As previously mentioned, we wanted you to meet some of the
precious students we leave behind.
We’ve talked about Carlos and Simone. Let’s continue with Manoel #2 (our pioneer partner Manoel,
who we met first, is Manoel#1).
Six months ago during our very first week here, we worked in
a village called Capim Branco. As
is the custom, we pilled into Manoel#1’s car and headed there, it’s about a 25
minute drive. Once we arrive in a
rural area we must find a spot, somewhat in the middle of the territory and
park under a shade tree. The only
shade tree we could find was a giant mango tree right in someone’s side yard. We were a bit horrified when Manoel
pulled in but we went with it.
Sure enough, two sweet teenage girls came out of the house and told us
it was no problem to park there.
When we returned at lunchtime, the girls, their mom and their
grandmother were waiting with bowls of water and towels and had set out chairs
for us! At the end of the day, we
thanked them again and left the recent magazines after giving a witness.
Three months later, we finally got around to returning to
those who had shown interest that day!
Only we didn’t get very far.
Once we arrived, we again parked under the same mango tree. But this time the man of the house came
out to greet us on crutches. Ben
began to explain who we were and how we had parked there before and the man cut
him off saying, “I know who you are!
I’ve been waiting three months for you guys to come back! In fact just last night I was saying to
my wife how sad I was that I missed those Jehovah’s Witness that day. I need to learn more about the Bible.” He explained that he’s always working
but that we caught him home because he had just suffered a motorcycle accident
and that he’d be home now for three months – just the time we had left there :)
We sat down right away and started studying in what has
become an essential element to our preaching work: the brochure “Listen to God and Live Forever”. He loves what he’s learning, has never
missed a week and now his wife and daughters regularly listen in. He’s been incredibly encouraged by his
fleshly brother who as it turns out is studying in another state. They call each other frequently and
share what they’re learning.
Manoel#2 and his wife attended Ben’s last talk and will continue
studying with Manoel#1 and Menice.
Ben has Manoel read from the brochure. Ben then reads the bible texts and asks
Manoel to explain how he thinks they apply.
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Ben with Manoel and his wife at their lovely home
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The Three Gals started as just one, the oldest one,
Lia. Doing territory in town we
met Senhora Lia and she immediately invited us in. She told us how at one point she had 11 children and now she
has just 2 who are living. She
explained how her husband had died as well and how through all of this, many
people told her that it was because of things she had done wrong in her life to
deserve these loses. We were able
to show her from the scriptures that this reasoning was not sound. She found comfort in that and welcomed
us back.
Upon returning, we met her daughter Solange. Solange explained to us that she had
recently become dissatisfied with the Catholic faith and decided to leave. She’d gone from there to the Assembly
of God. She said at that church
there were still many things she didn’t agree with and that she was still
searching for truth. She had a
number of questions that she’d always wanted to ask the Witnesses and so we did
our best to answer them using the scriptures, along with the reasoning
book. At the end of our visit, we
placed the Bible Teach book with her and set up to return.
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| Early on with Solange and Lia |
We had three nice studies with Solange and Senhora Lia
listening in. On the fourth study,
Solange’s niece Cassia was there and listened in as well. Toward the end of the study as she got
more comfortable, she was answering the questions before Solange could! Cassia then sat in on every study after
that and showed particular interest in the chapter on death as she had lost her
father – Lia’s son - in a motorcycle accident a few years ago.
We studied twice a week with the three of them and both Lia
and Solange made it to a meeting before we left. At our last study Lia announced that she too was leaving the
Catholic faith because literally translated, “I’m impassioned for
Jehovah.” :)
We set up for Manoel and Menice to continue their studies
when we left but in between our leaving and their first study, about a week
would go by. During that time,
Manoel and Menice had joined us at the beach for our last few days in
Brazil. Well one night the phone
rang and it was The Three Gals.
They wanted us to know that they were sitting together and using the
“Listen to God and Live Forever” brochure (we had given this to Lia as her
reading is limited) reading the scriptures cited and taking turns answering the
questions! They said, “We don’t
want to wait a whole week for our next study so we’re doing it ourselves!”
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| Solange |
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| Cassia |
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| Lia |
What a blessing it was to take part in ‘planting’ and
‘watering’ while we were there. We
miss our students terribly but we’re confident that Jehovah will ‘keep making
it grow’ and that we’ll see them again some day.
