A Field Service Experience …

 

We had an experience in the field ministry today which reminded us of something similar in the Watchtower of October 15 2014, in the article “They Offered Themselves Willingly in Taiwan”.

We had a Bible study arranged for this morning, so we walked to the shop where the man works. Unfortunately, he was not there, so we turned around and came back.

On our way to the study, we passed a couple of men working in a hole where road work was in progress. On the way back, one man looked up, so we greeted them and he asked if we were Testigos de Jehová (Jehovah’s Witnesses).

After we replied that we were, he spoke to us in rather fast Spanish, which we had difficulty picking up. We could pick up some words and phrases and understood that he himself wasn’t a Witness but that he was “Roman Catolica Apostolica”, and that he was saying something about “explaining the Word of God”, etc, but weren’t sure if he wanted us to explain the Word of God to him or if he wanted to explain it to us.

Fortunately, after a while of us trying to make sense of the bits and pieces we could understand, Brendan worked out that perhaps he wanted some literature that would help explain the Word of God, as we weren’t managing to do such a good job of it by ourselves.

So, I reached into my field service bag for some Spanish magazines (even though we focus on English speakers, it’s always handy to have some literature in Spanish and Quichua for occasions such as these), asked the man if that was what he wanted, and yes, it appeared it was.

This is our field service group at the start of the campaign in August with the tract to promote jw.org

Afterwards we were talking about the frustrations of having an incomplete understanding of the language, and it reminded me of the article I mentioned at the start of this blog.

In it, a couple named Brian and Michelle, moved to Taiwan and ‘at first, they felt that they had no meaningful share in the ministry. But an experienced missionary told them: “Even if you can only hand a tract to someone, you should remember that it will likely be the very first time that person receives a message about Jehovah. So you’re already having an important share in the ministry.”

So even though our Spanish is patchy, there are still opportunities for us to be able to give a witness to those who speak only Spanish.

One thing that still surprises us here is that it’s not uncommon for people to ask for Bible literature, and even if we can’t communicate very well, we are still able to hand them something that will help them.

A couple of times we have been in the field ministry when someone approached us in the street and asked for magazines, and once we were knocking at a door and a lady was up on her roof doing the washing and she also called down to ask for literature.

So, we figure if we are out there and available, we can still be of use in spreading the message, even with our incomplete knowledge of the language.

Some of our territory – on the outskirts of the town of San Antonio, near Ibarra