Sunday Meeting

Today we returned to Tequisquiapan where I received a lesson in how to pronounce it. For the curious it is: Tay-keece-KWEE-a-pan, accent on the capital letters. This lesson was patiently administered to me by Alexandro, an interested person whom I met at the meeting. He does many things for a living: gardening, guitar playing & singing, teaching English to  the Spanish, and Spanish to the English. When he said he also knew Italian I spoke the only line in Italian I know which translates as "I always get nervous when I speak Italian." Thinking I actually knew the language he took off speaking Italian to me. Carol snapped a photo of us ...

The Circuit Overseer gave the talk in his gentle manner which was very pleasant listening. His illustrations were good and I'll share two of them.

The first was directed to those who at one time were able to do much in Jehovah's service but for whatever reason, health issues, age, etc. are no longer able to perform as before. It can be a discouraging circumstance. So he told the story of a woman who would follow a path to a creek every morning to fill two buckets with water that she would bring back to use during the day. One bucket was old, dented, and eventually developed a small leak. Instead of arriving home with two buckets full of water, the woman now arrived with only one and a half. After a while the leaky bucket said to her (as the CO said, 'It's a story'), "You may as well replace me with a new bucket. I'm no good to you any more. With me you're only getting half the water home." Some with limitations may feel like saying something similar to Jehovah. The woman replied to the bucket, "Thanks to your leak I've been able, every day, to water the flowers I planted along my path. Look how beautiful the flowers have made it!" The moral of the story is that we need to see ourselves as Jehovah sees us and not according to our own limited viewpoint. We need to 'stop and smell the flowers.'

The other illustration was to instruct us to be good spiritual 'shoppers.' A woman might have a peach colored purse and shoes and go shopping for a blouse that would match them. After much searching she notices a beautifully styled blouse in precisely the right color. She feels this is exactly what she needs. It's absolutely perfect! But on closer scrutiny she notices the material is cheap and the stitching is hit-and-miss. The blouse has been made in a shoddy way. So she promptly places it back on the rack. It is similar with what the world has to offer us as opposed to what Jehovah offers. The world may offer things that, at first sight, seem ideally suited for us. But we need to be good shoppers and look closely to recognize what we would really get, which is cheap and shoddy compared to what Jehovah offers.

The post-meeting scene ...

A scene on the road to the Kingdom Hall ...

A scene in San Juan Del Rio ...

San Juan Del Rio is at an altitude of 6,350 feet. Carol and I are finding the effects of the thinner air more noticeable than two years ago when we visited Dan & Heather in San Luis Potosi (altitude 6,070 feet). The increased altitude here is modest but the diminished oxygen supply causes us to tire more quickly, and sometimes to feel out of breath after a little exertion. Mexico City is a thousand feet higher than San Juan Del Rio which is a remarkable thing considering that over 8,000 feet is considered a 'death zone,' according to my Web research, where getting acclimatized is just not something the average person can count on. So if ever you are in Mexico city, you would be well advised to avoid taking a breather on the rooftop of any 65 story buildings. Not much to breathe.