Whasblog

Hello everybody!

 As you can see I’m trying to blog a bit more often now even though I have less time on my hands…oh the irony! I thought I’d keep you up to date with the goings on in my little world.

This weekend was our annual district convention at Twickenham and I must say that it was honestly by far the best one I’ve been to for a very long time. Although, they are all brilliant and very uplifting, it really couldn’t have been better this year. I base my opinion on a number of factors 1) the programme was absolutely stunning- the presentation and variety of talks were so encouraging and enjoyable to listen to. Everybody was so enthusiastic and friendly and nobody was grouchy at all (it can get very tiring sitting in a chair for 3 straight days when it was designed for a couple of hours of rugby) 2) Although the attendance was very good this year (peak over 25, 750 Sunday afternoon, but even way over 18,000 on Friday which usually has the lowest attendance as some people can’t get the day off work and we usually have less vistors on a week day), it didn’t seem very crowded in the stands 3) we managed to get out of our car park within 5 minutes of reaching our car every day (as you can imagine, there’s a lot of cars with people travelling from all over London, Bucks, Herts, etc etc) and we had very little delays 4) the weather was brilliant. It really couldn’t have been better- not too hot but not raining either although the grass car parks were a bit boggy on Sunday in places. So all in all an entremely enjoyable if tiring weekend.

What I especially enjoyed was the theme of this convention entitled ‘Follow the Christ’ which I thought was particualry fitting for people who call themselves Christians so every single item was based around Jesus and how we can follow his example and imitate various aspects of his personality, ministry and relationship with God. There was numerous brilliant experiences and interviews with people from all walks of life (there was even one man being interviewed with the surname Golbourn!), re-enactments and as usual we had the full costume drama which this year was a lesson in humilty where the participants acted out a scene from the second book of Kings in the Hebrew scriptures about Naaman, the Syrian army chief with leprosy, the prophet Elisha and his presumptuous servant Gehazi. As usual the material was excellent and the delivery was to the highest standard.

Other highlights included a new publication released entitled “Come, Be My Follower”, an 192 page book which, rather than being a full and detailed chronology of Jesus’ life and ministry (as covered in another publication called ‘The Greatest Man That Ever Lived’) emphasises some features of Jesus’ ministry and personality that we can learn from.

Also there were 111 baptised this year, 44 women and 67 men, including one man who couldn’t walk and had to be lowered into the pool by lots of attendants (as I think I’ve explained before we perform full water immersion) which, as you can possibly imagine, was hugely moving.

Moreover, our campaign that we had before the convention really paid off! Last year, a new suggestion came out that every mwitness of Jehovah around the entire globe should have the opportunity to invite 50 other people to attend their local convention. Well, although we personally experienced mostly apathy and indifference here, we had 39 respond on Friday and 79 on Saturday which is a fantastic result as these people had made their own way there to take time out of the weekend to come and join us. The whole atmosphere was just simply wonderful.

And what is more, they announced that in 2009, they are planning an international assembly so, if it is still at Twickenham we may be able to use the stadium to full capacity with others from all over the world! If so, I cannot wait!

Anyway, hope you all had good weekends and hopefully I’ll catch up with you sometime soon. I’m off to bed in a minute as I have to get up for work tomorrow and I’m exhausted!

All my love

Robyn

xx