Life in Guam is always changing, recently our hall has undergone some of these,or rather will be.
One of the couples in our hall that have been at bethel was asked to go back into the construction that is taking place in Micronesia. we were so sad to see them go because no one knows what they will be asked to do once the construction is done. Dawn's amazing laugh and Jared's heart-warming smile are surely missed in our hall.
In addition to them leaving we have another couple moving to the machanu (forgive my spelling) hall because of the chuukees group since they know the language a bit. Also staring in January our Sunday meeting time is being switched to 3:30p.m. (we currently have 9:30a.m.).


This weekend we moved out of Josh's parents house and into some friend's house to take care of their house while they are gone for 2 months. We are in a neighborhood with many other witnesses, most from our hall, which is really nice. The area is nice and cool and quiet. We have enjoyed sitting outside in the evening chatting and studying for the meetings. 
Unfortunately, i have been sick again - another sinus infection - and Josh has been fighting off flu like symptoms. the flu has been going around the island. but we are plugging along trying to build ourselves back up.
Not much else to report right now, but hope to hear from you all soon. 

My work and the new cafe

So as i have mentioned before I work at a cafe called Infusion Coffee & Tea. Lately, they have been working on a new bigger cafe. They took an existing building and have transformed into a work of art. This week they have been putting the finishing touches in order to open very soon. Yesterday, they had an open house by invite only, to test the equipment and have a dry run for the employees. Josh and I went to check it out and here a just a few of the pictures. I will take more next time I go, so you can get a better view of it along with pictures of the currant cafe.  

my supervisor-notice the menu boards are not finished yet so don't be alarmed.

just a sampling of the cupcakes we bake and sell for our cafes-so yummy!

my co-worker enjoying all the space we now have at this location

the upstairs seating

looking out to our upstairs balcony where there is more seating

enjoying a pina colada smoothie:)

Thursday 11/17/11

This past weekend we found out that Josh's grandfather on his mom's side passed away in Philippians. Josh's parents have left to P.I. for the funeral.


As for Josh and I, we do have some sad news- our good news that was mentioned in last blog entry- is now not happening. Thank you to all who have given your support and encouragement it has been a great help.


For those of you who have questions about what I have been writing about or read my blog, please come to us for any questions you have and not my parents-we don't live with them and you should be getting any information from the source.


Josh and I would also love to hear from all who do read this, it's nice to know whats going on with everyone else in the rest of the world.

Friday-11/4/11

We have moved into Josh's parents place this past weekend and are settling in there for the time being. My apologies for not keeping in touch with ones(you know who you are),with moving and everything else it's been crazy busy. 


For those of you who have heard our good news-yes it is true but we don't know much yet, so be patient. Once we have details we will post them along with the good news. 


Recently we found out that some friends of ours that had moved here for construction/need-greaters, are moving to a new assignment. they are going to work on the branch in Myanmar(the country) for possibly 2 years! we are sad to see them go but know that they will enjoy it. They have to sell everything since the government is strict and will only allow them to bring what they can pack in-no shipping stuff allowed. we hope to keep in touch with them and hear their stories of how the new adventure will go.


Also for those of you wanting to know more of Guam and Micronesia, on the side you will notice links for some other blogs done by friends here, so you can see a better glimpse of life and ministry here.

special assembly day

About 2 weeks ago we had our Special Assembly Day with about 1,000 in attendance. It was very encouraging and so nice to see the ones from the different halls.

Josh and Ava (and uncle Keith on the phone)

Jasmine, Me and Ava
(by the way she is not our kid but the resident congregation baby that just looks like she could be ours)

So sorry for not posting more recently but we are in the middle of moving (have to be out by the end of this month). Our place echos now, we moved all our furniture into storage. I will try to post more after we move, since at my in-laws we will have internet!

Miss you all and hope to hear from you.

underwater world

 

On Saturday after work Josh took me to one of the local attractions i had not been to yet-Underwater World. It is mostly a 

 tube that you go through and are surrounded by the ocean and sea creatures, it's very serene.

rock fish

can you find the fish?

We have made the decision to move out of our place and to temporarily move into Josh’s parents place to save money while we try to get into this new place we found. This other place won’t be finished till February we think and is smaller and cheaper as well as being closer to work, which would help since we share a car.  For those of you who don’t know the currant place we are in is great but way too big for us, it is 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms with big living room, kitchen and dining room.  For our first place it has been a great starting point in our newly married life.

So our mailing address will stay the same and there is internet at his parents, so for anyone wanting to Skype or video chat let us know it will be easier then.

We are still managing to survive in the congregation with so many gone, our meetings feel so empty. We hope the ones gone are enjoying their vacations, but we miss them dearly.

At my new job it has been really nice because I get to see the different friends from all over the island and have met some of the new ones that have moved here, so it brightens my day.  Some days after work I have sometimes to kill before I pick josh up from work so I will go down to the park at the beach and study or read. Below are some pictures where I go.

Also on Sunday nights many from the different halls play basketball. We went on Sunday but not many were there-I think most were playing soccer.

this park is also where we have some of our congregation parties

last weekend-movie night

Just wanted to say hi and share a couple of pictures from last weekend. Not much is going on here other then our hall has been super empty since a few of the bethel couple have gone back to the states to visit family and attend the annual meeting. we all miss them so much! And our meetings are so empty! The only good part is I get to help take care of a study and few calls for a sister that is gone for a month:)
Actually last week we had a nice experience in service. Our last door of the morning (isn't it always), 4 kids were out playing in the yard when I drove up, so the other sister jumped out to talk with the mom as she came out. Her and the other sister with us had a nice conversation and started a study in the bible teach book. While they were talking the childeren all came over to me very curious and asking many questions-the 2 oldest are only 5 and the other 2 are 4 and 3 i believe. they asked me many questions and started pulling stuff out of my field service bag. I gave them the brochure on you can be go'd friend-the older boy looked at me and asked," you are god's friend?" and I said, "yes and you can be too". He then pointed at the cover with all the people in the picture and asked, "is that god?" I laughed and said know he lives in heaven, he walked away with a puzzeled look on his face. so I prmised to come back with books for them and read to them.
today i was able to stop by and leave them the books and set up to study with the mom and the kids (since the sister is gone). i will let you know how it goes!


We went over a brother in our hall's house for a movie night. It was fun and encouraging to associate with different ones in our hall.

Hope all is well on that side of the globe!

prepping for burgers

projection 3-d of under the sea!

Sorry i have not written lately, not much exciting going on here. getting over being sick and also finishing up my job at payless to work now only at infusion coffee and tea. for those of you who didn't know about my job change this is it- i changed jobs because i missed working in food service and it is same pay and same amount of hours.
weather has been super rainy so everyone here has been sick, but it has been keeping things a bit cooler thankfully.
hope all is well with you all.please email!

august update

Last week Josh caught the cold that been going around and then this week I got the flu part that was going around. So needless to say it has been a long 2 weeks, but we will survive. Sadly though, we did have a brother in the neighboring hall die this past weekend.  He was in our hall before it split so he was known by many. He was 49 and still has a child in high school, but thankfully the congregations have been so supportive of his family. It is so encouraging to see the friends rally for this sad occasion. The brother gave a very encouraging talk and it also gave a good witness as there were many present that were not witnesses.

  In September our hall will be very empty since many are going or have already gone on vacation. Josh has like 3 service meeting parts in September because of it, which is a good thing he now gets more practice. The problem here is there aren’t enough brothers in some of the halls (including ours); so many times one brother can upwards of 3 assignments on a meeting. For example, one night josh was supposed to read for the congregation bible study, do stage and also have the announcements as a 10 min. part. In our hall we have about 75 publishers, we have about 6 elders and about 4 servants, and our meeting attendance on Sundays is about 110-120. But in the islands the brothers have it harder. Erica (my old roomie here) and Antonio her husband live in the Marshall Islands. The island they live on is only a mile long and not very wide (you can see the ocean on both sides), but there is 16,000 people living on it. In their congregation Antonio and one other brother are the only 2 elders now – they have one other brother that is leaving soon to be the c.o. for the outer islands. Erica said they have about 40 publishers but on Sundays the attendance is about 100. On that island they are almost done building a kingdom hall with a missionary home above it.  This building project has been a great witness, and Erica says they expect attendance to be even greater once they are in the new kingdom hall. She and Antonio serve as special pioneers and will get to live in the missionary home once it is complete which should be about October.

Since I have not been able to put much on this blog lately, I have been thinking of ideas for it when there isn’t much going on. One idea is sharing recipes (which i know I already kind have been doing). I think maybe I will do a recipe of the month for now and then maybe when I have more time make it once a week. If anyone has any good recipes for us to try please email them-always looking for something new to try. I will only post ones that we have tried and liked.

So here goes for month of august (and this was one Josh found and made for us the other night) our recipe is:

Tilapia with ginger marinated cucumbers

·         ½ cup apple cider vinegar

·         ¼ cup + 1 teaspoon packed brown sugar

·         2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger

·         ½ teaspoon salt

·         2 medium cucumbers, sliced

·         1 (6oz.) container plain yogurt

·          2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh mint

·         Strips of lemon peel and lemon wedges (optional)

·         Cracked peppercorns

1.       Preheat broiler. In med. Bowl stir together vinegar, ¼ cup brown sugar, ginger and salt until sugar dissolves. Remove ¼ cup of the mixture. Add the cucumbers and half the mint to the remaining mixture and set aside.

2.       Spray broiler pan with non-stick spray, add tilapia. Brush ¼ cup vinegar mixture over the fish. Broil 4 to6 minutes or until fish flakes easily.

3.       In another bowl mix yogurt, remaining mint and 1 teaspoon brown sugar together.

4.       Place cucumbers on plates, top with cooked fish and yogurt mixture. Garnish with lemon peel, wedges and peppercorns.

o.k. so we had to make some modifications to this as we couldn’t find any mint, so we used dried dill and only had a fresh lime in the house, but I have to say I really liked it that way.  And any time you guys try one of our recipes but you do it your way, let us know how it is, we are always game for edits or versions too.

convention highlights!

Since most of you were able to make it to the convention this year I will only share some of my favorite points and a few of the experiences that were shared.

·         The first talk (“Why we need God’s kingdom to come”), the brother was talking about Satan and how he wants us to have bad feelings toward Jehovah so he twist things. He likened how we should feel about his is same as Jesus. He illustrated it like this – Think of how if you were the oldest and only child in a family and you became very close to your father and then along came a brother or sister but they grew to resent and hate your father, how would you feel? 

·         Second talk (“ How we know that God’s kingdom will come soon”), the scripture in Matthew 24:3,4 and explained that there are two groups of the spirit anointed ones. The first group is all dead, but the second group is still alive –these ones having been young when the first group died. As we know ones of the anointed would be still alive to see Jehovah’s day come, so that means it is very near since we know that the second group is getting older.

·         Our attendance on Friday morning was 1,033

·         The keynote address (Who are preaching the Good news of the Kingdom”?) talked of different ways to identify these ones. In the first point under what the content of their message would be, the speaker brought out that many religions today mix politics in to make it a more social thing. But as Jehovah’s people we teach the same as Jesus taught and it is a harmonious message. For example Time magazine wrote some years back about a priest who said he had in his travels around the globe asked Jehovah’s Witnesses what they preached. The priest said this of their responses –“They are all so stupid they all gave the same answer”! So it just goes to show how no matter where you are in the world people recognize we all are teaching as Jesus did, even if they don’t get it.

·         Also in the keynote address he brought out another point as to what reasons we preach the good news. He actually helped us to see what we don’t do it for – money like many other religions. He brought out the scripture where Jesus stated “you receive free, give free”. He also mentioned 2 Corinthians 2:17 that bring out we are not peddlers of the word.   He gave an example of how the Catholic Church does not follow this. The speaker said that when a person dies the family will have a mass for that person and they are charged $10 for it each time. But what is this mass for? It is to save this dead person from purgatory. As we know the bible does not teach of purgatory, so not only is the church lying to their parishioners about what they are supposed to be doing, but they are committing fraud for their own selfish gain.

·          In the talk “will you make sacrifices for the kingdom”, there was to 2 brothers that told their stories of how they have done this-very encouraging.  One younger brother went down to help out with the relief work after hurricane Katrina twice. At the time he was in college, but his experience and joy he had helped him to make the choice to quit college and move to Mexico to lice where the need was great. After a time there, he then heard about the need here in Micronesia and thus ended up moving here to help.

 The second brother and his wife came about 2 years ago after also hearing about the need. He brought out that for the first time his wife is able to pioneer and they have been able to draw closer as a couple and grow spiritually. He also has been able to conduct his first progressive bible study, the young man was getting baptized the next day!

·         Attendance on Friday afternoon was 1,035

·           On Saturday during one of the symposiums there was an interview of a sister from our hall. This talk was on how there different ways in which ones are coming into the truth. He story is this:  she grew up in a atheistic household, so when she had questions she would ask different ones, but was very confused and never found a satisfying answer. Her and her husband, were racing sailboats when one of the guys they knew had been studying with the witnesses and gave them a truth book. When she read it, she knew she had found the truth. Her and her husband quit racing because of the bad environment/influence. She even turned down a job to be a make-up artist on a popular t.v. show in order for her to pioneer. She says she finally found the happiness she never thought she could.

·         Attendance Saturday morning was 1,134 – 4 were baptized, one of them Janessa who just graduated this year from high school. We are so proud!

·         In the talk “Parents – shepherd you children with toward kingdom blessings”, the speaker asked a question that all parents can ask themselves – Am I a communicator? Do I create an environment that my children feel they can be totally open with me?  I thought this was really nice because now a days it seems too many parents are busy that they think just asking how their child’s day went is o.k. But the speaker brought out that young ones especially those in school are facing some pretty bad things their peers are doing and they need to be able to tell you parents about them, so you can help them to better handle these situations and their peers. He also brought out that parents should review how their parents talked to them, so that you can adjust your was of communication so your child is not just telling you what they know you won’t react badly to.

·         In the talk “Are you behaving as a kingdom citizen”? , the speaker brought out the scripture in Proverbs 27:11 and he said to put our names in their when we read it. This helps us to see how we are each individually responsible to Jehovah, even young ones.

·         Saturday afternoon attendance 1,147

·         In Sundays public discourse (“will humans ruin this earth”?), there were 2 points I though very interesting to think about. One was an illustration – when you are really sick and you go to a clinic, you wait for the doctor to tell you what is wrong, not the receptionist of the nurse because you know that the doctor is the most qualified. The same should be for us, we need to wait for Jehovah to fix this earth since he is the only one qualified to do so.

·         The second point was that when we look at the pictures in the literature we receive do we view them as like a travel brochure in order to picture ourselves in the new world?

·         Attendance Sunday morning 1,250

·         In the last talk (God’s kingdom will crush all other kingdoms), there was an experience given in relation to being faithful to the end. (Warning it might make you cry!)

In 1990 there was a young sister who had been born with a disability that left her an invalid, but she never let that stop her from serving Jehovah. She was able to get baptized – they did so in the bathtub at her home. Soon after, she wanted to axillary pioneer. So the brothers in her congregation arranged for ones to come over and hold the phone to her ear as she witnessed to ones she called. This encouraged the congregation so much that the amount of pioneers in her congregation doubled! On one of her phone calls she spoke to a man who had lost his sight in an accident and thus felt like ending his life. As they spoke she asked him questions helping him to see what good things he had in his life. This got the man to reconsider. He asked her to come by his place to tell him more about the bible, but she told him she was unable. He didn’t understand, so she told him of her condition and how it left her bedridden. He then asked her what he could do for her. She told him that if he was willing to then she would send someone to study with him. He did accept. Currently he is still studying but the young sister has died.

·         Attendance Sunday afternoon 1,341

I hope you all found it very encouraging as we did. It definitely gives us all a lot to think about. For those of you, who may not have made it, just let me know if you have any questions

just a note....

I'm very sorry I have not been able to post more, things have been really busy. As I mentioned before we have had company since before the convention and work schedules have been weird with that also being busy. I am working on trying to put together the highlights and experiences from the convention to post hopefully next week.

I hope everyone is doing well, please email-we would love to hear whats going on back in the states.

Convention!

Millers from Kosrae

antonio and erica

beth, mom and their study

auntie juliett

art and dee mckiney

jared teaching leander about the stage

jay and daryl

kalah

jannessa got baptized!

dustin

the boys from palau

troy-soon to be c.o. for outer islands

jeffory who is in chuuk

tony,leander and barretts (our guests)

schultz with the family they are studing with 

tom and sue herrschaft

tomey and james

glen (our former c.o.) and dad

the 2 abbys!

jared and dawn klingbeil

where we had it