First Circuit Overseer Visit

Hello friends!! We’ve had a busy week with the visit of our circuit overseer and his wife! We were a little nervous and didn’t know what to expect but the week turned out to be a great success!

Having our CO over for dinner! Italian food served Thai style!

A few things about our awesome new CO- Their names are Peenong(brother/sister) Somphoat and Peenong Hitomi. We only use first names here so I’m not even quite sure what their last name is! He is Thai and she is Japanese. He first met Jehovah’s Witnesses when he was about 20 from his friend who was recently baptized. They were in a band together. His wife grew up in the truth and moved to Thailand to serve as a need greater when she was 20. She has been serving here 9 years now, and they have been married for 5. They have been in the circuit work for 1.5 years. They don’t have a house in the circuit, but instead have everything they own in their car and just travel from congregation to congregation. In some congregations they stay with a family, in others that are more well off they are put up in a hotel. Our group had a sister who was away on a visa run so they were able stay at her place. Also the congregation is responsible for feeding them lunch AND dinner since they don’t have a kitchen of their own. We had them over for dinner, which was our first time having company over our new home! I was super stressed since it was only my second time cooking with my new kitchen set up, but after blowing the fuse from using the toaster oven and the hot plate at the same time, everything went smoothly 😍

Aaron and I weren’t expecting to get very much out of the visit because we hardly know any Thai, and I was even a little depressed thinking about sitting through our pioneer meeting not having a clue what was going on. So you can imagine our surprise Tuesday at the meeting when he hands us the outline to his talk in English!!! And then through out his talk, he would say the scripture in Thai and then repeat in English for us, and say little things in English like “we are moving on to the second point now” It brought tears to my eyes actually being able to understand what he was saying. I was very touched that he was making a special effort just to help Aaron and I along. That’s how it went the whole visit- the pioneer meeting, MS/Elders meeting, Sunday, etc. The local needs part for the pioneer meeting and some of the field service meetings were previous videos from broadcasting, so even that we could understand since we had seen the videos before! We felt very included and very encouraged!! Looking back, it makes a lot of sense that he accommodates need greaters in this way because there are so many serving in Thailand. His wife was a need greater, so she especially was very understanding of the struggles we are having and she was very encouraging. And they were both very excited to practice their English with us. They have been learning because there is no CO training school here in Thailand, so if they get invited it would be in the Philippines and it would be in English!! So they have been working very hard to learn so they can go to school.

The meeting on Sunday was pretty exciting since we had 31 in attendance! We all brought food for dinner afterwards. This is the second party in only 3 weeks we’ve had in our kingdom hall. 😜