The time has come


"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."

Through the Looking-Glass

Thursday 14 February 2013

ABOUT OUR CONGREGATION

 

So far, we haven’t said too much about what it’s like being in a foreign language congregation in a foreign land. So here we go.

Our congregation, Cuenca English, is one of 3 English-language congregations in Ecuador. Other than Cuenca, there is a congregation in Guayaquil (near the coast and about 3 hours drive from us) and one in Quito (the capital, about 8-10 hours drive from us). There are English-language groups at Riobamba (a few hours north of here), Manta (on the coast about 5 hours drive from here) and Atuntaqui (north of Otavalo, about 12 hours drive from here).

Last year, we had our 3 day District Convention at Guayaquil (in July), our Special Assembly Day in Quito in November, and we are having our Circuit Assembly in Cuenca in April this year, which will be nice for us – no travelling. This will be the first English-language Circuit Assembly in Ecuador.

Our congregation is fairly new – it operated as a group for a couple of years and then around 2 ½ years ago became a congregation. Of the permanent people, none have been here more than 5 years, and the rest less than that. Brendan and I have been here around 10 months now. And there are quite a few who have arrived since we got here.

We have 41 publishers, 9 elders, 5 ministerial servants and 18 regular pioneers (when you include our current visitors, that ups the pioneers by at least 7). 51% of publishers have been baptised over 30 years. There are 51 Bible studies being conducted in the congregation.

A lot of these studies are with Spanish-speaking people who want to study the Bible in English. The Spanish-speaking people have a love and respect for the Bible that is not commonly found in western countries.

The interesting thing about our statistics is that the situation changes frequently. We are really quite a transient congregation, which makes life interesting, but also somewhat challenging at times. Of our elders, for example, two are currently back in their home countries either sorting out paperwork in order to apply for residency here or attending to other matters, and another is in another town in Ecuador for a month and soon after that will be returning to his home country. Our 41 publishers will become 39 on Wednesday when a pioneer couple who have been here for six months or so return to the States.

In our congregation, we currently have publishers (in descending order of quantity) from the United States, Australia, Ecuador, Canada and Denmark. We have had visitors, for varying lengths of time, from New Zealand, England, Ireland and other places. Who knew there were so many different ways you could pronounce the same English-language words? Even though, in theory, we speak the same language, at times we still don’t understand each other and have to explain words or phrases.

We generally average around 40 publishers, but with visitors, the meeting attendance is always above that. It is unusual for there to be a Sunday meeting at which we don’t have new people. A few weeks ago, we had around 70 at our Sunday meeting! We found out that was because a sister from the States who moved to Ecuador and is in a Spanish-language congregation married an Ecuadorian brother, and there were lots of visitors who came for the wedding and then came to our meeting. It’s a bit hard to keep track of who’s who when there are so many new ones.

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This is our “current” congregation.  There are about 50 in the photo, 30 of whom are visitors (here for 3 months or less, or used to be in English but now in Spanish).  There are around 20 other permanent members of the congregation who are not in the photo because they didn’t come to the picnic, are away, or are off patting horses etc

At the moment, even though the wedding guests have returned home, we still have more than the usual amount of visitors. I suspect it’s because it is winter in the States and Canada, and it’s a good time for people to take a holiday to somewhere where there is no snow (as long as they stay away from the tops of the mountains here). Normally, we might have a new couple/family/person every week or two, and they might be staying for a week or up to 3 months. Or they may be here with a view to settling permanently.

Some come to Cuenca to pioneer for a month or 3 months, some are doing a travelling-around-Ecuador trip to see if they want to move to or retire here. We’ve probably met more people from “other places” in the 10 months we’ve been here than we have in our whole lives. Admittedly, we didn’t travel to too many exotic places (understatement!) before coming here.

Most of the brothers and sisters (read “friends” if you come from the U.S.) in our congregation don’t have cars, so getting to the witnessing territories generally involves sorting out who has a car and some go by car, and then for the rest, working out which bus to take to get us as close as possible to where we want to be, and then all piling onto the bus. (You can take taxis, but that can get really expensive if you do it enough.) Fortunately there is a bus stop at the corner of the Kingdom Hall which will take us to some areas, but other times we stroll downhill towards the centre of Cuenca where there are more choices of bus lines and destinations.

Then when we have finished witnessing, it’s a case of trying to work out which bus to take to get to our homes or lunch place or the Kingdom Hall for afternoon witnessing, depending on where we are and which buses routes are nearby etc. (There are around 29 different bus routes throughout the city of Cuenca.) Sometimes it seems to be a case of “you just can’t get there from here!!”

Brendan has a Bible study which takes him around an hour to get to, by the time you include walking, waiting for the bus and travelling on the bus.

A couple of months ago, Brendan suggested that we open our home to be able to have brothers and sisters stay with us who are coming in to Cuenca, as we have a couple of spare rooms and bathrooms (lots of new homes in Cuenca have what seems to be an excess of bathrooms; but it’s excellent when there are visitors) and also we know how hard it can be coming to a new place where everything is different. So, after working out the logistics, etc, we decided to give it a go.

So far, we have had 4 lots of brothers and sisters stay with us. Three from the U.S. - one couple from Arizona, 3 sisters from Michigan, one sister staying with us at the moment is originally from Florida and Texas but currently serves in an English-language congregation in Mexico and we’ve had one couple from Canada, near Niagara Falls. It’s a good way to get to know all sorts of interesting people from all sorts of interesting places, and also to increase one’s family!

Somehow out of all that, we now have 3 daughters that we previously didn’t know we had! They stayed with us for 2-3 weeks until they found a furnished apartment. They are in Cuenca for a total of 3 months and are still here (going home in about 6 weeks). Every now and then when their cupboards are bare and their tummies are rumbling, we hear the doorbell, and the usual laughter and giggling and the cry of “We’re home!”

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Brendan and I with our “daughters”

It kind of proves that scripture about how amongst Jehovah’s people you end up with extra family members!

(Mark 10:30) who will not get a hundredfold now in this period of time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and fields ... “

This past weekend was Carnival in Ecuador. It’s a 4 day holiday, and just about all the shops and businesses are closed for business and anyone who can, evacuates to the beach or to holiday houses in the country. As for the rest of us, we tend to lay low, as we have been told that Carnival in Ecuador means water throwing, shaving cream squirting, water balloons, fruit throwing, throwing blocks of ice, etc. etc.

Apparently in years gone by, “Carnival” or throwing of assorted wet things began not long after Christmas finished, but now, by law, there are 4 days in which such activities are allowed, otherwise if done so outside those days, people can be fined or otherwise in trouble with the law.

Many congregations cancel their meeting during Carnival weekend, as there are few buses, if any, not many taxis, and the great likelihood of getting soaked, sprayed, or hit with something unpleasant, especially if you are dressed decently.

We didn’t see much of this going on, largely because we took notice of the advice to stock up with food, games and jigsaw puzzles and lay low for the duration.

Our Sunday congregation meeting was cancelled and instead, on the Monday, we all went in a hired bus to the country where we figured we would be safe. We drove about half an hour south-east of Cuenca to a property belonging to the father of one of our Ecuadorian sisters.

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Bus all loaded up and ready to go.  The wire gate/fence on the left is our Kingdom Hall

The house on the property we went to was built about 25 years ago in typical Ecuadorian country holiday house style. It’s made of stone and adobe/mud brick with old-style tiles on the roof and has a courtyard in the middle. All the rooms open onto the central courtyard.

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Looking through the front doors into the central courtyard

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The central courtyard – there are roses and lemon verbena etc  growing

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These are some of our Ecuadorian brothers and sisters who used to be in English but are now back in Spanish – it’s nice to catch up again

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The man who owns the property loves his horses

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Brendan is near the corner of the house with a white hat on, looking thoughtfully into the distance

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The tall brothers in the cong appear to be taking it in turns to hold up the veranda posts!

(Our “daughters” to the left)

To get there, we had to walk down from the road and across a couple of paddocks, all the while keeping an eye out for the contributions of various farm animals in our path. (There is car/4-wheel drive access from the other side of the property by fording a small river – although when we were there, the river wasn’t so small, as it has been raining a fair bit lately – tis the wet season.)

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We were all a little camera-happy

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It was fairly steep getting down from the road and a bit slippery underfoot due to rain. The house we were heading for is directly ahead of the trail of people.

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Lots of eucalypts and pine trees in the area

A lot of us were pretty excited about getting out into the country – an Aussie sister and I were pretty much drooling about being out among the trees (eucalypts, no less) and the grass and the hills and the cows and the sheep and the chickens … (you get the idea).

We all brought lunch and our Watchtower magazines, as we didn’t have our meeting the day before, and we had an informal Watchtower study which Brendan conducted, followed by hiking up slippery trails to the top of the nearby hill, exploring the house and the area and generally getting mellow amongst all that lovely nature.

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It was a really nice way to spend a day and a good opportunity to enjoy Jehovah’s creation and get to know each other better.

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Not quite spiritual food, but no doubt tasty to horses

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Me and a little stream on the side of the house away from the road

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Just chillin’

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“Mmmmm.  How nice of these humans to leave me some lunch!”

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Tanya, an Aussie sister who lives a couple of blocks from us (we almost have the same jumper)

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Anyone would think we hadn’t seen horses in ages (we haven’t!)

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There’s Brendan towards the left of the little barbeque hut

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Tanya and me

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Brendan, me, and Janice our current house guest

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… and so we head home.

2 comments:

  1. The pic of you and your 'daughters' made me tear up. :) So sweet. This blog is just what I needed to fule our Ecuador fire.

    ReplyDelete