Kingdom Message In A Bottle: May 2013

"Let the little children come to me."

Lisa has studied in the past, but was recently found and began again. She attended the meeting on Sunday with her daughter and granddaughter. During this study, she tried to get her daughter to leave her alone, like she always has done before. Gloria helped her to see how Jesus would've treated her daughter. She said that while she was at the Kingdom Hall, she couldn't understand why we were helping her granddaughter find the scriptures. Previously, she felt that it was her time to learn and the kids just came along. Her attitude has changed and she willingly included her daughter in the study. Her daughter's face lights up at the idea of going to the Kingdom Hall or studying. We don't want that flame extinguished. Gloria is going to help Lisa get started with a family study this week.

Lost and Found

Cristina sat in on someone else's study three years ago and attended a meeting along with some other women. Then she was gone. And no one seemed to be able to say where she went. For all of this time, I've been hoping to see her again.

Last Sunday, I went to see a lady that has just started to study. She no longer lived where she was before, but two little girls happily walked me down the road to find her. As she was studying, Cristina walked out of the house. We looked at each other and then we looked at each other again and WOW! It was so thrillling! Since we saw each other last, she has had a little boy, traveled to Pohnpei for a while and returned. She just came back last month. As you can see, she is holding the Rohngamwahu brochure in her hand because she wanted to study again. We are both looking forward to our visit this Sunday.

Babysitting

Stroller--check

Water bottle--check

Beer--check

Old beer can to spit betel nut juice--check

Seeing shoes outside of a home is a normal thing to see. Before we enter most homes, we leave our shoes outside too. But we were curious about just how many people were in this one bedroom apartment.

Faithful Ones

Ray and Diane

What can we say? They are as strong as this bamboo and more beautiful.

It is such a delight to share a day in service with them.

Stand here and we'll take your picture....

Could we stand somewhere else, please?

Thomas the Train

There comes a point in service where you'll sit on just about anything. We sit on the floor a lot..clean or not, tires, frames of chairs, the ground, but this was the first time John sat on a train for a study!

These two men were first contacted by a sister in our congregation. She asked John to go because they are men and they are from Pohnpei. When we first went, neither of the two were there, but another one was. So we began to talk with him and started to study with him in the Rohngamwahu (Good News) brochure. After we finished the first section and read the scriptures, a lady who had met the sister told us that this man had no idea who the sister who visited was because he had just arrived from Pohnpei the week before. For some reason he didn't tell us any of this, but just followed along with what we were doing. His first impression of Guam? Strangers who are learning Ponapean show up at your home, sit you down, read the Bible with you and show you good news. Oh my!

The two photos below are from someone's front yard. In the second photo, you can see the family home.

Mary and Indy

Gloria and I just finished our study with Indy and Mary. Indy has since told us that the Mormons had been visiting them. She kept asking them to show her in the Bible to prove what they were telling her was true. They couldn't. So she said she will stick with the 'good news' because everything she reads in it is in the Bible. At the end of that study, her husband came home and joined in with us.