Welcome to the new service year everyone! The congregation is so warm and encouraging over here, just as you all are. I promised to tell about the congregation and how the ministry works over here, so here I go.
The English congregation has around 80 publishers, 3 regular pioneers, and 1 regular auxiliary pioneer. There are 6 Gilead graduates. The territory covers all of Zurich and the city outskirts. The territory is worked by searching for English names in the city directory or by going from apartment building to apartment building looking at the names on the door buzzers. Our congregation also looks for Indian and African names, as many of them speak English in the city. The territory is worked over once every 2-3 years, so many people have moved in and out in that time, so the search continues. Many times we are unable to find English speaking ones after a few hours of service, so we do street work. We listen for English and look for African people, as they all mostly speak English here. Also, there is only one meeting for service a week, Saturdays at 9:30 am. To go out during the weekdays we set up oppointments for service with whomever is going out, setting date, time, and place to meet near the territory.
Friday I worked in territory and street work with a pioneer sister named Jane, who moved here with her husband from Africa. We found one English speaking man home. We talked with him for a few minutes and read a few scriptures, but in the end he was not interested. But hey, we did find someone who spoke English!
Saturday I met the field service group. I worked with a 16 year old brother named Jason. He has a sister and the nicest family. We are in their bookstudy. He is really outgoing and likes to talk alot, which is nice. He is the only young brother in the Hall, so he informed me I must stay in Zurich longer then 2 months! We had a good time in service. We did street work for 2 hours, and talked the whole time as we were on the lookout for ones to speak to. We were talking when two English speaking girls walked right by us. We didn't even realize they spoke Enlgish until about 5 seconds after they passed us, then we looked at eachother, realizing we missed them. We were going to turn around and run after them, but we realized it may look strange if two guys were running after two girls, plus the polizei were driving by at that moment. So we just scolded ourselves for not paying better attention, lol. But, a few minutes later we approached an African man who spoke English (yay!) and talked with him for a moment. It turned out that he already was being contacted by a witness. We saw some French brothers doing street work, too, and greeted them. Jason is a cool kid. He loves soccer, and ping pong. So we have a ping pong match after bookstudy at his house.
Monday I met a pioneer sister named July (pronounced Yu-ly) on the outskirts of the city in the residential areas. It was a short train ride out there. I went on a Bible study with her. She is studying with a mother in the Bible Teach book, but on this study we studied in the Great Teacher book in the chapters on death, because her young children had been asking her about death recently and she wanted to know how to talk to them. The grandfather sat in on the study too, which was great, except when he started helping us teach. It was pretty funny, but he was actually very knowledgable of the Bible. The mother kept on saying to the grandfather after he spoke, "I want her (July) to teach me!" It was pretty funny. He was a nice older man though. Great study, too. July told me she even came to the memorial this year.
There are so many Bible studies that come to the meetings, it is so encouraging to see! There are so many great experiences to hear from the brothers and sisters of return visits, Bible studies and experiences from missionary work. My mom and I were invited to a regular pioneer meeting this Friday so we are going to that this week. The ministry is great here, a great experience to see how the preaching work is done in other parts of the world, and in foreign language territories.
I started working on part II of my story On the Precipice. Read part I first by clicking here. Below is a link to a short video I took of our street as I was walking home from service on Monday. Also, some more pictures. Gute Nacht!
VIDEO CLIP
Lake Zurich
The SMART car. A Mini could beat it in any race, but not in a park in in this six foot long parking space contest! It is practical...
But not powerful! Muahaha!
