Some convention highlights!

We're just off the "Remain Close to Jehovah" District Convention here in Guayaquil, and what an amazing weekend it was.  We always say "That was the best District Convention ever," and this year is no exception!  Each and every part was so motivating to draw even closer to Jehovah, and it instilled in us even more how we want to remain as busy as possible in Jehovah's service, and keep theocratic goals in front of us.

Also motivating to us was the unique spirit there, as most at the English convention are serving in different South American countries from all over the world ~ it's like a mini international convention!  Aside from Ecuador and the United States, we talked with friends from Japan, New Zealand, Australia, England, Peru, Canada, Colombia, Holland, Germany, Belgium, and Italy, just to name a few off the top of my head!  At one point a speaker asked all those in full-time service to raise their hands, and it was probably about 95% of the audience!

Most talks have something in them - at least a mention - specially geared toward serving where the need is greater, and keeping up with the work.  The brothers on the branch committee expressed their appreciation to the audience for serving where there is a great need, and shared the exciting statistic that Ecuador now has over 71,000 publishers!  With over 142,000 Bible studies being conducted, the potential for more growth is amazing.  Ecuador had the greatest increase of Kingdom proclaimers in all of South America last year with 7%. 

As is true everywhere, there is a great need for more publishers in the field, and for more brothers in the congregations and groups.  The announcement was made several times that there is a great need for publishers to learn the indigenous Shuar language here in Ecuador.  According to government estimates, there are around 50,000 people who speak Shuar, yet there are only 10 publishers in Ecuador who can speak it!  The branch hopes to hold two Shuar language courses for those interested in serving in that field in the near future.

Although there are many languages to learn in Ecuador, Spanish is still the main language, and one example of the growth in the Spanish field is from a group in the province of Manabí.  In January 2010 there were 6 publishers in the Paramo group.  Today, eight months later, there are 32 publishers, and their Memorial had an attendance of 76! 

The language groups and congregations that were highlighted for "Help Wanted" on the back information board (aside from Spanish) were English, Kichwa, Shuar, Sign Language and Chinese.  Speaking of Chinese, Damaris is one of around 60 publishers who are serving in the Chinese field here in Ecuador.  Way to go D!

We're definitely on a spiritual high now, and are excited to go back to the branch today for a tour.  We stayed at the branch when we first came to Ecuador in 2008 for a visit, but we never got an official tour!  Tonight we'll be going to bed early as we leave for the airport tomorrow at 5:00 a.m.  We'll be landing in Cleveland close to midnight tomorrow, so it's gonna be a long day!  We can't wait to see everyone!!

The hardest part

In between all of our packing, organizing, and cleaning, we've managed having guests from Guayaquil, two parties, two dinners, two meetings, and this post you're now reading.  It's been extremely hard saying goodbye to the friends, and our congregation going away party was the sob-fest of the year for me.  They had two performances ~ a song our friend Miguel wrote for us and performed with several other brothers, and a native dance done by some sisters.  A.J. and I both had to give speeches about our feelings, which I'm sure you can imagine was just a little bit difficult (and not just because we were speaking Spanish!).  As for saying goodbye to other friends, we still have the English District Convention to go to together, so that's a huge comfort!  We can say "See you in Guayaquil!" instead of "See you . . . ? ? ?"  As for Sunday of the convention...we won't think about that quite yet.

Here are some weekend highlights (for the full album, click here) >>>

Our final dance party in Apt. #301 ~

Michele, Megan, Brittany and me

A.J., Naoko and Wakana

D and Marco

A.J. and Teby

Our final meeting at Narancay ~

A.J. and the Castro boys

Me and Marlene

Final meeting with English ~

With the Lakes

Our Narancay going away party ~

Dancing!

Miguel's song

The girls' dance

This could potentially be my last post from Ecuador since these next two weeks are gonna be crazy...

It's been very busy around here as we wind down our stay.  We celebrated our one year Cuenca anniversary on Thursday before the meeting, with a fabulous steak dinner at an Argentine parrilla grill close by our house.  Our meal cost a whopping $5 a person!  We ran from dinner to the meeting, and A.J. had his last Thursday night meeting part.  He's been especially busy with parts; though today was his last part in Ecuador for a while. He had his first full Spanish public talk on Saturday, and today gave that same talk in English.

And speaking of English, it was announced at the meeting today that the group will be a congregation as of September 1!  The work continues to grow, and we can see that well here in Cuenca.  Another foreign language group, Kichwa (an indigenous mountain language native to Ecuador), became a congregation as of July 1.  And in the Spanish field, our sister congregation Baños split once again (I heard the average is about once every three years).  That makes 5 congregations in our Kingdom Hall, and the new congregation, along with Baños, only have ONE elder each!  Help is definitely needed, as today's Watchtower brought out!

Service these past couple weeks has been a lot of letter-leaving in doors since it's pretty difficult to find people at home.  All but one of my studies is turned over (which will happen tomorrow), and I'm very happy that they're all in such good hands!  And it especially thrilled me to hear them asking their new teachers questions galore...way more than they ever asked me...hmmm...were they under the impression that I wasn't fully understanding them?!??

We've been trying to catch up with all of our friends before we leave, and this weekend we had the nice opportunity to see many friends all at once at a 25th wedding anniversary party.  It was for our friends Lenin and Mary, given by their children Esteban and Daniela.  It was a great time, and a highlight was a person from every family saying something special about the couple.  There was a common thread through all of the comments ~ that they are an amazing family, loving all the time, ready to help and support everyone.  We certainly experienced that while we've been here!

This upcoming week is our last week of "normalcy", though it's not really normal since we have things crammed in to most days before we pack up shop and head to Guayaquil for convention.  It's going to fly by...From Guayaquil it's onto Ohio, and onto reverse-culture shock!

To see the latest EC happenings, click here!