Long weeks of work equal short weekends....

.....so you have to pack in as much as you can, including naps!! We have been on a tight schedule, trying to get the work done in laundry so by the time the weekend has been rolling around all I really want to do is sleep. But the weekends are the only time for a bethelite to go in service. And I have been missing the ministry a lot. It feels strange not to be going out as much! Anyways, Mona and I met with the group on Sat. morning. To get to the home where they meet is about a 10 minute walk from bethel. It first involves crossing a highway that is sometime 4 lanes, sometimes 6 lanes across! You basically look for an opening and make a run for the middle or the road, which is a strip about 1 ft wide. You wait there for the cars on the other side of the hwy to clear enough for you to quickly dart across again. After crossing that, you are awake and ready for the morning is service:)  
The service group meets outside of a local brother and sister's house. There were quite a few of us meeting! Then we just break away into groups of two and the brother gives you a bit of territory nearby to cover; in our case it was an apartment building. We only worked the first level and at all doors we had good conversations! It was great. The last door we spoke to a young man who goes to school with a witness who started studying with him. But right away he wanted us to tell him why his translation the bible does not contain God's name. We explained the reasons to him. But he wants to now the names of the translators themselves! So Mona told him that she would make a list of different ones and bring it back to him. He seemed happy to hear that.
After service we took public transport to downtown Kinshasa, where some of the big markets are. I wanted to get some more fabric. To ''catch" public transport you have to go back to that really large street I mentioned early and walk along it until you get to a spot where it seems like lots of the buses/vans/taxis are stopping. (maybe there is some actual order to where they stop along the road, but I have yet to see what it is) Then you just wait till a ride comes along that is a) going to the area you need, b) not already overflowing with people, c) not one of the taxi's that they call "esprit de mort" (not really sure of why you wouldn't want one of those!;), d) does not have a bunch of shady looking characters on it, specifically only men!  When you finally find one of those then, phew, it is smooth sailing from there!!!........ha ha, not really. Unless you call smooth sailing being packed in like sardines in a gutted out vw van that has been outfitted with "super fancy" wooden benches that seem to rock back in forth with every jolt and turn as you lurch over roads that are full of pot-holes, dodging other cars and drunk policemen, who are trying to stop the driver to get a bribe! I love it though.... I always look forward with anticipation to my next use of the public transport;)

In any case, Mona took me to a few fabric stores where we got some great deals on some beautiful fabric. Regarde:
The getting of the fabric involved a bunch of women around a huge pile of cut fabric in all different styles and colors, reaching and grabbing as quick as one can while the pile is periodically re-filled by a man in the corner. It was a blast! I would love to go back and do it again, but I fear my self-control. Or lack thereof. There are just so many different kinds, you sort of want all of them. Or I do at least!
After the fabric we headed deeper into the market to find jewelery but instead got sidetracked by a man with a pile of shirts in the ground in front of him. Mona proved to be super adept at finding some great shirts, swiftly flipping through the pile. For a little less then .50 cents a piece, you couldn't really go wrong.   Then it was time for public transport back to bethel. Another fun experience: As soon as we got on a man in the way back started hollering out the lingala word for white person. "mundele". He was not being super kind about it either. Mona mentioned to me in french that he was not being very polite. I agreed. He kept up with it. So Mona then, to the passengers around us, asked if this was how the Congolese now treated foreigners? What happened to manners? Well, this got the rest of the passengers upset....at the man. The Congolese are very prideful and do not want to look bad to other foreigners. So they all agreed loudly with Mona and yelled back at the man that he was an imbecile and why was he making the Congolese look bad to the foreigner?? Did he not now how to treat someone?? This got him to be quite. And the rest of the ride went well. Or, shall I say, as usual. (See above;)
I also went out in service on Sunday, working with two young local sisters. A cute story that happened at the meeting was when the brother was making the groups he did it according to what hour you were stopping. He would ask "11am?" "12pm?" "1pm"' etc. Everyone was paired off because everyone was stopping before then.  Except this young boy, maybe he was 10yrs old? He looked young. The brother conducting the group asked him what his plans were, what time was he stopping.  He replied "3pm" with a huge smile on his face. Well no one else was going out that long! But he insisted that he was going out until 3pm! It turns out that he was just recently baptized and had already started to pioneer and he needed his hours:) He ended up going with two other brothers.... I hope he got them to stay out with him!!
Another cool tidbit that I heard today was that over the weekend there was a kingdom hall dedication in the country side. The congregation only has 45 publishers. But there were 245 at the dedication talk! The local village chief came and when, during the talk, the brother talked about how all the work was done by volunteers and payed for by voluntary donations, the chief got up and walked over to the donation box and put money into it! Pretty neat.

The sisters I preached with on Sunday

Scenes from service