Aaron’s first Bible reading!!!

It’s been a super, super busy few weeks, so I’m way behind in catching everyone up! Keep reading and you’ll see why! A few weeks ago all the Japanese friends went to attend the circuit assembly in Japanese in Bangkok, so that left only Aaron and the local Thai brother behind to take care of the meeting Sunday. If you remember, this happened also while we were here last time which is why Aaron conducted the Watchtower after only being here two months. Well, it happened again! He spent SO LONG preparing for it! Last time he added it up and it was about 30 hours he spent preparing, and I would guess it was around the same this time too. 

Because our kingdomhall is becoming slowly more legit, we have actual microphones now. Since there were only two brothers at meeting (one was conducting WT and the other was reading) I got to do the microphones and sound!!!! Many of you probably saw on instagram that this was a dream come true for me!!! Only once did I give the mic to the wrong person, and only once did I forget to turn on the sound for a comment – mine!!!! But I’d say that was pretty good for a first timer! In the next few months two brothers are going back to Japan to work, so I will be getting much more opportunity to do mics and sound again! 

I was so busy doing mics that I didn’t get much video of Aaron, but I did get a minute when he was doing the review questions and concluding the meeting. If you saw any video of his WT the first time, you might notice a huge improvement like I did!! 

The next meeting was also a super big deal for us. Aaron had his very first bible reading, and I gave my second talk! Aaron had been working on his reading for months, and everyone had pitched in to help. It was really cool to see even the Bible students happy to practice with him, and they were all so proud of him after. Aaron says this was one of the hardest things he’s ever done. But of course he went about it the hardest way possible- reading straight out of the Bible with no English notes whatsoever! No baby steps for Aaron!  This is what his reading looked like. Seriously those squiggles are all he had up there!!!! All he added was a few tone mark reminders on the ones he kept forgetting. Also do you notice there are no spaces between the words? Thats half the challange, knowing where the words are in the long line of letters!!! 

Aaron’s reading was Matthew 11:1-19. He made it through 11 out of those before running out of time, which is pretty good for a first time reader! One brother in our group told us that for his first reading, he only prepared what he could read in the given amount of time, but when he got up there to do it the brother wanted him to finish the whole thing!! It took him 20 minutes to finish!!!!!  Aaron was very grateful when he got dinged by the bell!  All the friends clapped and told him what a great job he did after. Everyone said they could understand him well, which is the best compliment possible to us!! 

I was so proud of him I actually started to cry during his reading! But I had to quickly pull myself together because my part was next! It was my first time having a part with a Thai sister, so it was really difficult to communicate when to practice together. Finally I had to just show up to her house so we could go over it together because I don’t think she understood any of my other attempts! But over all I think it all went well. 

My grandmother told me last time I should work on my eye contact….How did I do this time Mom-Mom?!?!?!?! hehe! I really did try, but it’s not easy to memorize in another language, and the words definitely don’t come naturally…YET!!!! I think this was the most stressful meeting to date! But it was extra exciting because my cousin was visiting and we loved having him with us to cheer us on! More on that in another post!

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