Country Mice have become City Mice

And we're still trying to decide if that's a good thing or not. . .

You will remember from our previous post that we are now assigned to the English group in Granada. We had some mixed feelings about the whole thing. Now, about 6 weeks into it, the feelings are still mixed, but we are glad we came. And we aren't as terrified as we once were.

From the beginning we’ve really liked the English group. It is small but there are some very colorful personalities with us. No one is really very similar to another, which serves as some very funny happenings and also some that can be irritating. But that is to be expected.

Our small group has 10 publishers. Us two, the Brooks family, Cindy and Francisco, who are fleshly brother and sister as well, Edith, and the Mosca’s (Steven and Debbie have been here the longest, and they just got back from the States a few weeks ago. . . .they constantly have to put up with laughter at their last name, which means “fly” in Spanish. The insect “fly”, not the superman “fly”). There was one other person with us, a retired sister from Hawaii who arrived about a week after we did, but who eventually went over into the Spanish. (It really is tough in the English, since we have to walk a LOT each day to get to some far-flung territories.)

Over this past month, we have seen that it will be a challenge to support the group, but that it can be deeply satisfying as well.

We have the entire city as our territory. Some of us have more of a physical limitation than others do, and others have their plates a little fuller and can’t be out in service every single day. So this leads to finding a way to get and give enough support in the ministry to the others in the group so as to avoid discouragement and a slacking off.

I get the sense that it’s kind of like jump starting a car. It can be challenging and frustrating, but once it gets going it will kind of take care of itself, in comparison to the effort made at the beginning.

The first part of the month was just spent getting everything settled and getting everyone’s schedules so as to figure out who goes out when. It has basically gone down to going out as a group from Wednesday through Sunday at various times, which works well with us.

The cool thing is that we have been used a lot in the Spanish congregation which is supporting the group, Granada West, and Marlene is going out 2 days per week with Spanish and I am going out 1 day a week with them. We are going to double meetings on Sundays, which is a challenge, but for 2 very good reasons. 1, so that Marlene doesn’t lose her Spanish, which is possible when you are in English 80% of the time and you live in a city where you can very possibly live without knowing a lick of Spanish. The 2nd reason is so that we can establish friendships with the Spanish friends. We are trying really hard to avoid forming a “clique” with only the English group, since it isn’t fair to us or the Spanish, and since it really will only add to our joy and satisfaction while being here.



The English group is so small and so contained, I can easily see it becoming claustrophobic after a while.

Being with the Spanish as well is a great release valve, and with a congregation that has a good 100 to 110 at the meetings, it has a large variety of people in it. For example, of the two elders, one (Tim) is a missionary who lives in the missionary home on the same property along with 2 other missionary couples. His wife, Glorie, is a really nice sister. Marlene and I have had several opportunities so far to work with them, and we are really impressed by their great examples in service.

The other elder, Benjamin, is a very experienced older man who has been an elder for about 40 years. He was an elder throughout the civil war of the 80's and lived through all of the tribulations that brought. He is extremely humble and always has a twinkle in his eye.

As far as the English is concerned, we had two brothers leave to go back home. David went back to England and Torrey went back to New York. So we’ve taken quite a hit.

Gary, Steven and myself get to be used a bit more, but it’s really a danger because it can get really boring week after week seeing the same people give parts, and we are worried that it might cause the attendance to lag a bit.

The past couple of weeks we’ve had no-shows for the public talk, so that kind of made it worse. But hopefully we can get a bit more organized and make sure that whoever is coming will actually come. But, it truly is a really cool blessing to be a part of this little group. This is us. It's up to date, except for the tall brother in the back (red shirt, striped tie), Torrey, who went back home, and the sister in the front in the white top, who is still here in Granada but went to the Spanish congregation.



THE MINISTRY

Remember how I told you that I was convinced that the ministry would be really, really hard? Well, it is. But not in the way I thought.

The hard part about our ministry here is that there is a TON of walking! I thought back in Teresa, with all of the rural territory we had, we walked like we had never and would never walk again. Well, I was wrong. We walk 30 minutes at a quick pace just to get to the Kingdom Hall, and then sometimes we walk another 30 minutes to get to the territory. AND, Granada is the hottest place I have ever set foot on in my entire life. It is relatively cool, maybe 75 degrees, at 6:00 in the morning, and then it quickly shoots up to 98 or 100 with probably 100% or more humidity. This means that as soon as we put our service clothes (and I mean “as soon”, like, as soon as the cotton touches my back), we break out in a fine sweat all over our bodies. At first it was really disgusting, but now we are used to someone being able to see through my shirt and just being all sweaty and gross. We just have to make sure we bring plenty of water with us and we always walk in the shade. Part of the reason for the high humidity is the lake.



The easy part is actually the preaching. Yes, even in English. Marlene currently has 2 studies in English and 1 in Spanish, and I currently have 6 studies in English. (Granted, some of mine were given to me by Torrey when he left, but they are all past Chapter 6 in the Bible Teach book, and some have already come to meetings, so they are progressive!) I would never have thought it to be possible.

On one occasion, we were walking to the territory and Paula, one of the sisters, was with us. She wanted to stop by a gas station to get a bottle of water, and the counter clerk happened to speak English. While Paula and I were selecting our refreshments, Marlene struck up a conversation with her based on the New World tract. The girl just very directly asked Marlene “Do you really think this is possible?” So that started a nice conversation. When we were ready to go, Marlene asked if she could stop back in some time to continue the conversation, and the girl (Maria) said, “But I thought you Witnesses visit people in their homes! Can you visit me instead?”

The next week Marlene started the study with her and she is studying regularly.

One of my studies is a lawyer on La Calzada, a very major tourist street in Granada with a bunch of restaurants and offices. His father happens to be a Witness, but he was baptized when Marvin (the lawyer) had already grown up and moved out on his own. Marvin never really gave the Witnesses much of a chance, until we tried talking to him in English. He, too, is a regular study and was very impressed with the Bible’s teaching on what happens to us when we die. He is a very logical person and had reasoned that since no one had ever come back from the dead and spoken about Heaven or Hell, that there really wasn’t any proof that when someone dies they go there. When I showed him the scriptures in Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10 and John 5:28, 29 he smiled and said that he completely agreed with the Bible. He was raised a Catholic but has not gone in years because of the false doctrines that are taught there which have no basis in the Bible at all.

So we are really enjoying ourselves in the ministry here, although I have probably lost another 10 pounds which I really couldn’t afford to lose. Marlene is pretty happy that she is able to sweat her weight off, but I am getting slightly worried. As a precaution, though, I have taken to picking up a few Snickers and American donuts when I can!!! (Marlene, when you read this, it will already be too late, ha ha!)


THE FRIENDS

We are really enjoying the friends here in Granada as well. Nikki is really attached to Marlene which is great, since Marlene is so good with little girls. I, on the other hand, tend to antagonize little girls in general and make them mad at me, but I am really trying to curb that (although I really don’t know why it happens, honestly).

We’ve taken a few day trips to Managua to the mall (and our favorite Mexican restaurant!) and to Catarina to take a look at the Laguna de Apoyo. We took the Brooks to the market in Masaya so that they could pick up a few things they needed, and they were pretty impressed with it all, although it was really, really crowded as usual.

I think at some point soon we need to check out a movie in Managua and go to Price Mart to stock up on some Star-burst and Snickers. And frozen vegetables, per Marlene.

We’ve been to 2 parties this month, one at the Brooks’ old house (the house they lived in when they first arrived, while they looked around for permanent digs) where we were treated to a really nice folkloric dance that the brothers planned, and then the rest of the friends had a great time swimming in the pool for the rest of the evening.



The other party was at Benjamin’s house, it was a going away party for one of the sisters who is moving to the States, and there was some really good food and a lot of dancing. It was good to spend some time with the friends in Spanish, in a more informal setting.

One really nice thing is that Frank and some other friends from Teresa came out a couple of weeks ago to visit us. It was very nice to see them again and they commented on how nice the city was, and also how much hotter it was than Teresa!



Some cool news: The Lau’s made it back safe and sound from the U.S. They arrived last week and gave us a call. They have already made their move to Santo Tomás and are enjoying it, especially since during their first weekend back they had their circuit assembly. We have ours at the end of June, a few days before we leave for our “vacation” in the States. We are actually going to be meeting up with them in Managua this Friday to have lunch together and catch up a bit.


HOUSE TROUBLES

This subheading is a double-edged sword, almost literally.

You might remember that in Teresa, we had to live next to this horrible, screechy disco bar. When we got away, we felt so relieved. However, it seems that misfortune tends to follow us.

I once had a horrible nightmare in which I was running away from some crazy masked killers. I managed to slip away from them and, scared to death, I ran to a house in the middle of the night that happened to have their front door open. I pulled open the screen door and just ran inside, babbling to the people in the house that some crazy psychopaths were after me and I needed help. Unfortunately, I soon learned that the people in that house were crazy psychopaths as well, as they closed the door with a very scary grin on their faces. (I know, I know, it’s very weird, but my dreams are always really weird. And no, I don’t watch horror movies or really bad stuff. All that junk is already in my head for some reason.)

Anyway, it KIND off feels like that here in Granada. We were so happy to come into this beautiful house in Granada, and everything was fine for the first few days. And then we noticed that the punk kids across the street love to blast their speakers directly at us. What is most horrible, however, is that most of their musical tastes run in the range of total filth. It’s hard to not get very upset when you hear very loud music screaming F-bombs into the air about shooting and raping people. It’s really, really bad. We have to shut (slam) the front door some times and just retreat to our bedroom in the back to watch tv on the portable player.

However, the music is just about 3 to 5 days per week. The one thing that is a bit more frequent are the drunks who love to sleep on our front porch or just sit on it and look inside to see what we are eating or what we are doing or what we are watching on television. It is SO annoying. The local friends tell us that it is a pretty common “problem”. It’s more a problem for foreigners, who tend to like their “personal space” than for locals who have grown up around that behavior. I definitely don’t get any “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!” vibes from the drunks, but it is still extremely annoying.



One good piece of news regarding that, however, is that we convinced our land-lady to put up a wrought-iron fence and gate around our door, and so now the drunks can’t sleep or sit right there. In the week or so that it’s been up, it has actually gotten like 70% better, so it’s not terrible.

But the street is not good, even by local standards. Whenever we tell the friends where we live, they always say, “There? Why would you live there?”

Well, we didn’t know the area, I tell them. And besides, the truth is that we cannot afford anything even similar to our place in a nicer part of town. So it’s either live in a really, really nice house in Trash-ville, or get a really terrible, rat infested hole in a really quiet and pleasant neighborhood. It’s a toss-up.

We are keeping our eyes open for anything else around town. We actually spied this nice looking house in a nearby neighborhood, but it came with some familiar trappings that made us not bother calling.



Now, I mentioned that this house thing was a two-edged sword. The other edge is our house up in New Mexico. Unfortunately, the tenant (who has been great) lost her job and is moving out on June 15. That could either be a small blip in our life that will be resolved when it needs to be resolved, or it could be a disaster that will force us to go back home. (And it WOULD be a disaster. In spite of the challenges of the house, etc., we love it here and we still can’t believe we get to be out in service almost every day and be a part of such a special thing as helping to start a group.. . . the house thing is not a gigantic problem, it’s just when we come home that it’s a problem.)

Anyway, our property management guy in New Mexico feels pretty confident, apparently, that he can get someone in there as soon as the tenant leaves.

This is definitely something that is adding stress to our lives, but it’s really just something that is out of our control and we can’t do much about it. So we’ll just have to see if it works out. I’m sure Jehovah will help in whatever happens.

So, this is it for now. I know it wasn’t a huge book as usual. Although we have been extremely busy, the dynamics in Granada are much, much more different than those in Teresa. There are no more rural territories or piglets or horses or crossed rivers or Japanese friends to write about anymore, unfortunately. Granada is just a big city, and we just go out in service, much like we do back home. Not much “out of the ordinary” happens, at least not as much as it used to back in Teresa. Things here are so much more “routine”, kind of like back home.


But we are grateful to have a little bit of extra space for the doggies (who are doing fine, by the way) and a very nice mixture of cultures and languages which makes things a lot of fun.

We leave for the States on Wednesday, June 24 for 2 weeks. I might write again before then, but if nothing spectacular happens, I will write after we get back, which will be a nice post.

Anyway, we will continue to plug along here, and we pray that Jehovah be with all of you.

Ciao!