First Memorial as a congregation!

I don't know how your Memorial campaign was, but ours was beyond expectation! The previous year, when we were a group that was part of a congregation, we distributed around 100-150 invitations. So this year, we printed about the same number, and they ran out in the first week. Then, we printed another 100, and those lasted another week. The bottom line is, we distributed over 300 invitations!

I was to give the Memorial talk, which was to be held under a big white tent erected in the Kingdom Hall parking lot. (The English and French congregations had the upstairs and downstairs Halls.) Unfortunately, the previous week I had gotten a bad cold, with coughing, from a house guest from Congo who arrived at our place sick from day one. So, on the day of Memorial, my main concern was getting through the talk without having a coughing spell. I fell back on my experience in Colombia when I had to give two public talks in the same day while recovering from the flu. Then, I prayed not to cough, and it worked! That is, until I got off the stage.

Also, my thought was, maybe one Chinese person will come...okay, at the most five. I'd say five was being pretty liberal, eh?

Well, when the meeting started, it was a bit sparse. But then, they came...and came. The final tally: 14 Chinese persons! (Some count me as the 15th, but I would tend to dispute that.) Including our 24 publishers—none of whom, thankfully, defected to another language Memorial—the total was 38!

One of the Chinese guys actually ate the bread, but didn't take the wine. (I would have thought the wine would be the bigger draw...) Of course, we didn't count him as a partaker. The Chinese sang the songs enthusiastically, probably because we projected only characters on the screen and not pinyin.

Afterward, we got a number of WeChat contacts, and they are all being followed up. One of them, Mr. Zhou (same as my surname), also came to our meeting last Saturday. He has expressed interest in knowing more. We helped him to download the Bible, as well as the study edition of The Watchtower.

Everyone was ecstatic about the turnout! This experience motivates us to persevere in our work of preaching to Chinese people!