From Pressures to Blessings

One thing I have become convinced of over time is that Jehovah is a fan of poetic justice. You know how we always read these accounts of the work being banned, only for the population of Witnesses to explode into greater and greater numbers? It seems like that's always how it goes. The harder Satan pushes, the more Jehovah turns that pressure into blessings.

Living in a territory like this, which never ceases to have its fair share of pressure from Satan, I've been able to be eyewitness to this exact scenario more times than I can count. Whether things go wrong at the last minute for our assemblies or our travels out to conventions, it has never failed to turn into a positive for us.

Let me share the most recent example of this with you. Maybe you're familiar with our beloved congregation boat, Kingdom Proclaimer VII.

Or "K-Pro" for short.

In the last few years this boat has endured 50-60ish trips to Siparuta, and it has received a heavy amount of wear and tear throughout its faithful service to us. Until of course two weeks ago when it wound up getting stolen, right in the middle of our Circuit Assembly.

So here was our original plan: we were going to take K-Pro to Siparuta the Thursday after assembly, cover the whole village (or as much as possible) with the invitations for Special Talk/Memorial, and then go over again the morning of the Special Talk, get everything set up, and just hope everyone who was interested would remember the event. Repeat for Memorial.

Once news broke of our boat being stolen, we had a problem. How to get to Siparuta? Walk three hours through the jungle, in the midst of a borderline monsoon? (We're experiencing rainy season here at the moment) That didn't seem a good option. Here was the pressure. But what would the blessing turn out to be?

A Bible student over in Siparuta made a tantalizing offer. See, there's a commercial boat that goes from Orealla to Siparuta on Friday night, and travels back Sunday afternoon. So this study suggested that if we came on the boat Friday night, we could stay at their house until Sunday, and then ride back. Added bonus, the boat captain offered to take us for free.

You can see how distraught we are over our predicament.

So now instead of taking a small boat that holds six people over to Siparuta to preach for a few hours and go back home once every month (and spending a decent amount of money buying the fuel for it), now we have the option of going any weekend we want, with as many people as we want, spending all Saturday in house-to-house and Bible studies, keep a Public Talk/Watchtower study on Sunday (which many in the village have been literally begging for) and then get a ride back. All for free.

Yet another bonus! Now we can spend several leisurely hours swimming in Siparuta's wonderful blackwater creeks!

We first used this method for the Special Talk weekend, which resulted in nine people attending. We intend to make use of this new arrangement as often as possible, at least once a month. Stay tuned to see how this pans out in the future.