Can never judge a book by it's cover...

We've been studying with Philley for a while. As mentioned before he works in a phone shop and we study when he has no customers. He's a half Sarawakian (east Malaysian native) half German young man with a great love for God. He treasures his New World Translation and it goes with him everywhere and he loves the fact that the JW library app means he can read the bible anytime of the day or night.

He's doing really well, after reading the magazine on smoking he's given that habit up. He really loves what he's learning...
He seemed like a fairly simple kind of guy, with only regular education. One day he opened up to us.

He told us he might have to join the army which he doesn't want to do, we think he means he's being conscripted for the first time....but no...as a dual German/Malaysia citizen he has already done two tours of duty with the German Army. Once to Israel and once to Iraq in the Bin Laden era. He's seen his best friend die in his arms, and he's been shot in the shoulder. As a sniper he's also taken numerous lives himself.
We were just stunned at what this meek and mild mannered young man was telling us.
No wonder he has trouble sleeping...

After reading Jehovah's view of war, he at once sees what he must do...for him it's time to beat his sword into a plowshare. Thankfully for him Germany allows conscientious objectors.

Today at our study he was happy to announce that he'd had an email to let him know he's excused from further army service. He was so happy...so were we...and so is our heavenly father.

This seed lay dormant for 30 years!

We're studying with a young man named Philley, in a phone shop, normally about 1pm it's very quiet, but today quite a few customers come in one in particular with a problem that's seems like it will take a while to solve.

We start chatting to a South African couple who also come into the shop...nope they don't want any magazines...so the magazines just sat on the table while we waited.

Philley finished with his customer but before the customer leaves he asks us "are you JW's?" We of course answer "yes, how could you tell" he recognized the magazines and he overheard us discussing the bible.

He's from Singapore where he's met our people before. He had a visit from an elderly bro who could barely walk 30years ago that really impressed him, he was spoken to respectfully and shown scripture to answer questions. The brother visited him 3 weeks in a row but then never heard from him again, he thought maybe he had died, but he always remembered him as it was so different compared to when a pastor visited him, he stayed 10mins and then left because he couldn't handle the Buddhist idols in his house and told him he would burn in hell because of them. He could see how hypocritical this was as there were so many idols in the church.

His question for us amongst others were "why do Christians condemn other religions to hell, why not be kind and maybe we would listen?"

We had a nice conversation again we were able to answer him from the bible which he really appreciated.

In Singapore he worked for the military and he would see our young men being put into detention for refusing military service and this furthered his admiration for the witnesses.

We left him our details and look forward to another chat soon.

Was a great reminder that we never know the impact our Christian personality has in our ministry, even 30 years later.

 

 

An experience that really made me stop and think!

We had our Circuit Assembly on the weekend, with 400+ in attendance. Most from our state of Johor, but some of the Singapore congregations fall into our circuit too, which was nice to be together with them.

It was a great program, really encouraging, and I even had the privilege of my first circuit assembly part (man, was I nervous!!).

There are a number of missionaries serving in foreign language congregations in our circuit (they're really local languages like chinese and tamil - you might have seen Naomi's pic on instagram), but since english is their first language, they came to the assembly so they could get a full program in english. We've made good friends with them and its great to catch up with them all at once.

But despite the great program, catching up with great friends, what hit me the most was a conversation I had just after the assembly finished which I wanted to share.

I met a family from Singapore. They had 2 children, the son was 15 and the daughter 16.They told me they were going to the international convention in New Jersey next month and both the son and daughter were going to get baptised there! What an experience for them! The biggest convention they would have experiences so far would be about 2000 people.

But then the boy said, "yeah i wanted to get baptised and we talked about it and we decided to go to the international because we thought the experience would be more faith strengthening." I sort of thought to myself, what does he mean by "faith strengthening"? Your baptism day is something you don't forget regardless of where it is.

Then his father said, "since he is 'going in' in 3 years, we felt this would be a great experience for him to remember and keep his faith strong". I still didn't understand what he really meant.... then it hit me!

I was looking at this young smiling 15 year old, eager to get baptised and keep his faith strong because in 3 years, he's going to JAIL!

At 18 in Singapore it's mandatory military service, any who refuse received a 3 year jail term!!

So this 15 year old boy and his family, are planning how to keep their sons faith strong to help him survive a 3 year jail term, likely involving some time in solitary confinement.

Its something foreign to us, especially from Australia, we think about our young ones first car, or first job, freedom they will have when they're 18 and an "adult"... but there its the exact opposite! At 18 they lose 3 years of freedom, to come out at 21 and try and get back into life. Their parents are thinking about what will get them through, what will keep them strong.

It was an experience that really touched me... to see this young man so determined to have such strong faith that he would get through, and his family helping him prepare from such a young age.

Something for us all to meditate on!!

Frank

Spiritually rich

Sometimes it's the people who have the least materially who are the kindest and most generous with what they DO have.
It's very touching the generosity of our Pakistani studies. Always wanting to cook for us, buy us drinks. Giving us little gifts, tonight it was a shaver for Frank and a new toothbrush for me, from Pakistan. (how did they know I needed a new toothbrush)

At the meetings I write down the scriptures for them during the talk to help them look it up in their Urdu bible, and later this list becomes their personal study, and they share it with the ones who couldn't make it. We only have 3 spare seats in our car, and now we have up to 7 that sit in on the  studies.

Tonight was particularly touching, after giving us the shaver and toothbrush then they insisted they cook us some chapati and chicken curry.  We told them we could not study for the next 2 weeks as we were going to be in Vietnam to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, one of them opened his wallet and pulled out 50RM (about AU$17) wanting to give it to us to enjoy some food and drink in Vietnam.

How could we take it? They wouldn't earn much more than 1000RM the whole month! We tried to decline until he said "if you do not take it....I angry"

Honestly....almost brought a tear to my eye.

Memorial Update

Our memorial was great! Such huge attendance from all 4 languages that share our hall.

Attendance was...
English - 49 (23 pubs)
Chinese - 86 (42 pubs)
Tamil - 65 (21 pubs)
Malay language - 100 (24 pubs)

We had 4 of our bible students attend which was really nice, for 1 it was their first meeting.
They can really see the difference between us and Christendom.

Frank gave his first memorial talk in our English cong.

With some of our English cong sisters

My adorable student Helista

With Annie and Samson who attended the Chinese memorial.

We currently are having Saturday night meetings because recently they changed the weekends in our state to Friday/Saturday.
The other week Frank gave the talk. 4 of our bible studies attended! So there I was 2 on either side. Helping 1 find the scripture, writing down the scriptures for another and using google translate to know what the Urdu name of the particular book of the bible is, so they can look it up in their Urdu bible. Talk about under the pump! The best kind of busy tho :)

Our new Pakistani mates

Now that Frank has finished giving his talks in Oz where he related this experience I can now put it up here.

A "please follow up" form led us to some dingy flats above some shops. Behind the door were 3 Pakistani Christians with beaming smiles. Only 2% of the 180 million inhabitants of Pakistan are Christian. So these men are rare.

We were brought inside and sat down in their lounge room, and they scurried off into their bedrooms, and brought back their big bibles in the Urdu language, their mother tongue.

They sat opposite us...ready to learn.

Pakistani curry and fresh homemade Chapati after our study.

We learnt that one of them, Phillips, had actually been in contact with one of the only 880 witnesses back home and had Watchtowers/Awakes and The Greatest Man book!

He brought out to us a yellow envelope with half a dozen certificates in them, from different Christian organizations. Showing he'd reached a particular level of study with them. He pushed them aside saying "No good....Bible...Good....Jehovah's Witnesses" pointing to us, "GOOD"
He proceeded to tell us stories about how he'd spent time with many other religions and realized that what they were teaching was not in the bible.
But obviously he could see the truth in the few magazines and books he had.


Another one of them, Yassir, told his father in Saudi Arabia that we were visiting them and his father was so so happy! He said "Jehovah's witnesses will tell you everything you need to know about the bible!" So he must have had some contact too.

We'd been able to download the Truth tract in Urdu so we've been going thru that, in Urdu and English.
They wanted English bibles because as one of them said "my hobby is reading Bible" so they were excited to receive their own new grey NWT.

While going thru the 3rd and 4th question in the truth tract, Phillips asked "what about this" and turned to and read 1 Samuel 28, the account where Saul goes to the spirit-medium at Endor and she brings up who is supposedly dead Samuel and speaks to him.
So while he was learning about the condition of the dead he had remembered reading this account and wanted to understand how that made sense!


Thankfully we have the watchtower online library on hand to help us give a satisfying answer AND google translate to help us with putting some of our more complex ideas into their mother tongue.

Yassir has a phone that he can access the internet so we showed them jw.org/ud in Urdu. So he tells us every morning he looks it up while waiting for the work bus and read something spiritual in Urdu.

Each time we see them it's emphasized "we are so happy to meet you, before you come we are very sad, now you come we are very happy," they are so very grateful that we visit with spiritual food for them!

Just last week 2 of them were able to attend their first meeting....as you can see...many smiles all round!

To be continued....

Hope you're all well xx Naomi and Frank

Thirsty People...

A few English speaking people have been passed onto us recently.

One young Indian woman we visited came running up to the gate, so excited to see us...yes she was waiting for us to call. We weren't too sure what to expect...but she made it quite obvious that she wanted to study. A study was started, the following week she was so happy to have her first bible, she now prepares for her studies by looking up each scriptures and making a note of the page number so she can find it faster in our study....

After a week or two we were sent a request for a bible study slip from the branch...Frank recognised the name...it was our new study! In the week or so between her first visit and our following her up, she must have sent away the coupon for a study...no wonder she was ready to study the bible when we turned up at her door! Will keep that one and give it back as a memento when she gets baptised :)

Today she was even more happy to receive the new revised edition of the NWT...with all the extra features and the simpler English she was so happy...although the page numbers are a little different to the old one so threw out her preparation...but never to mind :-)



ANOTHER passed on call to us in the English cong, a foreign worker from Pakistan. Speaks English but reads Urdu...after printing out KN38 in Urdu to bring him, today we called...although he was working, his 3 flat mates also Pakistani Christians (only 7% of the country they tell us) they sat us down and ran off and brought out their bibles in Urdu and English. They were so so happy to read the kingdom news no.38 in their mother tongue. 

One of them seems to have read the Greatest Man book in Pakistan. Which is quite amazing seeing that the ratio of witnesses to population is over 200,000 to 1!

 We went thru some of KN38 together and their appreciation for us visiting them and speaking about the scriptures with them was clear. Life here isn't the easiest, they work hard, 6-7 days a week, with a tough boss, and their families are back in Pakistan where they live in fear of the Taliban. 
It was so surreal to be sitting with these men who's stories we'd seen played out on TV many times.
To speak about the bible made them so happy. But today they could see that Jehovah really is the God of all comfort.

Next week when we bring back the BH book for them they want us to stay for dinner with them. I wonder if it will be our first eating with our hand experience!