So there I am, on a rented boat soaring down the canals of the famous "Floating Market" of Thailand. It was about 12:30 pm, so most of the waterways were fairly cleared out of the merchant boats, so our rented boat was really moving to get to where our host wanted to take us this fine day. I was sitting at the very front of the boat, so I didn't get splashed by the mirky canal waters of the Mekong. I was taking photos looking back with my new Nikon D5000 w/Sigma 18-200mm lens when my wife (behind me) points and says, "Hey, look at that!" I being busy with taking photos asked, "What?" She points again, and there, along the canal of one of the worlds most famous marketplaces, sits a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses. I was too stunned to take a photo, although I kind of wished I did.
I was in Asia all last week. Hong Kong, China, and finally Bangkok. I didn't spot even one Kingdom Hall, but on this next to last day in the middle of the jungle in a canal offshoot of the Mekong River, sat a dingy Kingdom Hall in the middle of a floating marketplace. Unbelievable!!!
Thailand is filled with Buddhist temples, they are everywhere, even in the middle of the jungle. The are beautiful, elaborat, and while being pretty, I consider them to be Pagan. The day before I was reading a book in my room at the resort I was staying at (Rose Riverside Resort) entitled, "The Teachings of Buddha". While there was alot of good advice in there in which to live your life, towards the middle to back of the book it started talking about how you have to call on Buddha to be saved and Enlightened, how he was the only way to salvation, etc, etc. To me, it was typical bait and switch tactic. Here's all this good advice on how to live your life, but oh hey wait - you gotta believe in this deity in order to be saved, and only him. Sorry, I'll stick with Jesus as my mediator to YHWH, not the Governing Body, F&DS, Buddha, Muhammed, or anyone else. (my apologies to the atheists and agnostics on here)
Back to the topic, this kind of really does PROVE that there really are Kingdom Halls out in the middle of nowhere and I'm sure the peasants of Thailand walk quite a distance to get there, and maybe they swim the canal to make the meeting in time, right? LOL!!!!!
Seriously, what's really sad about this situation is here I am, from Pennysylvania, USA - the birthplace of the CT Russell and this crazy cult, I live only 3 hours from NYC, and here I encounter this half way around the globe and these people have no clue. They don't have the internet, they can't post on here. I'm talking about the poor, because I did see plenty of huts with satelitte dishes on them and with that internet service possibly, so maybe there is hope.
I was in China for (1) day, my first time there. Gangzhou province, Hijouie City. The thing that struck me the most, and this is like a brick to the face when you think about the "Preaching Work that must be spread thoughout the entire earth" - is the incredible amount of people that are there. I mean, I was on a train from Hong Kong and then a van, and this city just kept going on and on.......highrise apartment buildings built tight together, probably 50 stories tall.....on and on.....millions upon millions of people. It reminded me very much of that scene from The Matrix when Morpheous is telling how he saw the human growth fields and you see the robots harvesting the humans, how they stretch on and on.....it's like that, except highrise apartment complexes. So how is Jehovah's Word reaching these multitudes? JW's are still banned in China, right? So how is his word getting out? Living in the very under-populated USA, neighbourhoods and developments (even new ones) go untouched by the Pioneers for YEARS, decades even without having your door knocked on. So do tell, how in the hell is Jehovah's word getting out to these mega-cities in China that weren't even there 10 years ago?????? They are popping up all over, and there are over a billion + people in China? These are the things regular JW's who sit around in their trailer parks and scrub toilets can't even concieve of much less rationally think about. It has to be seen to be believed.
- Wing Commander
