I'M BACK

Needless to say I am very bad at sitting down and writing when there is so much more to do.  When last I wrote I was making plans, the plans turned into doing and bottom line is the target date was met and I am now sitting in my apartment in Manta, Ecuador. I am happy.
Where to start. Maybe I'll just start with today since there was a milestone reached. I live on the third floor of a very nice apartment building that has 4 apartments. There are about 30 stairs that spiral up to my place, very nice tile.  I love it up here because people don't seem to look up.  I can spy on my neighbors and they don't know it. It's a nice neighborhood, very quiet, except for the dogs. Everyone has at least one. There are a lot of cats here too, but they are mostly strays and only appear when you put the trash out. Then it's like you have brought them catnip and they practically attack you. The best part of living here is that there is a family of Witnesses on the second floor just below me.  Mark, Heather, Jonas and Rylan.  Very sweet family that has helped me so much with everything, starting with picking me up at the airport with the family of 4 that I traveled with and all of my luggage.  A blessing for sure.  Mark has an old Toyota Land Cruiser which, he claims, has seem many adventures. It's a rare thing here as I think that among the brothers in our English group there are only 3 or 4 with vehicles. So it's a ride to the Kingdom Hall for me.  Except when I'm going and they are not.  That happened today. My service days are Wednesday through Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off. The family wasn't going today so I had to make my way there all on my own.  I did it! But not without some amusement. My friend Karina (the Ecuadorian sister who has helped me through all of this) wrote down on a piece of paper what to tell the taxi driver.  I handed him the paper and he couldn't read it. He stopped a couple of girls that were passing by and they read it to him.  I managed to understand him when he asked me how much Spanish I spoke and we laughed a lot when I told him Hello, Goodbye, I'm sorry and how much? We got to one corner and he didn't know which way to go and neither did I. We took a chance and went left and sure enough we ran into the Kingdom Hall.  I walked in with the meeting in progress, but everyone was so happy to see me. Trust in Jehovah and you will find your way to the Kingdom Hall.
We had our Circuit Overseer visit last week. First one ever in English for this group. We have the Spanish Overseer next week.  Sunday meeting was a record.  53 in attendance with 7 bible studies! The English group only has 20 publishers.  Service here is so amazing. It's an ongoing census work then calling on interested ones.  We find more Spanish that want to talk about the bible than we do English.  They will talk to us because they like to talk to foreigners.  They may never have heard the Truth if we weren't doing this work otherwise, because they are really steeped in their religious rituals.
So, I'm hoping this will be a trend because it really does help me to put my (all but scattered) thoughts down in writing. There is so much to say, but it can be overwhelming.