Dominican Republic Zone Visit 2013

Hello friends! Our preaching activity here in Santiago has increased even more! Why? Because we have a group of almost 20 people from the states all coming here to help support the Imbert English Group. It's been SO encouraging meeting these different ones. You have single ones, single parent families , and many other large families! All here to help us! We begged the master to send more workers and as always , Jehovah has provided for us.

Yesterday was the zone visit and I seriously was in spiritual overload! The way they delivered the zone visit to all of DR was interesting. Because we have so many language groups ranging from creole to Russian to Italian and so on, they needed to use a way for all these groups could have their own translations. By using the Internet , the transmission from Santo Domingo was sent simultaneously to all these groups! It was also recorded so that other congregations could see it later on that night. We were able to watch it live in our own Kingdom Hall! The attendance at that time went as followed :
Spanish : 4,400 +
Creole : 1478
ASL: 821
English : 358
Now these aren't the final numbers. We were told they'd be available soon. I was so happy that Rodnee and Leogan (another study of mine ) were in attendance with me! It was such an amazing event.

We were given some facts about Dominican Republic and the progress we've made so far. For example, five years ago there were only 28,000 publishers here in DR. But as of October 2012 we now have 35,535. An increase of over 7,000 people ! There have been 70 new congregations formed and 20 new salón del reinos built! Next, we talked about four goals the branch has for Dominican Republic.
1. Preaching in places of greater need. We were told that 30% of our territory on the island isn't reached regularly or at all! The call has one again gone out for help reaching these smaller communities in the campo.
2. In march the branch would like to have 20,000 auxiliary pioneers. This would mean that 6 out of every 10 people would be pioneers. Also we set a new goal for 7,000 regular pioneers.
3. Learning a new language to speak to foreigners. We were reminded of Haitian , Chinese , Russians and Japanese. There are so many types of people we can find here and we want to know their language to be able to preach effectively. In Acts 2:4 it talks about the anointed ones speaking in tongues. It was pointed out to us that most of these people could have spoken Greek , yet Jehovah wanted these people to hear the message in their own tongue. So it's up to us here in DR to learn these new languages and find these ones so that they can learn of god.
4. Conducting progressive bible studies. Right now there are over 70,000 bible studies being conducted. But the increase has been slow. So we were given four reminders. 1 Thessalonians 2:8 tells us that we need to impart our souls. So are we truly becoming friends to our students? Are they like children to us? Second, direct attention to Jehovah, Jesus and the organization using the new brochure. Also we could do this by binging experienced ones like elders with us. Third, help them understand the seriousness of the study. Our students must be prepared and we should be aware of when they need to be terminated if they aren't making progress. Last, finish both books and help them maintain their Christian course.

Below you'll see Adrean and Blake riding in the back of Mag's truck. Gotta get to these studies somehow. Haha next are picture of the zone visit ! The last one is Joseph(brother with the Chinese congregation ), myself, Leogan and Rodnee.

Take care friends and keep strong. I'm hearing scary reports about snow. We've been thinking about you all.

Nos Vemos,
Aaron