Friday, April 6, 2012

Memorial 2012

Such a lovely day today!

Tonight was the Memorial, a special evening that we look forward to every year! 

Aside from a bit of crying from Ethylwolfe on the way there when he realized that he forgot to give Papa his invitation to the Memorial this year, it went well.  I felt terrible because he had an invitation to give him, and I forgot to remind him to give it to him about 10 times.

The Memorial was scheduled to begin at 9pm.  We were the second group to meet at the hall and when we pulled down our road at 8:25 we came to a halt about halfway down.  Stuck in a long line of cars waiting for the other group to get out so that we could get in, we did a lot of waiting.  By the time we parked and I jumped out to get seats, it was after 8:45, and the seats left were limited.  Already people were filling up the 2 back rooms.  Making my way through the crowds, I was thankfully able to find 3 seats together close to the front.  The hall was abuzz with lots of smiling faces, hugs, and love as we celebrated this special occasion and I got to meet lots of the friend's Bible Students!

We have a large congregation as it is, but tonight we filled every possible seat, every spare chair was filled and a "4th room" was created in the lobby where they put every extra chair that could be found out of storage.  Even still, people were standing and laps were filled.  How fantastic to see such a large number of people gather to show their appreciation for Jehovah and the gift he gave us.  I'm eager to find out how many we had in attendance and to see what the stats are worldwide!

For the talk, we had a visiting brother from Brooklyn Bethel who is in a Portuguese Congregation.  He gave such a fantastic talk and made it easy for the visitors to understand.  There were lots of excellent illustrations and fun facts.  I was anxious to find out if he knew any of our friends from Bethel and he does!  Which is always fun.

The hubs took these pics of the kids while I was still getting ready, and then a friend at the hall took the one of our family...






Hope everyone else had a great evening!  Good Night!

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