Day 37 – Who wants to minga?

The three little kids showed up
on their own to help.

We had to be at the Kingdom Hall by 8:30 this morning for the big minga. What is minga you say? First of all, for all you Italians out there-it’s pronounced ming-guh. It’s like a get-together. In this instance we minga’d to do a good cleaning of the outside and inside of the hall. We had a good size group, including young and not-so-young. Any activity that allows a man to swing a machete is really cool, and if you can swing a machete for the lord, well, jackpot. So we machete’d  the gardens and as you can see in this photo Don Israel looked as if he was going to machete Shawn’s head.  I think it may have had something to do with him eating so many of the delicious empanadas that were provided by Maria Ester (one of the bible students).

Waiting for empanadas

Don Israel seems to know a lot about plants. For instance, there is an árbol de limón (lime tree) in the front of the kh and he showed us how this really little vine (suelda or matapalo) grows on the branches of the lime tree, almost imperceptibly, and if you don’t remove it, it will actually kill the lime tree. Remove the deadly influence to insure survival. I think there may be an illustration somewhere in there.

How many brothers does it take to check  the sound?

Guess who didn't get the memo? Robin the rebel.

After minga-ing we went to the grocery store in Zamora. Guess what we did there? Yep, got groceries. Sorry, boring. Got home and took a siesta and got ready for the meeting.

Br. Jiminez with 2 daughters and 3 granddaughters.

There was a pretty good size group at the meeting. It was nice to see Brother Jiminez and his family. He is the brother that is a recognized local artist. He is the only one in his family that is baptized, there were 14 of them (wife, 3 daughters, son-in-law and granddaughters). They got to and from the meeting in a taxi (pickup truck with extended cab). It was good to see them there and many of them commented. Brother Jiminez' wife lifted him from his chair as if he was a 25 lb bag of rice and carried him to the front seat of the car, about 25 feet! Wow!

Johan, Marisol, Maria, Sandra (Johan & Marias mom/Marisols aunt)

Well, we got home and attacked the fridge and cupboards. Leah, Robin, Shawn and Veronica played-and are still playing-Sequence.
On a literary side note…I read “Into the Wild” over the past few days. I figure now that I am so adventurous and living in the rain forest it would really be up my alley. It was really good. I am ready to escape into the wilderness with just a backpack. Do they have backpacks that will fit a refrigerator/freezer (preferably side-by-side), 17.3” laptop, a couple pairs of shoes and a bicycle?
Tomorrow we r gonna attempt to go do Marisol's study and a few rv's - we'll see how that goes.