Changes

We enjoyed having our first circuit visit in Bolivia, and we had hoped that our group here in San Lorenzo might be made a congregation, but Jehovah had other ideas - still pretty exciting, but totally unexpected. Immediately following the circuit visit we flew out for New Zealand for a month of work to top up the coffers. We were notified by email that a meeting was held for the Elders of 4 congregations, and a fifth congregation has been formed from the 4. The new one is called Tomatitas, and this congregation will now look after San Lorenzo. Drew and I have been assigned as Elders in this new congregation, along with one of our Ministerial Servants who was made an Elder during the visit. This will leave a hole in the San Lorenzo group of course, and it will now revert to one meeting per week, and join Tomatitas for the other one. Lois and I intend to continue supporting San Lorenzo, so hopefully the workload in the congregation won't force us to abandon that goal. The territory is pretty exciting in San Lorenzo, and I can foresee that before too long there will need to be a congregation out there as well.
Well we are certainly enjoying being back with family in New Zealand. We are making the most of the food as well; I can't get enough of the seafood especially! Nevertheless we look forward to returning to our studies and of course our friends in Bolivia.
We have been asked to do presentations at meetings here to discuss how things are going in Bolivia, with the goal of motivating others to join us over there, so that's quite a privilege we are looking forward to. The territory is so much harder here in NZ but still Lois and I have managed to start studies since we have been back, perhaps our attitude and motivation have been tuned up a bit by the huge interest in the territory in San Lorenzo!
It was quite a learning curve flying out of Bolivia as well! We flew from Santa Cruz to Sao Paulo, then on to Dubai, Australia and NZ. Leaving Santa Cruz we went through customs 3 hours before our flight thinking it might be good to allow plenty of time. We had to wait in a queue for an hour and a half to pay our departure tax, then we had to wait in another queue to pay for the privilege of leaving the country (a separate "departure tax"), THEN we had to join another queue which was huge! Halfway through the wait they announced our flight was boarding. We asked if we could advance in the queue but were told no. Later they called our names, and we again asked if we could go to the front. Again, no. 10 minutes later an announcement that our gate was closed, and the plane was closed! 10 mins after that with another 30 minutes left in the queue they decided to rush us forward. We found at the front of these huge queues ONE guy checking luggage! He still gave all our stuff a thorough going over and then we literally sprinted to our plane and just managed get there in time to board. We ended up having to pay the equivalent of over $500 local currency for departure taxes. Don't you just love Bolivia! Once we got to Brazil, Dubai, Aussie and NZ everything was a breeze. Normal boarding, no extra taxes, quite boring really! Emirates really looked after us. We had a 10 hour wait through the night in Dubai, and they paid for a dinner, breakfast and accommodation in a nice hotel. I will happily pay extra to fly emirates from now on.
Well the weather here in NZ is nearly as hot as Bolivia at the moment, but apparently we have a tropical cyclone heading our way over the next few days.
We will be spending a few days in Dubai and Rio de Janeiro on the way home. I hope to do another post while here in NZ but this will depend on my workload. So perhaps next post I will talk about our trip home. Here are a few pictures of my granddaughter, NZ scenery and a link to a short video clip of a woman I am training to fell trees here as part of my work. Also a link to my first Bible Highlights in Spanish in San Lorenzo. See you next time.
Tree felling training
Bible Highlights