Day 8 - Zone Meeting

Sunday! We woke up early and joined Victor and Lauren in some early morning street preaching at 7AM. It was really cool in the shade and we found quite a few people hanging out on the street or just walking by. Since my Spanish is still limited I just asked if they would like something to read. Everyone we talked to said yes! Then Lauren added in that they could read it with their own copy of the Bible at home as well. Later when we were walking back past the people we placed with, we saw them reading the magazines we left them! That was encouraging to see.

Jo at our front gate/door

It started to get a lot hotter as the sun rose and we ended up back at the house after nine. Since we still had the whole morning before we were going to the Zone meeting, we headed for the beach.

Shade is our friend.

Sunken ship, chilling in the water. We pass it on the way to the beach.

After relaxing in the water and on the sand we headed back to change and leave for the meeting which started at two. At 9AM the branch in Santo Domingo had the meeting and simultaneously recorded and broadcasted Spanish, English and ASL. Then they rebroadcasted at two and six for congregations around the DR to stream locally.

The congregation in Samana had Spanish meet at nine and English/ASL meet at two. 60 were present for the meeting. Some there had went to Spanish in the morning and then came back for the afternoon meeting as well so when it came time for the songs, there were people singing in Spanish, English and ASL. That was pretty sweet.

After the Watchtower summary there was a talk on Ezekiel's vision of the vehicle of Jehovah's heavenly organization by Andre Santiago (Ezek 1:18-28). At that time, Ezekiel was the earthly connection to the heavenly organization drawing a parallel to today. So we can can be close to Jehovah's heavenly organization obvioisly by staying close to the earthly organization. However he gave the comparison that this vehicle is not a pickup truck. It doesn't drag us along. We have to keep up ourselves. How do we do this?
(1) By how we use our time
(2) What our goals are

Brother Santiago then gave four goals for the Dominican Republic.
(1) Preach in places of greater need
He said about 30% of the territory in the DR has either not been worked or is seldom worked. Even though many of the populated areas are frequently covered, there are some outlying areas that have no publishers there at all. He gave an experience of a group who went to preach in a remote area and had huge numbers of people come to the meetings they arranged between Thursday and Sunday, I think 114 and 74 were in attendance to the two meetings. However when they left, they were only able to plan on going back after one whole year!!!
Brother Santiago encouraged the friends and quoted the experience of one family who moved to the Samana ASL group to help out and how it's been a great blessing for their family.
(2) Increase in pioneers
The goal is for 20,000 to pioneer in March. It's a good month because of the 5 weekends and the 30 hour Aux Pio provision as well! They would need 6/10 publishers to pioneer so the goal is definitely reachable!
(3) Learn a new language to preach to foreigners
Apparently there are a lot in the DR from Asia, Russia and Haiti as well as the deaf needing more support. Even if these ones have learned Spanish, we read Acts 2:4,7 to encourage us that a person's first language is what Jehovah wants us to use to reach people.
(4) Conduct progressive Bible studies
He encouraged us to follow 1 Thess 2:8 where Paul encourages us to teach and impart our own souls to our students because they are beloved to us. So we have to ask ourselves, do we love our Bible students? Do we treat them like our beloved children or our own family?
To help them progress he also encouraged:
-Directing them to Jehovah and the organization
-Helping them appreciate the importance of preping for the study
(He gave the example of not preping beans before cooking, if you try to eat them, they will be super hard! But if you first take the time to soak them, then they will be ready to use. So preparation is important!)
-Finish both books with the study
(The first for basic Bible truths and the second to help them live the truth)

The second talk was based on Isa 2:1-3 where Brother Joe Dillinger explained how we can climb, and continue climbing Jehovah's mountain of true worship. Many today try to climb the mountain of "Fame" or "Wealth" but he pointed out that if we are not on Jehovah's mountain, we won't be protected from Armageddon (Rev 6:16-17).
He gave four routes we can take to help us climb Jehovah's mountain:
(1) Control of our thoughts
(2) Control of our speech
(3) Our fine conduct
(4) Preaching with zeal

We won't get the final total on attendance until a future date but it sounds like well over 5,000!

Dante looked so cute in his little bow tie!

The projector setup

But our day of excitement wasn't over. No sir. ;)

As I relaxed on the porch talking to friends and family that evening, I suddenly felt little eyes on me. Where were they? Peeking out from the inside of our washing machine.

I called over Joanna and after turning on the light, it disappeared into the washer! So we pulled out the panel and there it was. A froggy toad thing.

When we finished torturing it with our flash cameras, Jo reached to grab it and when she did, it leapt!!! And it had super grippy fingers so it bounced from one side of the washer to another! We all screamed (it was pretty unexpected that it could move like that!). It ended up on the window frame.

And then finally out of the porch and onto the side wall of the neighbor's house.

Whew! We'd previously seen a lizard on the porch too.

I can also see why the phrase "leaping lizards" is common since they can jump pretty well.

Jo took this at the beach. There were at least three jumping around in the bushes!

That evening we headed out to a restuarant to bid farewell to the group of Canadian brothers who had been here about a month I believe.

Back: Sven (Sweden), Mike(Ottawa), Poncho(Ottawa), Caroline(Norway), Nick(Ottawa), Ben(Ottawa)                           Front: Bailey(Iowa), Me, Victor(Sweden), Lauren(California), Eliza(Canada), Jo