First Meeting in our New Kingdom Hall

Yesterday we had our very first meeting at our new Kingdom Hall (where Jehovah's Witnesses have their religious services).  As I mentioned in our previous post, Kingdom Halls all around the world are built entirely by volunteers.  This particular project took about 2 months to complete and had volunteers come from all over the world.  All the funds for the build are contributed from Jehovah's Witnesses around the world.  Without these funds and volunteers, we would never have been able to have such a beautiful place to meet!

We were not able to help with the project, as we were working in the US at the time.  However we had a great privilege of being there yesterday for the first meeting!  We had about 66 people in attendance, which was wonderful since there are only about 33 Witnesses in Taulabe.  Many in the community even stopped by to peek inside before we started.  It IS the only building with a parking lot in our town after all!



We had beautiful new bench seats, new sounds equipment, bathrooms with running water and flush toilets (WOW!) and even overhead fans!  I feel like we are livin in luxury now! 




Everyone was all smiles when the first meeting started.  Even though there was a random helicopter that kept circling over the building the whole time!  What are the chances that the exact time of our meeting, someone decides to land a helicopter right next door in a soccer field??

 Our little buddy Jonatan reading his assigned bible verses.  He is in the Theocratic Ministry School.  It is a school to help us learn how to be better public speakers and converse with people that we encounter in our ministry work.

 This is an older shot of the outside of the building during the construction work. Sorry I don't have one of it when its all cleaned up and finished :)



And finally, this is everyone in attendance.  You can almost see our little white faces all the way in the back! Haha.  It will be a day that we remember forever.  The Taulabe congregation has come SO far in the past few years and grown so much.  They very much deserve this beautiful meeting place that they can be proud of!