Street Witnessing

This last Wednesday we had our local needs part on the service meeting. Summer whispered what I thought it would be about and I mentioned our flaws "showing up late to the service meeting? whispering? hehehe, laughing during the meeting??" Thankfully it was none of those. It was on doing our best finding the english speakers in our territory, and also diligently working to find the ones in our own personal english territories. You see, we have canvassing territories where we look through the whole territory for ones who speak english and then we have our own personal english territories made up of 10-15 known english speakers in different parts of the city. Josias, one of our elders, said of the 34 publishers there are 63 bible studies being conducted. Many of those are still in spanish so he encouraged us to continue to work on finding ones in english. As of now, in our databases, there are 600 known english speakers in the city. So we do have our work cut out for us. Thursdays in service are reserved for working our english territories and fridays are for street witnessing. On friday we get partnered up and sent to work our own busy streets. I got paired with Judith and we had a couple of busy andadors (strictly walking streets) and Mercado de los Dulces (an indoor little shopping area with clothes, food, candy, jewelry, yada yada yada). Well, we both decided to go to the Mercado first :) And to blend in we started looking at jewelry....what can I say, I'm human! But thankfully we did. At one jewelry stand we were admiring, another woman was there. I asked her if she spoke English, and she did. She was from Hidalgo, Mexico but living in London currently. She said she was there to learn English. So we got to know her a little bit, let her feel comfortable. And then I offered the magazines. She was very excited to take them. I thought that was gonna be all because she said she had to catch a bus, but then she said "I want to tell you something." She proceeded to tell me that for 3 years she ignored the Witnesses when they came to her home. Her sister had committed suicide and her boyfriend according to Victoria (that was her name) was one of Jehovah's Witnesses and she had always blamed it on him. Well, I expressed sympathy to her, and fortunately on the back of one of the magazines I left with her there was a coupon for the brochure "When Someone You Love Dies". She became very excited when I told her she could get it when she returned to London. After reading Revelation 21:3,4 with her, I told her to contact the witnesses in London and they could share more about the hope with her. She was very excited, and we exchanged emails. She left us with a huge smile and a hug. Its so nice that with all the visitors in San Cris, even though we may not get to cultivate all the seeds we plant, we still are able to plant them and in far-reaching places too. We get to talk to people from France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Australia you name it :)

This next week Summer and I will be headed to a small town maybe 2 hours away as little helpers and guests to the Spanish C.O. and his wife. We will be staying the night in a small town and then travelling everyday to the territory. Service will be Spanish only, we'll let yall know how that goes....Oh, and the pictures are looks at our territory, and includes andadors where we do our street witnessing.