Vaca (Cow) Congregation Get Together

A couple from our hall donated a baby cow so that we could have a congregation get together and BBQ the meat.  It was a great day the congregation was able to spend together talking and encouraging each other.  Here are some photos of our day together.

There was a snake in we found closes to were we making soup so Brother Batista killed it.

Chopping up area.

The cow heart.

Memorial

At our memorial this year we had about 120 in attendance which was great considering that we are only 38 publishers and 2 hours before the memorial started it started raining super hard which made it so that many invited people were not able to come.  Here in Panama the week of the Memorial is Holy week so most people have several days of the week off supposedly for God but people use the week to go on vacation and party hard so this also makes transportation hard to get.  The bus here are privately owned so if a bus driver takes the day off then there is just one less bus on the route so the week of the memorial is difficult week to get around but even though it rained hard and was hard for many to get the bus we still had a full Kingdom hall and all enjoyed.  Here are a few pictures of the evening.

Br. Batista with his student Elvino.  The student was in a very bad car accident about 2 years ago and still has some memory problems because of that but he regularly comes to meeting and is slowly progressing.

Yamilet, Maria, Avela

Sister Marquez and 2 of her daughters Kathrine and Roxy.

Grenda and her daughter Naomi and her Husband who is not a witness.  It was nice that he was able to come to the memorial.  He was very nice hopefully he will come a little often, you never know.

Grenda's Husband in the middle and his Mom Chabella on the right and Alexandria who lives with Chabella who are both witnesses.

Me and Majudy.  She is a unbaptized publisher and has been for years but has recently decided to get serious about getting baptized so the elders asked me if I would study the book Keep Yourself in God's Love.  Hopefully she will soon be taking that step to finally get baptized.

Chabella on the far left and her granddaughters.

Elvis and Chabella.

Walter, He is studying with Elvis and is originally from Colombia but is not living here in Panama for work.  He grew as a Witness but never got baptized and is not trying to get his life together and become a witness.

Elvis with his student Walter

Brother and Sister Sanchez

Batista Family

Kelly in the middle in the strips with her husband and mom and sister in law and her kids.  Kelly is the only witness in her family but her mom is studying and so is her sister in law and her husband has studied in the past.  It was nice that they were all able to come.

Well that was my memorial, what a night to remember.

Circuit Overseer and District Overseer Visit

We just had a wonderful Circuit Overseer Visit and we also had the privilege of having the District Overseer for the whole week also.  They are both really great Couples.  Our CO is from Mexico and just arrived here in Panama just a little over 6 months ago.  Just last year the Panama Branch office was closed as were all of the other central American Branch Office except for Mexico.  Now the Mexico Branch office is in charge of all of central America so that has changed things alot and has meant that lots of CO's and Missionaries have been moved around.  It is interesting to see how the different couples adjust to different countries.  The District Overseer is from Panama.  They are a very nice couple and I realized that about year ago I got a flat tire and a man came out of a house close by to help me change it and little did I know that that person was the District Overseer.  He recognized my car.  We had a good laugh about it.  The week that they were here went by so fast especial because we here in the invitation work for the memorial but the visit was truly a blessing, just what the our congregation needed.

Circuit Overseer: Hermanos Ballenas and District Overseer: Hermanos Portes

First Day of Visit service.  There was a good size group about 20 which is about half of the all publishers.

And off we go in to the territory

Our two elders and the Circuit Overseer in the middle.

Circuit Overseer : Hermanos Ballenas

District Overseer: Hermanos Portes Aren't they so cute.  They were the youngest assigned Circuit Overseer here in Panama, and you can still see there youthfulness.

Yup you are seeing that right there is a sister working in the literature counter.  Since there are so few brother in our hall the sister have had to step in to help with a few things.  That is Doris working in Literature.  She loves it so much because she like to organize so she couldn't be happier with her assignment.

Me with some of the other sisters.

I had the privileged of making dinner on Friday night.  I did it in different sister house because I was making enchiladas and need to make a alot and since my oven is so small it was going to be to hard to keep the food hot so Kelly was nice enough to let me have everyone over to her house.  It went good.  The CO and his wife enjoyed my wannabe Mexican enchiladas and were grateful so have some spicy food.

Sunday service after meeting.  I was not looking forward to service after meeting on Sunday because it is always so hot but since it was the CO visit I decided that i needed to just go.  I was very glad that I went it wasn't to hot and the time went flying by and it was the first time that I was able to work with the DO's wife.  When we doing things that Jehovah tells us to do it always seems to work out good.