SPECIAL ASSEMBLY July 4-6, 2012

The anticipation for this occasion has been six months coming. We are so excited for this day to finally come. We get to the Nokia Arena and see something we have never seen before at an assembly, worldly people checking your bags before you go in. Another thing we haven’t seen before, is a full arena work force on hand. They were guarding all the doors.

Once in, you saw a total of four stages, three on the arena floor and one tiny one on the upper level. There was the English, Russian, Hebrew and Hebrew sign language on the floor and the Arabic on the upper level.

 

















DAY 1

The first day of an International Assembly we sat with the delegates from the U.S., Italy and Greece. Since this convention was organized by the Italian branch all the speakers were Italian and some had heavy accents. All the talks, demo’s and interviews were in English. We saw the Lilly’s since they walked into the arena, we had extra seats around us so we sat together. We had a two speakers from headquarter’s, one was one of  given-ones and Bro. Stephen Lett from the Governing Body. Bro. Lett started his talk by saying, “this is truly a historic convention, as it is the second special international convention. The last time a special international convention was held in Israel was on 33 C.E.”, he got a roaring applause by all of us. Last time there was an international convention the apostles were giving the talks! Isn’t that amazing? And we were privileged to be present when the Hebrew brothers received the NWT of the Greek Scriptures. TRULY HISTORIC!!!! Oh by the way, they allow dogs to the assembly here in Israel. Her name is Rio, she's a working dog. She's a seeing eye dog. I can't remember his name, but he's blind, deaf and mute and he got baptized on Saturday. Jehovah's word is so powerful it can penetrate deaf ears and blind eyes, AMAZING!!!! 

DAY 2

We knew exactly what we were going to do today. Today Leti and I were going to sit and hang out with the Arabic and the Russian brothers. For the morning program we sat with the Arabic brothers up on the second level. We weren’t going to understand a word but we wanted to be with our brothers, besides we went to our assembly already. I just followed the timeline of the talks on my notes from our assembly. The stage for the Arabic section was tiny but they fit all the demos and interviews on it, and nobody was complaining.

The first thing we noticed was that the Arabic brothers are super friendly. Very nice brothers. We made friends right away. I traded my lapel card with Teddy, an older brother, who’s been in the truth here in Israel since 1973. He was the speaker with the over friendly sister/jealous wife demo. A young couple sat next to us that live in Bethlehem and right away invited us to their home. We told them we have a car and could drive to them, but since they live in a Palestinian area tourist rented car is not allowed. So the bro. would have to pick us up at the checkpoint. We’ll see if we make it. During one of the songs and announcements, we were told "we are so happy many of you delegates are here with us. But the Arabic brothers are here to listen to the program, so can you brothers move to the edges a let the Arabic brothers sit towards the center or if  you want you can move back to your section. So we moved to the edge, we were not going to leave just like that, we wanted to get to know our brothers.

After lunch we moved over to the Russian section, the biggest of all the home crowds. Their was a huge Russian/Jew migration to Israel after the war so there community is very large. When we moved to that section, bro. Lett was giving an encouraging talk, telling the Russian brothers that no matter what Jehovah is with  them along with Christ, resurrected spirit anointed servants that have been clothed in immortality, the angels, the GB, and all the association of brothers worldwide. He gave this same talk during the lunch hour to all the sections except English. He just added some of the same points in his last talk Although friendly, not as friendly as the Palestinians. There was a lot more brothers in this section that didn't speak any English, so it was a little more difficult to communicate. We talked to a few of them and traded gifts.

DAY 3

Today was the day we sat with our Hebrew brothers. The brothers we sat around were quite friendly. We met another newly baptized brother, who's way to the truth is quite interesting. You can ask me about it later. Then we met a very large and very nice Indian family, one of the couples in the family traded with us their lapel cards. Actually, Leti traded with the sister and when we went to take a picture with them at lunch time, she told me to trade with her husband so they could now be the Moreno's. Then we met a sister who just moved here with her husband, who's from here originally, she's from Brazil. Her first preaching experience was a Jewish man yelling at her and chasing her out the building and she doesn't even speak Hebrew yet. The same day her husband got water thrown at him. WELCOME TO ISRAEL!

We then sat with Hebrew sign language. One of the interpreters in particular was so expressive that I told him, " you're so good at expressing yourself in sign that even I understand you". We had a specially difficult time communicating with those brothers. Every time we went to a section, they asked us you speak the language? No, but we want to be you brothers. Their huge smiles were evidence they liked that idea.

The drama had some very good actresses. The sister who played the spiritually weak young sister was a very good actress. She even cried real tears during her cafe scene. All the actors were from Italy. They did a good job!

After the assembly we had agreed to stay as long as possible at the site with the brothers. We were hoping to do the wave, like in Chile, but here instead of doing the wave they have a certain clap they do over and over. Then they played song 134 and we sang it together. Since we were in the sign language section I attempted, and failed, but I tried to sing in sign. It was still nice to participate with them in song. Who knows what I was really saying with my jacked up signing. So here we are thinking we're going to stay a few hours and still visit with the brothers, what we didn't realize is that the convention ended just before the start of the Sabbath, so we got kicked out of the arena. The workers had to finish closing up before their Sabbath started in the evening. So we missed out on associating longer with the brothers. So that was the end of the convention. Much more to tell, no time to type all of it, besides fingers getting cramped up.







 At lunch time the delegates were provided box lunches