Goodbye Graham!

So our friend Graham returned back to the States this past Saturday. He stated that this experience had shown him there was more to life then what he saw back home. I remember exactly what he feeling from my visit to Dominican Republic in October 2011. I think seeing the international brotherhood was an amazing experience as well as seeing what life is like outside of the United States. He was expressing desires to return soon , so maybe we'll have a new need greater in the Santiago English congregation!

So as I had mentioned before , the studies have been pouring in. But I just wanna share the experience of one for now. His name is Rodnee and originally he was contacted by a sister visiting from Texas. His initial questions were based around god's kingdom and what it was. Using the new brochure , Doing Jehovah's Will, we answered his questions and more! He continued to ask very good , deep questions such as "how do we know there are only 144,000 going to heaven ?" His answers were based on the bible and you could see that they were truly touching his heart. On his recent study he told me that he had told a friend of his all about what he was learning and now the friend wants to sit in on our study. Immediately he called his friend and within a few minutes , both of them were learning more about Jehovah's will for them! I'm constantly in awe by the response we face here because people are SO receptive. At times it can be overwhelming , but with a good schedule and plenty of rest, we make sure everyone has an opportunity to learn of what Jehovah has promised. Another thing about Rodnee is that he told me he wanted to know what we would be studying next week so that he could read and prepare the scriptures in advance!!!! THIS IS TOO EASY! Rodnee attended his first meeting this past Sunday and has expressed a desire to continue to attend. I'm excited to see how Rodnee will progress even further as he regularly associates with Jehovah's people.

Today , we preached in an area that needed to be indexed or in other words, we needed to take information down about the houses and then the languages of people living in those houses. While we were preaching we began to notice a dog following us. As we went to a door, she would sit and wait. Then once we moved on, she followed behind us. This dog seemed to share the attitude of a bible character. "For where you go I shall go" said Ruth at Ruth 1:16. So we decided that Ruth was a fitting name. Below you'll see a picture of our faithful friend.

On a side note, everything here has been truly great! We have settled into a nice routine and are starting to find some normalcy in life. See, since we had started moving in April , our lives had been pretty crazy. We then went from moving to living with other people for almost 3 months. So now that we have our own place , it's truly beginning to feel like home. Even saying that is giving me chills !

I hope you guys are going well! Thank you so much for the emails and encouragement! You have no idea how much your words mean!

Nos Vemos,
Aaron