Our extendable kingdom hall was host once more to a special assembly day, which was very successful. For Avril and I it was an enjoyable programme which we enjoyed to the full, since we had no share on the programme ourselves.
Once more we were pleased to invite our dear friends from Mbulu, Modesty and Jamaica Kobelo. They are the couple that we went to visit in the town where they are assigned, out in the middle of nowhere and at 2,000m above sea level. We have made it a habit to invite them to stay during each assembly, and we enjoy their company very much. Each time, they bring their humble gifts, usually vegetables that grow in the fertile soils from around Mbulu. This time, among their gifts, was a fruit called topetope, whose name in English we don’t know. It tastes like a slimy pear, but has a tough lumpy green outer skin and seeds that look a bit like cockroaches. It’s quite nice really.
On the programme, we enjoyed hearing the experiences of the local brothers and sisters, many of whom are very zealous in the ministry. For example, there was one regular pioneer sister who was interviewed. Though she is a local girl, she was asked a few months ago to serve where the need is greater in a village called Mto wa Mbu, or in English, Mosquito River. That unappealing name does not prevent tourists by their thousands from visiting this village, since it stands at the gates to two world-famous national parks. In contrast to the UK, where practically all the area of the country is assigned to some congregation or other, no doubt a large majority of the area of this large country is not assigned and not regularly preached. Mto wa Mbu has perhaps never been thoroughly preached before. She went there with a companion and started preaching, just the two of them. The nearest meetings are fifty miles away, but the sisters got a good response from the field and now have 30 studies to conduct between them.
She even managed to start a study with a pastor in the area, and as the study progressed, they reached chapter 11, paragraph 5 in the What Does the Bible Really Teach book. On reading the cited verse in Job 34:10, the pastor exclaimed, ‘Oh, when people find out about this, we clergy are done for!” Something no doubt said in the hearts of many of his colleagues around the world. It certainly is a privilege to expose bible truth and Christendom’s lies, and all the better when individuals respond humbly.
There was a young lad who made special efforts to start studies at school during his free periods. He was able to begin a study with a classmate, who had many questions to ask. The classmate made rapid progress, and was baptised last year. The youth’s family perceived fundamental positive changes in the lad’s behaviour and personality, and they also started studying and now attend meetings regularly themselves (- Ephesians 4:23, 24.)
Among the attendance on Sunday was my student Geoffrey. I have spoken of his father on a few occasions in the past and I am disappointed to say that he’s no longer studying himself. He had many pressures, including his common-law wife who opposed him but who is the mother of his four youngest children. It’s not easy feeding all those mouths with an ordinary job or home business. He succumbed eventually to these pressures, while his eldest son began studying earnestly. It took me a while to see his potential, and now we study on Sundays each week. He struggles to answer the questions well when he doesn’t prepare for his study, so sometimes he refuses to study, asking for a little more time to prepare.
He tells me often about the hardship and opposition he faces because of taking his stand as a witness. Not only does he face opposition from his step-mother, but also at school, where his colleagues mock him for not being a part of a ‘proper’ religion. They make fun of him because Jehovah’s Witnesses, to them, seem like a small, pathetic church compared to the Catholics, Muslims and Pentecostals here. Witnesses expect that kind of persecution, I tell him, and that it’s a further proof that he’s in the right religion (- John 15:20; Matthew 5:10-12; 2 Timothy 3:1, 12.) The elders will meet with him this week to see if he’s ready to preach with the congregation.
Another student, recently passed into my care, is Moses, and he too was there, with his two small children. Though his accurate knowledge of the bible is not advanced, he has great zeal for the scriptures, and though he had not even begun studying the first chapter, he asked me what I thought the unforgiveable sin described at Mark 3:29 actually is. He works as a shoe repair man in a tiny hut by a busy thoroughfare, and in between resoling and stitching people’s shoes, he’s there, reading God’s word. We sit there, studying together, interrupted by his customers as they come to ask for his help.
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