A Good Report

Our group minus 2 Chinese people who had left already

Caught Wen Wen "partaking" of the bread after the Memorial

Memorial excitement started a little early this year.  Monday evening the Chinese group was prepared to hold their usual class in the KH but when we walked into the hall the entire foyer was flooded with maybe an inch of water - apparently there was a leak in the ladies room - so out came the brooms.  It took 5 sisters about 45 minutes to sweep it all out the door and then to mop up the remaining wetness.  We were just happy to be there, saving the KH on the night before Memorial but the real reason we were there was to sing!  Those new songs can be kind of tricky and with a small group everyone has to be on their game so we turned on the music, brought out the songbooks and serenaded the group of brothers who showed up to do some last minute repairs.  It was really fun, a bonding experience for the group and just made the anticipation that much greater.  One brother was concentrating on something much different...It was Fausto one of our newest members of the group.  He's only been learning Chinese for 1 month and was assigned the prayer over the bread.  You can imagine his nerves so he was going over the prayer, word by word, sound by sound with Wen Wen - a Chinese bible student visitng from Dominican Republic - and Ivan.

I decided to attend the Spanish Memorial before the Chinese one for 2 reasons.  One, because it was my first Spanish memorial and also my first memorial in EC so I was really curious how it would be, who would show up, I also wanted to hear the talk, etc.  Two, because the Chinese one didn't start till 9:15 and I don't like leaving my house that late by myself - better to leave around 7 :)  As I walked up to the hall people were pouring out the door from the first Memorial (remember this is just the first Memorial for our same congregation...) and others were piling in.  As everyone found their seats the hall filled up nicely and it was easy to see that there were a lot of visitors.  I shared my Bible with a young girl next to me.  I really wanted to talk to her after but Fauso called me outside to talk to a Chinese man who had turned up early.  I'm sure someone took care of her.  The Chinese man turned out to be Yan Xiao Mei's husband.  She is one of our regular meeting attenders and I guess he comes to the Memorial every year - very nice guy, all dressed up in a nice suit!

As we got started we could see that there were 7 Chinese people in attendance, all from the territory, except for Wen Wen.  The brothers did a fabulous job from start to finish and the singing was right on!  All in all we had 27.  As you know our group is only made up of 8 and we had 7 Chinese visitors.  The rest included brothers from our congregation there to help with the sound, passing emblems, and general support and we were grateful for it!