Meetings are So Much Fun!

Thursday morning we were out once again, met a very large group. I was put with Doug, which aside from the wealth of experience that I can learn from, also puts me with someone with many calls and a car. It may sound lazy, but it was much appreciated after all the walking on previous days. (And guess who did street work all morning? Yep 2 straight hours of walking around town. -Eric) We did a number of his calls, one of which was a Muslim man. It is quite difficult to reason with them because they think everyone just chooses their own path, and almost all think that they believe fundamentally the same as us. So with this belief there is no reason for change, but at least they are nicer and more willing to talk than the English people. Doug invited me in for tea afterwards, which turned into a light lunch. Kam is originally from the US so we talked about some of the differences between here and home. Eric had plans in the afternoon and I forgot to get the keys, so I got to spend some time in the park locked out of the house. In the afternoon we went to the park for some more tennis action, and were able to play many competitive games under the bright sun. (In the afternoon i got to work with Estera. Man i think it is her goal to make us pay for us working with her all the time. She slept in in the morning then when we met at 12 we walked through Acton doing calls, then we walked out to Ealing which just to get there is a 25 minute walk. Then walked all around there then another 25 back. -Eric)
That evening we studied for meeting and grabbed a quick dinner. In typical fashion, we were terribly late getting ready and just barely rushed into the hall a few minutes before the meeting started. It is always very warm in there, and I stripped my jacket at the first amen. Many of their brothers and sisters are gone this weekend for their listening convention(they often go to one they aren't assigned to for their "listening" convention so they don't miss their information from their "working" convention), so a few assignments were unfilled. They discovered that the bookstudy reader was one of those assignments when the first paragraph was asked to be read. There was a scramble as they ran to check the list. 20 seconds later and no solution. I rushed to put on my jacket, and 10 seconds later still nothing. Eric and I looked at each other, and both of our hands shot up at the same moment. The brother was a bit surprised, but after looking around a few more seconds, he invited me up to the stage. It went ok, not the best I'm my opinion and would have been better with my glasses. But hey, finally got to do something, I get antsy at the meeting if I'm not doing mics or stage or something else. After that a brother did an excellent job on the reading, a hilariously awkward moment when the audience laughed at statement that was meant to be serious, and we concluded with a letter about convention cleaning after which the brother took an extended time to emphasize the importance of not dumping rags in the toilet along with the used soapy water. We laughed all the way home, it was one of those you had to be there moments. After meeting we did some blogging and got some shut eye. (Right after meeting was also fun. They are a very warm congregation and are always in the mood to laugh and have fun. There are so many different types of people here you can really see: Rev 7:9 John 13:34, 35 -Eric).