The Zone Visit

 I have to be honest, with all the exciting things to look forward to this week, the zone visit was kind of bottom on the list, just one more thing to be done with till the wedding.  But what a wonderful occasion! We traveled to La Isabella Kingdom Hall (Mike & Jess's KH) for the event. The two congregations have a combined total number of  publishers of a little over 40 but we had an attendance of 80!

We had been given the wrong time for the program to start. We had planned on being there over an hour before the program would start but because of the confusion of times we arrived 1/2 hour before the program started but it only took Cory about 10 mins to get things hooked up and the transmission of the program worked perfectly! There was a country wide attendance for the morning of over 35,000. But that wasn't the final total because some congregations were taping it to watch that afternoon or evening. 

Older Brother from the DR Branch was Chairman

 The program started off with a summary of the WT and then was followed by two fantastic talks. I was worried about being able to understand but the speakers both spoke slowly and clearly. The brother from the US Branch was American and very easy for us to follow. The first talk was about how we can keep pace with Jehovah's  organization and was a discussion of Ezekiel 1 .  The Brother then shared some interesting statistics about the work in the DR. He said the 35 percent of the country is not being preached to regularly, so could we serve where the need is greater! There is especially needs in the foreign language fields such as Creole and Sign Language.  What we need is faith and confidence in Jehovah to make such a move and he used the example of Abraham's family who moved to a foreign land. He also pointed out that the first miracle after the start of the Christian congregation was the gift of tongues to preach in different languages. The Main talk of the morning was on the theme of Continuing our way to the Mountain of Jehovah based on Isa 2 and dealt with four areas, controlling our thinking, self-control over our speech, excellent conduct, and preach with zeal. He then shared some experiences from around the world, including Cuba.

After the program, the congregation of La Isabella had some light refreshments for us! So the friends were able to enjoy a little association before heading back home. What a great morning!

I know you're probably getting tired of pictures of this family but I just adore them. They made the trip to La Isabella on the bike and Daniella sat with me in the front row for the program.