Abuse of the Feet

By Saturday a realization had hit us: because of our detour in Ireland and an upcoming side trip, we would only have 20ish days to get our time in. This seems to be no problem for 2 vigorous young men, except we want have time to be tourists too. So Saturday was decided to be a long service day. We started at nine doing park witnessing, where we ran into another sister doing the same thing by herself. By 10 we had walked to the Kingdom Hall to meet the group. Some minor remodel work had been started that morning in the foyer/entryway, but the main hall was intact and everyone came in the exits next to the stage. This would be no issue except the doors face a busy street, and had to remain open to let latecomers in. The meeting was interrupted at least 3 times by police sirens on the road, and the buses that go by every 2 minutes. Of course no one thought to speak up, consequently not much was gained by us from the meeting, but I'm sure the lengthy demonstration they prepared was great. (There is also an Albanian group who is in the hall. They had their own meeting for field service a few rows away from where we were having the English meeting for field service. -Eric) That morning I worked with Kam, the special pioneer sister who was a missionary in Japan for 40 years(Her husband picked us up from the airport). She proceeded to take all the doors and do all her return visits, but I was happy watching her teach and learn all about her years in Kobe. Eric worked with a pioneer sister named Estera, you'll be hearing that name often. At noon I met them both and another sister named Anna for lunch at a deli. After, the europepros were assigned a section of not-at-homes to do, and off we went by ourselves.

At the time we thought nothing of it, but this turned out to be quite the experience for us. After a 15 minute walk to the territory we started going through the list. The first door was straightforward, not interested. But then we came to a door with 4 bells, and the front door was wide open. It had been split into flats(apartments), so we marched right in and started knocking. But at the second door the lady marched us right out and told us to use the bells. How were we supposed to know? But that was only the beginning. After that we found the next door to have 6 different doorbells, and one front door, locked. Most of the houses on this street we big and old, and had been split similar to the 2nd house. We're not fans of this style. You have to ring the first bell, wait a minute, ring the second, wait a minute, ring the third, and finally someone comes all the way down to the front door. They say they're not interested and while they're walking back up the guy from the first bell is finally coming down and passes his neighbor in the hall. And you talk to resident number 1. And while you're talking to number one number 6 arrives from shopping in town and tries to walk in the door. I may or may not have used a little creative licence in the description, but you get the point, its strange and partially chaotic. But we survived the that house somehow. The next door a man was working in his yard, and I was able to read him a scripture. He asked me if that was the Bible, and said he reads from the Koran. Inside my head: "Uh, ok, well um hmm what people use that?" My face must have betrayed my thoughts because he clarified that he was a Muslim. Inside my head: "Uh, ok, well um hmm what in the world am I supposed to say to that?" But he was very nice and Eric helped out with how we all are trying to be good people. So we did have some things in common. (Actually he was very pleasant to talk to. Much nicer than most "Christians" that we have been meeting. The territory is filled with Muslims so we should be pro at talking to them by the end of the summer. -Eric) Time to search for those articles about talking to Muslims that I thought would never apply to me! Moving along, this same stretch of houses introduced us to intercom witnessing, a slightly better variation of the 6 bells in my opinion. At least this time you spare the householder from walking to you and potentially passing their neighbors in the hall. Except when someone comes to the door anyway when you've already moved on and are on the intercom with their neighbor when they open the door. It was a learning experience to say the least. And not really as bad as it sounds, we were just a bit flustered the first time. All our efforts were rewarded when I placed a Teach book with a very nice young Polish man. (The young Polish man lived in a small flat that was apart of a large house. The door to his flat was around the side of the house. The main door was mine and the woman was definitely not interested, and when we politely asked if there were any other flats around the side of the house she scoffed and said no. As we walked away from the house we noticed the side door with another address and realized the woman lied to us. So we decided to knock on the side door on the way back. And that's where Blythe met the young man. -Eric) At 330 we met the sister from the park, Naomi, and also Anna and Estera at McD's for ice cream(it has been really really hot so far!). After I went with Estera and Eric with Naomi. We walked all over creation doing calls and a little territory, and once again was able to place a book at the last door. We stumbled in the door within 2 minutes of each other, around 5:30. It was a long service day, bearable, but keep in mind we had no motor transportation from the time we walked out the front door till we walked in. I will eventually stop complaining about all this walking, but for all the blisters we acquired, I think we're allowed a few lines of self-pity. We ended the day with a little football, the European kind, in the park next door.