The Long Day

I shouldn't really be writing about Tuesday, it was Eric's show, so I'll just say what I did.  I met the group in the morning, and we walked to one of the farther territories to do the invitation work.  While there we had an extended discussion with a Buddhist, met plenty of atheists, and also met a brother from a nearby Spanish congregation.  We finished the whole area, and stopped around 12:30.  I had no one to work with in the afternoon, so I went home to blog and watch some boring British TV.  In the evening Eric was back, and we went to Subway for a quick bite, and met Dawn and her daughter Jade at the bus station.  We rode a bus that was filled to capacity for about 45 minutes, down to a town called Southhall.  This area of London is called "little India" and you can definitely tell why when you drive through.  We met the group at a brothers house, there were about 12 of us.  We went to the territory and just blitzed the neighborhood.  We were done an hour and a half later.  We took the bus back home and watched a few episodes of an old British comedy call Fawlty Towers with Doug and Kam.
(My day was a little bit longer. I am a regular axillary pioneer now so i am attempting to get my hours in even though we are on holiday. I am not quite sure if i will make it but i want to try at least and i do enjoy doing service with the friends here. They are fun.
Well i started off service with Michael D at the unholy hour of 8:00. It was slightly raining and slightly more freezing but doing street witnessing warmed us up quickly.  After walking to Chiswick, which took about 30 minutes, we did some large loops around the hall until we were on our way to meet the group at 9:30.  On the way i stopped a man and tried to give him a tract about the Bible.  He suddenly started to go on about how we shouldn't trust the Bible, because it was written by man and how the Bible contradicts itself and Jesus even said it did.  So i asked where it said that and so he told me to turn to a scripture in Mathew. I did and read it out loud.  After i finished he said how its so obvious and it is black and white.  Then he went on about how we shouldn't listen to him though, so we thanked him for talking and went on our way to meet the group.  Like Blythe said the territory we were going to do is one of the furthest, but an elderly brother that was out needed a ride to get there and somehow i got to be in the car too.  We did invitation work for about an hour. I had plans to work with Estera at 12 but her partner had to leave an hour early so i started to work with her at 11:00.  We finished the road that was assigned at the meeting for field service, then moved on to finish a road that she had to do.  We did one side of the street then after some pleading and begging i convinced her to go get some lunch.  I had been walking since 8:00 see so i was very very hungry.  Then we walked to an area in south Acton that some new blocks of flats had just been built.  It was our job to map out the new area.  After that we did some of her calls.  We went to see a young woman she and another sister had meet in street work and they were able to get her address to call back.  The woman was Turkish so Estera brought her a Bible Teach in Turkish.  Arrangements were made for some Turkish brothers and sisters to return and have a study with her.  Kindly her roommate suggested that a specific time and date should be set up too.  Those calls and talks with people make the whole day or week of service worth it.  It was a little before 1400 and she was supposed to meet another sister then.  So she asked if i wanted to do street witnessing until we got to the next sister's house.  I said sure so we did.  The three of us worked together and we took the bus back up to finish the other side of the street that Estera and i worked on earlier that day. For those of you keeping track that's the 3rd time that i went all the way across Acton in just a few hours.  After finishing the side of the road the other sister said she just wanted to work for an hour and so she was done.  So we street witnessed down to Morrison's and the other sister went home.  After thinking for a few minutes of what to do next we decided to go work the new block of flats that we had previously just mapped.  There were roughly 65 flats to do.  Some we used the intercoms, and others we were able to get in.  It was unbearable hot in there though so it was very draining.  I did see a Muslim woman with no head covering on, which was very brief though because within a split second she shut the door and then reappeared with a head covering on.  Oh and for you sisters, if you ever are going to talk to a Muslim man try to have a brother do it instead.  They can get very mad sometimes if a woman tries to just talk to them.  Anyway though we did door after door and floor after floor and on the last door we placed our last tract.  (Yes it was crazy)  Then we were done so i walked home and rested for less than an hour.  Then it was off to Southhall. I worked with a young sister named Leah.  We did blitz the territory and quickly did several streets.  It was nice to work in service in new places other that Acton.  Well my day was pretty busy and in total i probably did 150 flats/homes and placed over 100 invitations.  But it was fun and its a good tired after a long service day. -Eric)