Jungle preaching, Spanish class graduation, circuit assembly & you!

This month has been super busy and I've been terrible at updating this...  I will try harder!

A few weeks ago, we travelled seven hours to a small jungle town to preach to the Chinese there.  While there, I had the opportunity to hike a lot and relax in the rainforest a bit. It was unforgettable. I think that hanging out under a waterfall in the amazon is retroactively being added to my bucket list :o) Check out the photos:  http://travel.webshots.com/album/579660714PYYvIT

Damaris graduated from the Spanish school a few weeks ago and I attended to support. After all of the students were given their certificates, one of the brothers from Cuenca talked about how happy he was to have all of the foreigners here. He referred to us as the flowers in the field. Apparently, while Ecuador always has a significant growth each year, in the past years, Cuenca has had yearly increases of up to 18%!  CRAZY!

Recently we had our circuit assembly.  I just want to share a few statistics of our circuit... We have about 1,700 publishers in the circuit.  In the past year, we’ve had 166 new publishers and 46 baptized.  Of course, the number of publishers doesn’t include the rather large crowd of others that attend meetings and are not publishers. For example, last year, my congregation had to have two separate memorials to accommodate everyone. That being said, guess how many elders we have in the entire circuit... A whopping 37!  Can you even imagine the responsibilities that these poor brothers have!?  The entire circuit has 94 servants, but many are new to the truth and are not yet qualified. So… consider this your invitation to step over into Macedonia because we need you!  There are plans for another Spanish class in Cuenca in September. Can you be here for it?  There are now three apartments available in my complex :o)