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| Myles needs a bigger desk! |
We have finished what is allegedly the heaviest week. It was quite a big one. Still, I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen the next four! There were some nights with tons of study. There was a ‘brothers only’ session each day that had us sweating! The sisters enjoyed some down time …. or so we thought! Turns out they were putting together a slideshow of us, their husbands, and a version of “Shepherds – Gifts in Men” incorporating 6 languages! They came in and sang it for us on Friday! Wow!
We had some nice spiritual addons this week. Our Friday afternoon recorded lecture was by brother Mark Noumair on “Imitate the Apostle Paul”. It was a whirlwind tour of Paul’s life, following him on his missionary tours and noting when and where he wrote his letters. Awesome!
Saturday we had brother Pratt, from the Branch Committee, come and do our morning worship. He added on a short talk “Keeping Looking for the Donkeys” about King Saul as a young man being sent on the lowly job of looking for his fathers donkeys and receiving the privilege of becoming king. Nice application to accepting humble assignments.
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| Our adopted Kingdom Hall |
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| Hayden, my first service partner |
The congregation we are assigned to is the Sandalwood Congregation. They meet with the North Park Congregation but in the downstairs Hall. This week they have invited a speaker from Warwick NY to come for the weekend. Yesterday he gave a service talk in the afternoon “Keep Making Spiritual Progress”. We were able to attend since we only have mornings on Saturday. Today we are looking forward to him giving our public talk. Nice. We aren’t able to get programs like this very often. The North Park congregation upstairs is tying into the programs as well so it is quite the event.
The young ones from another congregation made bookmarks for every student in the class! They sent them along with a letter to each of us. Awesome! We are putting together a bunch of photos of ourselves with the bookmarks and letters to thank them! Future SKE students!
Ok, some gems of the week:
first, brother Charland’s joke for the week.
Jesus called the Pharisees ‘off-spring of vipers’. Vipers, or snakes, are reptiles. They hatch from eggs. The Pharisees were bad eggs.
From brother Mario Perron’s morning worship (he is one of the class observers).
The Faithful and Discreet Slave is responsible for feeding the flock of God. We have scheduled meetings, regular publications, a program of Bible reading etc. Not only do they provide a food supply, it is measured out for us! It is just exactly what we need to keep our heads above water and keep going!
We sometimes are lax on the issue of Neutrality. It isn’t what we do or don’t do. It is what is in our heart. A brother in our class is from South Korea. He went to prison for the issue. He made the comment that in Korea one of the political opposition parties that is trying to get in power would like to put in a law allowing Jehovah’s Witnesses to do alternative service instead of being put in prison. Imagine how hard it is for Christian parents with young sons facing prison time not to even side with that party in their heart! They must be neutral! Examples to imitate!
We studied a lot about the rise of Christendom and the Man of Lawlessness this week. Here’s note: True Christians have always been ready to die for their beliefs. Satan’s seed throughout history has shown that they are ready to kill for theirs!
And one more. To illustrate the anointed being told by God’s spirit that they have the heavenly call. A group of children are playing outside. They hear a voice calling “Suppertime! Come for supper!” Who answers and goes in? Only the child (or children) whose parent called! They recognize the voice and know that it applies to them.
That’s it for this week. Time for breakfast and off to our meeting.
