Brothers Like No Others

This is just great! I'm having the time of my life! What a trip... what a brotherhood. Today was the first full day of the convention at the Olympic Statdium. It's just like the pictures you see in the publications. (No suprise) There is such a variety of brothers and sisters here, we're all different - and yet we're all the same. It's so cool to experience meeting someone, niether of you know a word of the others language, but you're able to communicate through gestures and smiles, the joy that we all get from being together! It's crazy... there is no other place on Earth, where people can't communicate, come from completely different backgrounds and feel a connection with eachother that just makes you smile. Only in Jehovah's organization... we hear it all the time... but to experience it... it's just so cool. Really makes you appreciate what Jehovah has brought togather on Earth now... and builds incredible anticipation for what lays just ahead!

Today we sat in the Italien section. Yesterday we couldn't hear a thing, but sitting right in front of the Italien stage and speakers at least made the few english parts easy to hear. Brother Lett of the governing body released the new song book today - that was the main part translated from english. Crazy weather - but never too bad. Everybody was thinking this morning that it was rain for sure with the dark and ominous cloud cover. But no sooner than the end of the first part - and the sun broke through. Got pretty hot pretty quick and the umbrellas cames out for shade instead of rain. Then half way throught the morning - more clouds and looking like rain, but it never did. Off and on from sweat to shivers all day.

It's so wonderfull just walking around and being able to go up to anybody, shake their hand, say a few words nobody understands, give them a small gift and smile ear to ear. We already are running way low on our candy/cards, so we had to stop buy the store and get some more bags of candy... and it only the first day! You meet so many people! And everyone is warm, welcoming, and so happy! It's impossible to be in a bad mood at this place... love it!

What I thought was really cool is when we went out to dinner. Just walking to the subway and to the restaurant... it is absolutely unbelieveable... Every 30 seconds there is another group wearing badges! You run up to them, smile, shake hands, say a happy farewell... You never met these people, never even seen them, but when you see the badge from a far off - you run to say hello! That is such a cool feeling... what a brotherhood! When we were walking towards the subway escalater there was a group of about 15 Italiens. All we could say was "Chou!" and we just said it over and over to everyone for like a minute until we finally got to shake everyone's hand. Then after laughing about how awesome that was... who do you think we met at the bottom of the escalator?! A group of Germans! Same thing - laugh, smile, shake, exchange gifts... then who do you think was there waiting for the train with us?! More Italiens! Wash, rinse, repeat hahaha! And who do you think was there when we got on the subway?! More Germans! Talked to them all the way home... but before we got there, we had to walk a ways from the station to the hotel... and of course we ran into tons of witnesses within those few blocks! It is absolutely stunning our sheer number and presense! What's more stunning is how we interact... it makes sense that we use the term "friends" when refering to the world wide brotherhood, most of whome we've never met... but they're frinds just the same. I'm loving every second:)

P.S. Had my first wheat beer tonight at Ratzcellar, (not sure how to spell that) it was pretty delicious... sorry guys I'm not downing pints of Guinness or doing shots of scotch... tell the truth I haven't even seen a place that offers Guinness! And give me some time for the scotch... I'm doing fine with the wheat beer for now:)

The coolest sign ever

Yay! The Fedors! Going for pints on Sunday:)

Click to enlarge - pretty cool