History and beauty in service yesterday

July 28th. We briefly stopped to read these plaques while we were out in service. The area was beautiful but hazy. It's very, very humid today.

It's been awhile since I've updated here. But I'm hoping to get back into this blog do friends who are no longer in the area with us can share.

I'm using the phone app for the first time, so please bear with me. These paragraphs are not supposed to be centered.  Update:  It looks like all that I can do with the app is literally add pictures and type with no ability to alter boldness or paragraph style from my phone. I'm going to try a different app.

Guest congregations and productive return visits

The last few times out in service haven't been great for picture taking.  Street witnessing is difficult.  So are other people's Bible studies.

This may be the stock picture I use for studies.

Yesterday, May 5, I went with my mother on her progressive study.  It's a delight to go.  Her study really understands what she's learning and really makes and effort to apply it in her life.  Satan is throwing obstacles at her left and right, but she's understanding how much prayer can help her endure those trials.  You can see she's leaning on Jehovah, and she's teaching her little boy to as well.

Her study is not usually on Sundays, but circumstances necessitated moving it around, so she agreed to have it before the meeting.  So that morning I made scones for the first time ever, and we took them over to her for a little brunch while we did the study.

(They turned out great for my first ever scones.  I was very excited.)

We are hopeful that this study will join us for our one day this weekend.

Today, May 6, was really wet and cool and dreary.  Again.  I'm not sure which is worse right now, the rampant pollen, or frequent wet an dreary weather.  I'm waiting for winter.

No seriously.  My allergies are making me miserable right now.  Can't wait for allergy season and sudden-change-in-weather season to be over.

Anyway, probably because of the weather, no one from my group was out.  But Madison, who meets at the same time, had a nice group.  So I ended up going with them, and we went on a really great return visit.

We spent most of the time in the car driving or in the house, but here are a few blurry photos I was able to take out of the window.  I miss some of this territory.

You know, when I had this idea, we'd been having beautiful weather and gone out to these amazing territories in the mountains.  Suddenly it's all wet days.  Go figure.  :)

I may have a temporary (month-long) job offer in the works, but any day I'm not at work, I'll be out in service (health-willing) and hopefully taking some more photos of the area.

The month of April...

Here is a backlog of some of the days out in service in April when I also took pictures:

 

April 15th, the day I started this, it was a soggy day.  It wasn't raining, really, just drizzling.  We worked in some territory just outside of town.  The views ranged from forested gravel roads to a beautiful view of the mountains.

April 19th. Another overcast day.  It wasn't raining that morning in service, but it stormed that night. We went on one of my return visits off 229:

April 24th.  An absolutely gorgeous day.  We found a few people home who were very receptive.  One of the sisters got a great call that may turn out to be a Bible study right from the first call.  These are some pictures of the area we were in:

This was also the day I figured out my phone can take panoramic pictures.  Huh.

Wet and dreary days mean apartments and letter writing

I've been meaning to start this blog for a couple of weeks now. Since I am now out of work, I have been going out in service as much as I can. So when I was out in the country one day, I thought to myself that we have such lovely territory that I should take pictures of it. And then I thought of taking a picture or two every day I go out and posting the pictures for my friends who are no longer here to remember us fondly, and to keep myself encouraged about my new service time, instead of depressed at my new out-of-work time.

So that's what I'm going to do.

This is my first post, but I actually have a bunch of pictures from last week and the week before that I will be posting as well.

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Today was wet and rainy, and we had a two-year-old along, so we worked in town in some apartments:

 

 

I also took a picture of a tree across the street, because I like it, and I'd like to imagine the majestic other half that has tragically been cut off:

 

Later, we worked in a local neighborhood because the weather cleared up a great deal.  I didn't take any pictures there, but it was exciting because the two-year-old gave a householder his first tract!

He grew tired as lunchtime approached, so his mom took him home for a nap.  When he was asleep, three of us met there to continue service with some letter writing:

Even when the weather's not great outside, we can still be blessed with a happy, fun day out in service.  Perhaps one of those letters will go to someone who really needed the encouragement just now, and will bring them some comfort.

(I haven't named names in this post because I'm not sure if my friends are okay with that yet.)