Huatulco

AHEM! I would like to annouce the first meeting ever to be conducted in English in Huatulco occured on Wed, Oct 26th with 26 in attendance.

9 brothers and sisters from Oaxaca plus the PO and his wife came to the coast to support the CO who has been traveling to the English groups.

Tues we had a meeting for field service and did censo to find out the interest and level of English speakers. The CO said during the meeting for service our job here is ´to spy out the land.´ To keep record of any English speakers found, their level of English and interest. We invited all English speakers to the Bookstudy and Talk on Wed. We started 16 bible studies, called back on interested one the following day and had 26 support the first book study in Huatulco!

Its such a privledge to be a part of the expanding preaching work, growing to the ´remote´ parts of the earth. In December the CO is sending brothers from Oaxaca to start up the bookstudy in English on a weekly basis and give a public talk monthly. So hopefully the field will keep growing and continue to be productive and fruitful!!!!!

Jehovah Finds a Way...

Tonight during the CO´s talk one of his point in establishing a good relationship with Jehovah is straightening out matters with him. If we´re hiding sins, if we commit a sin to openly confess it, etc. He gave an example:

A sister, married to an elder, went to the doctor for a general reason. Ended up finding out she had AIDS. She knew she had never committed fornication, she had only been with her husband, was raised in the truth, so she was puzzled as to how she had that infection. She went to the elders and explained to them how she´s raised in the truth, never strayed, only married to her current husband and somehow she contracted AIDS.

So the brothers formed a judicial and called the elder in. They asked him how his wife might have contracted AIDS? The brother replied ¨I can not fight against Jehovah¨. He admitted he had been sleeping with a girl in the congregation. So the elders called in the girl and asked her to take a blood test.

The girl returned and proudly said she was not the one infected with AIDS, she was clean. Even more puzzled, the elders asked the husband to go have a blood test. But his test too came back negative?!

The elders met with the wife again and asked her to go back and take another test. It turns out the doctor confused the results and she was not infected! Neither the wife, husband or the girl. But the truth came out! The affair was discovered and the matter was dealt with judicially!

Amazing! Remember, we can´t hide anything from Jehovah´s eyes. He has the power to make the truth known!

First Impressions

Shame on me! We have the CO´s visit this week. An American couple is being training for the next 10 weeks by a Spanish couple. The Spanish overseer is giving all the talks. I was a little disappointed...he didn´t seem that familiar with the circuit work, or maybe it was just the English field. And the first meeting he asked us to take his car up to the car wash. Well, it ended up being this whole ordeal and B and I missed the entire CO´s talk!! We were grumbling about why couldn´t he do this yesterday, because it was taking unusally long and we were disappointed to have missed his first talk. And the American couple is only observing this week. He has no assignments. :(

Then this morning for the field service group it was a little disorganized. Both the CO´s and the PO were suppose to have the list of who volunteered to work with the overseers. And no one could find it so he just rearranged everything. So up until this point I was getting a weird vibe and wondering if the rest of the week would be as wonderful as I had been looking forward to.

I was placed in the car group with the Spanish couple. And once he told us his story boy did my conscience feel guilty! He was telling us how he has 11 years in the circuit work. Then he got married and his wife has joined him for the past 5. His whole family have not only been raised in the truth but served in full time service...His father use to be the CO here in Oaxaca in Spanish. He commented how he had just finished training another couple when the branch called and asked him to train another couple down in Oaxaca. And that it would be in ENGLISH! Little did we know this CO is actually a spanish CO and hasn´t spoken English in 25 yrs! He told us how he was hestitant but then reasoned well if Jehovah´s extending this privledge to me I know he´ll help me with the language. And after you consider that, man! His English is perfect and he is doing a great job! I was so quick to form my opinions, well his English isn´t great...he didn´t deliver the best talk...but that was the first talk his given in English!! WOW, again!

He has been very appreciative of B and I taking care of his car. He told us how he and his wife had driven 24 hrs from Mérida to make it down here in time. That he drove the first day till midnight, woke up at 7am the next and continued driving until 7:30pm and they were so exhausted! And he was embarassed to take his filthy mud splashed car out in service the next day so the only time he had was when he asked us to take it for him. Woops, again.

Then I got to work some with American CO´s wife. They´re recently married, 6 months. From Portland and Seattle, been in Mexico 2.5 years met each other here, dated a year and just got married. He´s 35 and she´s 32. Shawn went to to MTS 10 yrs ago, they made him an elder at 26, has 18 years pioneering and she has 14. They just asked Shawn to conduct the pioneer school and right afterwards, totally unexpected, the branch invited them to start training for the Circuit work. She is really down to earth. She said she always thought Circuit work would be nice but never actually expected for it to happen, b/c who is she? She´s nobody. She asked about B and I...we talked about what kind of weddings we had, how we had each met our husbands, pioneering, etc. We have alot in common.

And just for a perspective. There are only 3 circuits in all of Mexico English. So if they´re training them that means they´re most likely looking to form another circuit and they will head it up!!!

We also had our pioneer meeting today. We have 16 pioneers. And 36 publishers. He talked to us about how just the publishers service hours average is 22.7! The national average is 11. So our congregation is doing well putting in the time. That we´ve covered our territory two years faster than they expected BUT we only have 48 studies!!! He really stressed working on our return visits and focusing on making them disciples. He said out of 100 studies only 5 people actually get baptized! So with only 40 studies we´ll only add about 2 more publishers and how long will that take? So we need to step up the RV´s and concentrate less on covering our territory. Focus on the found interest.

He also spoke about how to count hours. In the OM book on page 86 it lists the areas where we do count time and areas where we don´t. The book says our time starts when our ministry work begins and ends with the last call of the day. Other essencial activities related to field service, such as getting ready for field service, traveling to the hall, the service meeting, and travelling to the territory are NOT to be counted as field service time. Neither do breaks for eating and drinking refreshments. Pioneer meetings, tours of Bethel, time it takes to get to the hall in the meeting can not be counted as time, contrary to some´s popular belief.

It was very nice and an encouraging day. I learned my lesson today! Not to judge too quickly. Give people the benefit of the doubt and a chance to explain...understanding a full situation is essential before making any assessment! Looking foward to an excellent week!

Here´s the pioneer pic we took from today.

Sights of Oaxaca. San Felipe

Here are some more pics from things we´ve been doing around Oaxaca. One of the churches near the Zocálo. San Felipe, another ritz-ier area of town. Etcera.

Church near Zocálo, La Soledad and Courtyard.




Dominoes delivery.

San Felipe.

AND we got a new Burger King. Check out this ad!

Zócalo. Newly renovated.

What we WON´T miss!

So this morning B and I were at a coffee shop...making a call of course....and taking advantage of the fact that it was a coffee shop! We sat and were thinking of what we miss about home...what we won´t miss about here...and the stuff in the middle. The things we´ve learned here, things we want to bring back with us, ideas, items, etc.... Well here´s our individual lists. I´m sure you can guess whose side is which ;)

The following are not listed in any particular order.

Things we miss about HOME

1. Snow caps
2. Cookie Dough
3. Brownie Mix
4. Sunday nights
5. Carpet
6. Publix Sub´s
7. Pedicures
8. Driving-getting in the car and going whenever you want
9. Dishwasher

1. Car-Transportation
2. Do my own thing to my own home
3. Friends/Family
4. Speaking English everywhere I go
5. American music
6. Being 10-15 mins from everything
7. American food/Buffets-Chinese, Golden Corral, Mac Grill

Things we´ll bring BACK

1. More cilantro
2. Quesillo
3. TOD night
4. Salsa verde y Salsa roja
5. Parasites
6. Walking more
7. Hawaiian Hamburger

1. Cool Mexican music-Reik, Moderato
2. Stories/Experiences
3. Stronger Spanish
4. Authenic Mexican food- Quesillo, Manchego
5. Souvenirs

Things we WON´T miss (just one list, there was no dissention here)

1. Really thick Mexican accent
2. Starving packs of wild dogs
3. Trumpety clown music
4. Exhaust pollution
5. Dog caca everywhere
6. Bad crazy driving
7. Not being able to flush toilet paper

New Fragrance: Le Fabrique Softner

I have done away with my perfume bottles! I´ve retired them for a much strong scent: dryer sheets! MMmmmm... The clean mexican smell....nothing beats it! And it´s so potent, long lasting. You know the one I´m talking about. It´s the way all Mexicans smell. Their fabric softner must only come in ´original´. The smell lingers even after a hot sweaty day...mmmm fabric softner, Mexico original. I think they have a patent pending!

Tule Tree

The pics are finally up! They are posted in my yahoo photos account. Here´s the link. Enjoy

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/sbryington/my_photos

Traditions of men

Sherry and I were told that there was going to be a celebration going on the first week or so of October. Little did we know what was in store...

It started off a couple weeks before October. Just random at first. ¨Bombas¨, or fireworks in English. Every once in a while throughout the day, there would be a loud bang, which gives credence to why they call them bombas. I thought someone was shooting a cannon!! Then it started happening early in the morning a week before October. Five in the morning to be exact...every morning the whole week...each time would last for five minutes straight...needless to say, I was ticked. They also did the bombas for five minutes at noon and at 7 p.m. So we asked the family that Sherry´s known for a few years what was up. The father said that they were preparing for a celebration that lasts 2-3 weeks. Which isn´t bad in itself...but I found out what was bad about it...

Saturday night October 1 at about 11 or so, there was a parade going by our little apartment complex. The fact that it was 11 at night wasn´t bad. It was that they were nothing but brass insturments that sounded like they were being played by 10 year olds who never had a lesson in their lives. Then the bombas started. I figured that they would last only a few minutes. BOY WAS I WRONG. The explosions would reverberate through our apartment every ten minutes or so until 6 in the morning. Not to mention the parade of 10 year old retards with insturments came back by at about 3 in the morning. I look over at Sherry at about that time and she´s sawing logs.

I didn´t go out in service Sunday the 2nd. No sleep makes Brandon not so zealous. The bombas lasted throughout the day. I was told by a local brother that the celebration with the bombas was over. BOY WAS HE WRONG!! The bombas minus the parades started and ended about the same time Sunday night as they did the night before. Didn´t get a lick of sleep until Monday morning. Luckily, Sherry and I have our day off on Monday, so we could sleep in.

Monday night we go to the local internet owned by the family I mentioned before. While we´re waiting for a computer to open up, we see the retards with their insturments leading a parade out of the church. As the parade goes by, we see four or five guys carrying long Catholic tapestries on long poles. Then behind them, being carried like the Ark of the Covenant by six or seven women dressed all in white, is a three foot tall doll of Mary. More people behind them were carrying lit candles. The parade went around the corner and out of site, but you could still hear the music.

So why are they having these celebrations, you ask? I´ll tell you. Because however long ago somewhere in this colony (equivalent to zip code), someone saw a saint, or a couple saints. I have no clue which one, but ever since then, they´ve been celebrating every October. We have folks setting up a mini fair in front of the church where it´s celebrated. This church is about 2 minutes from our house. The traditions of men are so incredibly laughable...until they make you lose sleep.