Serving With Santiago English Congregation

   This last leg of our journey has been a welcome treat. After two weeks of meetings in Spanish and Kreyol, it is nice to be able to understand everything that is said from the platform and give "grown up" comments. Adding to the enjoyment of our time here has been a visit by the district overseer to the congregation as well. Interestingly, the D.O. for the congregation was a Spanish speaking brother so all of his talks were translated. Nonetheless, his manner of speaking and his animation made the points easily understood.

   Going out in the ministry here is very reminiscent of service with the Spanish congregation back home. We worked in apartment buildings and for each building there is a list of apartments where English speakers were found during a prior census work. We go to these doors and preach. At times there may be no information about who lives in a particular apartment so these doors we would knock on, and ask if there are any English speakers in the home. As you can imagine many times people move about so the home where an English speaker once lived may now be occupied by Spanish speakers. There is much work to do here in Santiago English as the territory consists of preaching in the entire city.Yet with these challenges and others our brothers and sisters here are hard at work, trying to reach as many as they can with the message of good news.

   Suzanne and I had a happy encounter at the Kingdom Hall this week. To me, it was encouraging and really shows what a small world it is at times. A number of years ago when we were newly married we spent a few years living in Raleigh, North Carolina. Serving in the congregation with us was a Brother named Daniel Sogeke. Well, of all the congregations, in all the cities, in all of the countries in the world who should be here in Santiago with us? You guessed it! We got to catch up a bit with him and meet his wife as well. They have been busy declaring the good news abroad and are now looking forward to serving here in DR. Man, it's so encouraging to see folks from years ago still faithfully plugging away!

   So that's what's going on here in lovely Santiago, Dominican Republic. We head back to Juan Dolio in the morning and will make our way home this weekend :-(  Back to work on Monday  :-( :-(   Bright side of things: We can start working to save money for our next trip back here to the DR :-)