Memorial Season in Las Vegas

Like Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide, Memorial Season (the time we celebrate the Lord’s Evening Meal and commemorate the death of Jesus Christ) in Las Vegas is a special time.

Greeting one another at the Memorial

For one thing, springtime here in the Mojave Desert is the best time of year. Of course, it’s a given that the sun will shine practically every day, with nary a cloud to mar the deep blue sky. Temperatures are remarkably similar to Ibarra, Ecuador, generally around 70 in the day and 50’s at night. In fact, I keep a weather.com app open on my smartphone that continually shows the weather in both Las Vegas and Ibarra.

The only fly in the ointment is that with all the plants blooming, the air is full of pollen, and with no rain to clear it out, many suffer from watery eyes and sneezing due to allergies.

Because we have 5 congregations meeting at our Kingdom Hall (typical of Las Vegas, where the need is great for Kingdom Halls, but construction costs- even with free labor- is prohibitive), only two congregations are able to hold the Memorial at the Kingdom Hall. We at Silverado meet at the MacDonald Ranch community center which is comfortable and has ample parking.

We rent a nice facility to host the Memorial

The congregation distributed nearly 10,000 Memorial invitations in covering most of our territory and enjoyed an attendance of 198.

Then we had the Special Talk the next week with about 180 attending, and this past week enjoyed the visit of the circuit overseer, and as an added bonus, the district overseer as well. And next weekend we have our two day circuit assembly in St. George, UT. Then we get a bit of a breather until our district convention in July, also in St George (about a 2 hour drive from Las Vegas).

The video that the circuit overseer is showing is amazing (another full house- 190 in attendance) and there was not a dry eye in the house afterwards. The direction of the Branch is so clear- that if we can arrange our circumstances to do more, then the foreign field is the place to do it. Just seeing those brothers from Ecuador out in service made me want to hop a plane and leave tomorrow.

Jehovah wills, Shirley and I will be there next year when my retirement kicks in. In a few months, I’ll give my letter to the brothers here to send to the Ecuador branch for their recommendations of where we might best be used. I know I want to be in the mountains, so we’ll see what they suggest.

Here in the Silverado Congregation we have 120 publishers, 9 elders, and 4 ministerial servants. Included in those 120 are 16 regular pioneers, and the CO commended us for our strong efforts in the field. Of course we had an abundance of auxiliary pioneers so things were really hopping.

Congregation Picnic in the Park

It’ll be quite an adjustment for me to go to a congregation with few elders, but I’m preparing now by telling the other brothers not to anything and let me do all the work for a month or so. (OK- not really) But a few years ago when we split we only had 4 elders for a couple of years so I sort of got a taste of how to manage when the manpower is low. As the CO brought out, many congregations in other countries have only one or 2 elders, and some perhaps none at all.  But I’m going prepared to work, and I’m sure I won’t be disappointed.

The Yellow Banks Rose in front of my house blooms every April