Invitation Work and the Memorial

This has been an exciting month for us here. It's extremely hot right now (average temp 100 degrees), we can't wait until the rainy season starts. Needless to say long days in service seem very long, at home when we put in a longer day and stay out until 2:30 it doesn't seem the same, here by 1:00 I feel like I have been hit by a train, we are covered in dirt from the dry dusty roads and sweaty beyond belief, however its still surprisingly amazing and we all love it. The kids are putting in just as many hours as us and doing great. Of course they still have their moments.



Monday we rented a friends car and we put in a long day to try to find our call that we had not been able to reach home, one last chance to give them an invitation to the Memorial and finish up mapping of 3 territories we had to get done. We started in San Fernando then to Estrada on to Samara then headed to do some of our calls up in Pelada the furthest north of our territories. When we needed a break we headed up to Ostional, this is about 7 km north of Pelada. All the rivers were dry on the way here but I had to take pics of all the walking bridges to this town, I could never leave if I lived here in the rainy season. We'd never been to Ostional and so we got to check out the beautiful beach and had a bite to eat. When we were sitting there an English speaking tico started talking to us about our kids so we told him that we were handing out invitations and offered him one as well as the truth tract and some English magazines, he was so excited and told us he was on vacation from San Jose for the holy week. (a week long celebration for Costa Ricans) When we showed him the truth tract he was really interested in learning more about "what happens to us when we die?".He said "oh yes that's a good one I'm scared of dying", so we told him we would come back in a couple days to answer that question for him. So today we returned to bring him the bible teach book and discuss that subject. We went over the first 8 paragraphs in chapter 6, it was great! He wants us to come back friday for another study before he leaves, we also told him there is a English speaking congregation in Belen close to where he lives and he wanted to know how to get there and was happy to hear about it.



Memorial was beautiful, the sisters had flowers from their yards that were along the stage and I must say the cleaning and paint really showed, it looked great! We had 133 in attendance (we only have around 35 to 40 publishers) and lots unloaded out of backs of trucks, it was so great to see. Unfortunately none of our calls came, even though we offered rides and called to try to get them to come after they said they would, I guess that was the common thread with lots of ones calls, so I didn't feel too bad. One poor girl in the front row got served the bread 1st and started to grab it to take a bite, everyone around her was like "no no put it back", poor thing she just didn't know not to eat it, she looked puzzled like huh we just pass it... It was so hot we couldn't wait to get out of the hall, we didn't really think about it before that we were going to walk home and I was wearing heals, stupid. Well we made it, good thing the moon was so bright and that we roasted in the hall cause it made it feel cool outside.