Week 4

Assembly Hall

Riding to the assembly with Bethelites (see me?)

Meet lovely Roselan.  A Bethelite (in translation) and in PJ group

This family is studying Bible. Mum is Filipino and Dad (opposed) is PJ. 

Kids names Mahima, Avinash,

See ceiling. Many fans like this are built into the ceiling.

Nice stage set up

Meet "my kids" White shirt is Shepherd,special pios and one of the PJ instructors of lang. class. Norman is a Bethelite and in PJ group. He is the 'valedictorian' of PJ.  Shepherd attended MTS 2 yrs ago and was assigned from Tagalog cong to english to help in PJ field. So he had to learn "2"! new languages at the same time!

Sister Gold and her husband moved from Bangalore to PI due to work. They are in Makati english cong. in the Hindi group.

Indian sister is from Sri Lanka.She maybe getting baptized this November at DC. Her teacher is standing behind her. The rest are from my cong.

Newly baptized 1 year (?). He speaks Sindhi and Hindi. Also attends Hindi group.

These are in the PJ group except for 1st sister in blue/green dress. She is Bethelite in our cong.

Sunday we had English SAD. There were a little over 1,000 in attendance but the hall holds over 5,000 but because this is a foreign language assembly, it is smaller (kinda like our PJ SAD).  So, the hall had no aircon!!!!  It’s a covered outdoor auditorium, beautifully designed and very picturesque but the roofing is made of some type of metal – so, for a taste – shrink yourself to the size of your pinky finger and place yourself in your oven.  The setting should be set to 200 initially. You may leave the oven door ajar for the occasional breeze.  At noon, raise the setting to 300.  You may use a fan and bros. you do not have to wear a tie or a suit jacket.  Phew! Thank goodness for deodorant and easy weight loss.  J  I appreciated the wonderful spirit from the brothers – no complaints – happy to be there – all dressed in their best with their lovely “special occasion” fans (even bros. had fans).    I wore a PJ suit and had an interview in which we briefly mentioned how I ended up in the Philippines to help in the PJ field.  After the program ended I was “attacked” with numerous “can you come visit us?  I have a call . . . .a study . .. a PJ  . . .etc. and they are asking  ‘do you have any Indian Jehovah’s Witnesses?’”   Some live 1 hour or 2 hours or 5 hours away!  Overwhelming.  So you Indian JW’s, please come!  I met one Pilipino sister whose fleshly sister lives in NY and is close to a PJ family (in Hindi cong) who at one time were going to take a vacation to the PI but it never worked out. So I hope to get in touch with them at some point.  In a city called Makati (40 min) there is another English cong. sponsoring a hindi group so we met some from there too.  So starting foreign language groups in the PI is very new here. Thus far, there is the beginning of PJ, Hindi, Korean, Farsi and Chinese.  In the ministry last week met a PJ family who has visited a church because they are tired of the hypocrisy they are seeing.  They asked “why is God punishing us?” Their child has severe autism. The other children are having their own bible study. This, I think, is the foundation.  The Filipino friends who started working in the PJ field about 5 years ago started studies with the kids. The parents are happy to have someone teach their kids to be good.  But now, the parents are asking me the whys and whats of our preaching work. They assume they are coming from church and get paid.  So after explaining, some are satisfied whereas others  want to learn more.  We just wait to see if Jehovah is drawing anyone else in that family to open up their hearts to study.  Its very interesting, some have already been witnessed to by their kids or have been reading our mags so they have heard about Adam/Eve/Satan.  This week will be busy with CO visit.