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| The brothers loading up the service boat |
To reach the inhabitants, the missionaries and local witnesses preach by boat! Instead of driving a car on a road from house to house, you drive a boat on a lake...
The adventure begins in Granada, a tourist city at the northwest part of the lake. I went with a couple friends to preach with the missionaries on the islands. The last time I went, (Yes this was my second time!) we stayed on the boat. To preach we drove up to an island, parked it, hopped off then preached to the people who lived there. This time, since we had a bigger group, I got assigned to preach Mountanita...I was excited because I had not been there before but I had no idea was about to get myself into!!!
Mountanita means little mountain...hah! To start we took a 20 minute boat ride SE from the dock to the peninsula at the base of Mountanita. This is where the famous floating Kingdom Hall is parked. (See The Watchtower - September 1, 2009 p. 26) We were assigned to preach to the 15 or so homes on the mountain behind the KH. First step, cross the bridge. I'm thinking no sweat its just a bridge. Hah! This bridge was one foot underwater...in a SWAMP! (I learned later that the swamp is normally 5-6 feet deep; so I was thankful to have the "bridge.") So we simply took off our shoes and waded across...Simple because we had no other choice! Either sigue adelante (go forward) or stay behind. It took us about 10 minutes to cross the swamp. And a swamp it was...sticky...pokey rocks...biting ants...I think you get the picture. If not here's a sample...
After the swamp was a 2 hour hike up the mountain. We preached to the few homes along the way and to any passerby's. The local friends, two siblings from the Las Isletas Group, were very kind with us extranjeros (foreigners) who are not used to walking through swamps and climbing mountains. They waited patiently as we huffed and puffed, dripping sweat up the mountain. They walked twice as fast as we did yet did not sweat an ounce!
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| The two in the middle are local sisters with the Isletas Cong. |
My partner Jessica and I had a nice experience. We met a woman near the top of the mountain who was busy feeding her baby. Even though, she took out chairs and invited us to sit down. We sat with her for about 20 minutes, sharing several scriptures explaining what the Lord's Prayer in Mt 6:9,10 means. She listened attentively and responded eagerly to our questions. After chatting a bit we found out that she attended a meeting before. We offered her a Bible Study and she readily accepted. So we made arrangements for the local friends to come back and visit her. When I visited with the local friends about a month after the experience, they had yet to go back and visit since it is a difficult territory to get to. We pray the Jehovah protects these seeds of truth until it can be watered again...
After we preached to all the homes, we headed back down. And we crossed the swamp again...yay. This time the water was warmed by the sun, making it even stickier and muckier than before, much to our delight. We finally made it back to the floating Kingdom Hall; sweaty, dusty, a little stinky, yet feeling like true missionaries.
A little history on the floating Kingdom Hall excerpted from the 09/01/09 edition of the Watchtower magazine article, "The Treasures of Central America’s Largest Lake"'
A married couple who are full-time ministers of Jehovah’s Witnesses moved to the Islets of Granada in November 2005. A few months later, when they invited the local people to the annual Memorial of Christ’s death, they were pleasantly surprised to have 76 present. This convinced the couple of the need to start holding regular Christian meetings in the area. Since a suitable location for such meetings was difficult to find, the pioneers pursued another idea. Why not build a floating Kingdom Hall that could be towed to different locations convenient to the people?
This enterprising couple, who had never designed or built anything that floats, set about the construction. They and six others worked on the project for a month. The new meeting place was to be a simple raft. It would consist of welded frames made of steel pipes holding together a dozen 40-gallon drums filled with compressed air for flotation. There would be a plywood floor, and a tarpaulin would serve as a roof. The workers prayed every night about the project because they were not sure that the hall would float. It did!
The new Kingdom Hall was used for its first Public Meeting on June 10, 2006. The next day, it was towed to the other side of the archipelago in order to hold the same meeting for people there. The combined attendance of the two events was 48, despite the fact that some of the people had to walk more than half an hour through the jungle. All were delighted to have their own place of worship! |
| Current floating Kingdom Hall |
After eating lunch and resting up, we prepared the site for the meeting and waited for the friends to arrive. The group is called Las Isletas. There are about 10 publishers and about 20 attend the meetings. It was so neat to see them pull up in their boats and park at the dock. The meeting was very nice but it was hard to concentrate with the spectacular lake views all around. Not to mention the monkeys howling in the background, the birds fighting in the trees, and seeing little fishes swimming around. After the meeting, we got to meet the friends, many of which are young ones who are learning the truth without the support of their families. Then we hopped on the boat and sailed back to shore.
All in all it was an amazing Yearbook-esque experience. I am very encouraged by the local friends, especially the young ones, who are putting Kingdom interests first despite many challenges. Also the missionaries that preach those islands every day...so awesome! Please keep them all in your prayers!
"Let them attribute to Jehovah glory, and in the islands let them tell forth even his praise." ~ Isaiah 42:12
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