2014

As I mentioned in the last post - we are planning on getting up to New York after the convention to check out Bethel. So my question is - where is the best place to stay so that we are quite central??? Need some help folks, so would appreciate any comments or you can  send me an email via the email contact form.

Thank you in advance!

Oh oh and something else exciting - we got cheap tickets the other day to go to the Galapagos Islands in February. We are going with the lovely Lopez family, Alison (our adopted daughter), Westley (our adopted son) and Aaron (our ... oh you know who he is). Such fun to look forward to and I can't wait to see all the wildlife there. 

Houston - we have a problem!

 Well I wanted something exciting to tell you this week and I sure got it. We have been accepted to be delegates at the Houston, Texas International Convention next year. Well when I say "we" - at this stage I mean "I". With all our too-ing and fro-ing, Mark doesn't seem to belong to the correct congregation so we need to find out where his letter of acceptance went to. Otherwise I might just be going on my own (yeah, right). OK so latest news is - yes Mark is accepted, but to Atlanta!!!

It will be really cool to go and hopefully we will also be able to fulfill my dream of going to New York, of course to see Wallkill and Patterson. I have always wanted to go and being quite close (well alot closer than if we were in NZ), you would have thought we would have achieved it by now. Money of course has always been the biggest issue - but this time all those trips back to New Zealand are finally paying off - we have air points!!! So USA here we come!

A nice thing about writing this blog is that we get lots of contacts from people wanting to visit Ecuador either for a quick visit or fact finding trips with the purpose of serving here eventually.Today we spent a lovely day with these two couples, from Illinois, Kevin and Dawn and Jules and Gloria. We were able to spend the morning out in service with them and then show them a little bit of our beloved Cuenca, including the $2 lunch. Actually as a side point - these guys had been to New Zealand in January for the special convention. Kevin and Dawn came to our congregation there and ended up going out in service with Mark. In their conversation, Kevin said they were thinking about serving somewhere where the need was great. Mark asked him if he had ever thought of Ecuador. He had and had been reading our blog so he was excited to meet the crazy New Zealander he had read about.

The preaching had to have impressed them - Mark called on one place and over the intercom a little voice asked what he was talking about. He said "happy families" and the little girl said "ok I will get my Mum". The Mum came on and asked what religion he was and when he said Jehovah's Witnesses she asked them to come in. About an hour later they came away with a really strong feeling she and her daughter will come to meeting on Sunday - we will see if that happens, but for sure Mark and I will go back on Monday. My experience was while I was talking at a door to a gentleman, explaining why there is so many problems in the world, another man walking by, stopped to listen. The two brothers working with us, pulled him aside and started talking with him and they were able to give him a good witness. One other experience that those brothers had was in their first door - a young man said he knew he had to change his life and he had just been waiting for God's messengers (his words, not mine)  to help him, so a study was arranged for tomorrow. So 3 potential studies in that one block, not counting all the literature we placed.  Awesome awesomeness!

Sadly not to much to report this week - been a bit slow on interesting tidbits to share but we are still here doing our thing. Mark, Amanda and Aaron have all been manning the stand down at the Bus Station this time and report exceptional success with people sometimes taking two or three books for themselves and for family members. It's exciting work!

I had an experience I am not keen to repeat but will have to - visiting an acupuncturist - scary stuff but hopefully it will help with my health issues. What I can't understand is how the other patients didn't look like me after the treatment - while I was a mess, they all seemed content and happy. Then again I am a big scaredy-cat when it comes to needles. 

So that's from me - hopefully I will have something exciting to tell you next time.

Metropolitan Preaching

Metropolitan witnessing has just hit Cuenca and Amanda and Mark were privileged to be part of the team on the first day! They were stationed at one of the parks in Cuenca, which was extraordinarily busy because this weekend was Fiestas de Cuenca - a big festival they have here each year celebrating the city's independence from Spain. They had an awesome time in their 3 hours on duty - placing 5 Bibles, 10 BT books and 4 magazines. They also were able to fill out 3 please follow up slips which was success in itself! There was another stand at the park too and we have been told, although not been able to confirm as yet, that 50 books were placed in total!  Remember that the instructions are not to approach people - they are to come up to the stand if they are interested, so what an awesome outcome and a shout of praise to Jehovah!

In other news - we have Westley Bennett here from New Zealand, visiting for 6 months - he's been suitably impressed by the food prices and all else that Cuenca has to offer. It's very cool seeing the place again through a visitors eyes - sometimes after being in a place for awhile, you tend to accept things as normal. Believe me - this place is not normal\- but it is very cool!

OFFICIALLY ECUADORIAN RESIDENTS AS OF TODAY

After a very long day of waiting, walking and celebrating, we have got our residency finally. This means that we can stay here indefinitely (as long as our investment stays in the bank, that is). It has been a long process but only one thing more to do, which is to obtain our cedula (official identity card) and we are set. Something also that was a VERY nice surprise - we were told to have $320 each to pay for the visa but it turned out that it was only Aaron needing to pay that (as the primary visa applicant) and only $50 for us as dependants - WAHOO - lets go shopping! Anyway it is a big relief to have this finally under our belt - now we can concentrate of the more important things in life.

it was a long wait at the visa office but about half way through the morning - a heap of chinese people walked in - Amanda being very prepared straight away was up and at em, with invitations to the Chinese meeting and magazines for them. It was awesome to see the look of surprise on their faces as this little white girl busted out the chinese. So jealous that I could really only say "ni hau" but I guess 5 years ago I could really only say hello in spanish too so...one day. 

In other news, I had my first study with the lady with the broken Jesus the other day. It was a text book study and the best thing about it is, she is at her place of business so will always be there - what a blessing.

We are eagerly waiting for our first visitor from New Zealand (this time around) to arrive this weekend. Westley is coming for about 6 months so we will have plenty of time to show him around Cuenca and why we love it so much. Let the good times begin!    

LAS CHICAS DE DIOS

Gotta love being called a "Girl" of God - helps that I was with Amanda of course!

So we walked a long way this morning and just when I thought I could walk no more, Amanda took me into her call with an awesome little family and we got invited in to sit down. The story behind the theme of this post is that is what the Mum kept calling us. I got the low down from Amanda and thought I would share it cause it is a cute story. Amanda and another sister where preaching in the cul-de-sac and the Mum called out "we're Catholics" - in other words go away! So they carried on with the other houses. Not too long after though, the lady comes out of her house and calls them back.as her daughter,Stephanie, had said to her - "that is not right Mama - they have the bible with them and you shouldn't be rude to them". Well as you can see in my sneakily taken pic, Stephanie is not very old, probably about 12 or so, but she has got a real desire to know what the bible says and comes out with some great questions. The first question she had this morning was something Amanda had talked about with her Mum and so Amanda was super surprised that the Mum gave Stephanie the correct answer. Shows she has been listening intently and learning a lot!

WE KNOW THAT JESUS DIDN'T GET TORTURED BY A CROSS BUT I DID!

Interesting title and it is a bit of a funny story: On the way home from Amanda's lovely call, we stopped in at one of my RV's - I had placed the October mags with the lady in a Funeraria (a place where they sell grave headstones, objects of worship etc) and I didn't see the cross, complete with a prone "Jesus" hanging from the ceiling. Of course I knocked it off it's perch and it came crashing down on to my shoulder and shattered into a million pieces, along with a glass table underneath it. It hurt a lot but I wiped away my tears and carried on (after Amanda cleaned up the mess that is) and offered a study to the lady. What else could she say except "yes". How embarrassing though - breaking all the idols before we even study that part in the BT book!