Posts
I had a nice day in field service today, thanks in part to the brothers and sisters I was out with. Speaking of which, do you ever find yourself out in the ministry all by yourself? Are you struggling to get in those last few hours, but discouraged because you're having to do it all on your own? Well then, here is the company you need!
Service Partners is staffed by qualified, experienced pioneers. We deliver them right to your territory! Our prices are very reasonable. (But don't expect them to offer you money for gas!)
On June 20th, 2009, I organized a group of 16 brothers and sisters from our congregation in Lake Mary, FL to go up to Keystone Heights to help with the preaching work there. Keystone Heights is a small, rural area near Gainsville. There were only 5 local publishers who met with us. Their congregation is small in relation to their territory, so they really need the help. I worked with my brother Aaron and my sister Heather in the morning. We had a lot of fun and were able to speak to quite a few people. Other groups had even more success. One brother and sister started a Bible study. For the most part their were very few bad experiences, though one young brother got chased by a dog, and another one got chased by a parrot. Here is a picture of some of the group breaking for lunch:
On March 14th, a week before yesterday, I met with some brothers and sisters to preach to Japanese speaking people in the Orlando area. The nearest Japanese language group is in Atlanta, Georgia and their territory covers a vast area including all of Florida. Of course, that's quite a distance to travel, so people in the Atlanta group asked some friends from the local area to cover the territory as they could down here.
There were 8 of us in service: Kelly, Jimmy, Nico, two couples (can't recall any of their names, sorry), and myself. Unfortunately, most of the group had prior obligations in the afternoon, so we were only out for a couple of hours in the morning. Because we only call at homes where we know there are Japanese speaking householders, the territory is very spread out. I think that between the two car groups we were only able to visit 4 or 5 houses. In general, it wasn't a very successful morning, but at least we tried. I'd love to do it again, but hopefully next time we could be out longer.
After service we had lunch at a genuine Japanese restaurant on International Drive. That was only the second time I've had Japanese food. This time I passed on the sushi and enjoyed the steak tariyaki.
Yesterday afternoon I had my first official lesson in the Japanese language. Kelly is pretty fluent in the language and he's teaching a couple of other brothers and myself. I'm looking forward to learning the language. I've tried to pick up a little on my own over the last couple of years, but I haven't made much progress. Hopefully having actual lessons will help. I'm going to post updates on my progress here. They say that sharing what you learn is a good way to reiterate it to yourself. More updates will be coming in the future.
It’s been a while ago now, but I wanted to share some quick thoughts about my most recent trip to Keystone Heights, Florida. On November 8th, I went with about 20 brothers and sisters to help the congregation there cover some of their seldom-worked territory in the recent tract campaign.
Aaron and I worked with Dena O’Brian and a couple of other local sisters in rugged, rural territory. The roads were crazy! We actually had to go up and down hills in Florida! Some of the roads were only made of very loose sand, so Dena had to kick in the 4-wheel drive to get through. When the SUV started fishtailing in the sand it felt like the “Dinosaur” ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It was fun. I didn’t have much success in the territory (I got to speak to a couple of Russellites, which was interesting but unproductive.), but Aaron had a good call on a man with whom he placed a tract, magazines, and a Bible Teach book.
Around noon time, the whole group met back at the O’Brians’ place and had a picknick lunch together. While the rest of the group began the 2-hour drive back to Lake Mary, Aaron and I continued in service for another few hours and then spent the night at Brian and Dena’s place. After attending their meeting the next day and going out for lunch, we headed back home. All-in-all, it was a good weekend.
Normally I would be making another post about my weekly time log for last week. However, it seems that my activities have pretty much stabilized. Over the last month I've drastically improved my study habits and field service so that theocratic activities are solidly in third place, right under sleep and work, which is right where they need to be. I've adjusted my other activities to accommodate a better spiritual routine, and now I'm just trying to maintain that.
This week I plan to introduce a new activity to my weekly routine. That will be language study. I want to start learning Japanese again. Also, I'll probably be doing more writing now that things are beginning to slow down around here.
Other than that, I don't see my activities changing much, so while I'll still be logging my time, I probably won't be posting updates of those activities on my blog. I might post a summary once a month, like I did here, but not every week.
This post is coming a little late because I've been busy. Here's my report for last week. It wasn't as great as the previous week, but it was OK.
The biggest disappointment was that I didn't get out in service at all. Also, I missed 1 day of personal study. My theocratic activities still held third place amongst all of my activities though, right after sleeping and work. Reading was a pretty close fourth, and movies/shows and housework tied for fifth.
While I did miss service last week, I guess I can still be happy that, overall, I didn't let my spiritual activities drop below third place. That means I spent more time on personal study and meeting preparation to make up for it. I'm not entirely sure why I missed service both Thursday and Saturday, but I suppose a big factor might be my sleeping schedule. Sleep has been a bit erratic for me lately.
My brother Brian and his wife Cherie finished their visit last week, however, and my brother David will be leaving tomorrow. While I enjoy their company, I know that their presence disrupted my schedule somewhat. Hopefully things will begin to stabilize more soon.
In the coming weeks I need to refocus on service and personal study in order to keep up my spiritual routine.
This post is coming a little late, but I just haven't had a chance to do any blogging lately, mostly due to visiting family.
Last week was GREAT. Once again, I managed to put my theocratic activities firmly in third place (after sleeping and work), and I met a couple of other goals which included getting out in field service twice and doing some personal study each day.
Here are a few more observations:
Sleep was very irregular last week. I still got a little more than 50 hours of sleep through out the week, but it was like, 6 hours two days in a row, and then 10 hours, and then 5 and a half, etc. I'm not sure what that means, it's just an observation.
Reading was a big activity last week with 13 hours devoted to it. That's quite a bit of time, but since my theocratic activities went so well I'm not too worried about it. I'm finding that a big part of balancing my schedule is just making sure I get spiritual activities done instead of putting them off while I waste time, rather than cutting back on anything in particular.
One sad note about last week is that I got no role playing in all week. Oh well. I still had a lot of fun doing stuff with my family.