a zone visit is a zone visit no more

we were excited to be tied in for the "zone visit" on saturday morning, and the first thing we were told was that these visits are no longer called "zone visits".  now it's just a visit from the branch.  the change of name didn't make it any less exciting.

the theme scripture was matthew 24:14 and the brothers said many times that we can see the fullfilment of this prophecy in ecudor's growth, and that we are all to be commended for our hard work and our active part in the ministry here.

the first two parts were in spanish - no real surprise there, but it did make it hard for me to get all the statistics.  so it's possible these aren't 100% exact, but i'm definitely there within 100 or so!

• 112 new congregations in the past year
• 1 new circuit in the past year
• moving to electronic maps which is allowing bethel to get a better report of how our territories are being worked and how often. it's also giving them a better view of where our seldom (or never) worked territories are, and it's a help for being better organized when we're doing campaigns. we don't have these yet in otavalo, but they mentioned that last year 500,000 new people received a witness due to the use of these maps in isolated areas. 
• 168 temporary special pioneers have been appointed to work these newly identified isolated territories. 
• they encouraged us to pray about our circumstances to see if we are able to move to a more isolated part of the country where there is a greater need. 
• i hope these figures are right - 487 new KH have been built for 750 new congregations (doesn't that seem like a lot????) and we still need 73 more KH in the country.  2 new assembly halls have been approved for building in 2015 and 2 new expandable KH which will allow for seating of 1000 when opened up, for assemblies. 
• the new regional translation office in riobamba is finished, and now between that house and the one up in otavalo they are translating for all of the local dialects of kichwa in ecuador. 
• ecuador is keeping up with technology!  they gave the example of the international convention which was transmitted in part or in whole to the entire country, and now the transmission of that day's visit to the entire country (over the course of 2 meetings on saturday and 2 on sunday). 
• the branch itself has seen a lot of expansion:
• 1987 new branch built in guyaquil
• 1993 to 1995 they expanded, also adding the assembly hall
• 2006 to 2008 they expanded again
• 2015 we have a planned expansion/renovation work to better use the space we have

then we had the special talk from our visiting brother Harold Korpurn (? spelling?).  he was awesome, so expressive and sweet AND the talk was in english, translated into spanish.  the translating brother did an awesome job expressing Brother Korpurn's thoughts and emotions.  he gave a super encouraging talk on how we can have the mind of Christ (based on 1 corinthians 2: 14 - 16).  

we all left feeling like we had been given a big hug by the branch, and it was such a lovely experience. we were at the saturday morning session, which was attended by 46,811 through the entire country.  the anticipated attendance for the full weekend was 100,000.