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!
