August 16-18 2019 in
St. Louis Missouri we attended a very special convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses,
it was an international convention which had in attendance 5,000 international
delegates and in total we had 27,000 to 28,000 which included the international
and local state wide delegates and had over 8,000 to 9,000 others patched in from
other conventions in the united states and abroad during certain talks at our convention!
The theme was “Love
Never Fails” from 1 Corinthians 13:1-8. It was such an uplifting convention and
we all spent over a year preparing to attend and volunteer, which me and
Anthony did volunteer. Usually we have smaller conventions of 5,000 closer to
home but this year was an international in our state of Missouri and we were
all invited and it was the first international convention we have been able to
attend. There are other international conventions worldwide and several more
smaller conventions still occurring.
Me and Anthony and
my parents when they could made gifts for the delegates and they did likewise. We
made marble magnet bags. So we got little green, blue and off white with blue
or green string mesh bags which we put the marble magnets in. We used clear and
sometimes mottled flat back marbles and printed out in different fonts JW.ORG
for the one set of marble magnets. The second set had galaxies and I got those
pictures from scrap book paper at a local scrap booking store. The 3rd
set was small animals (hummingbird, lion, wolf, turtle, sloth, fox, skunk and a
few others), again from scrap book paper at a local scrap booking store. Each bag
had one of each of the marbles.
They were made by
putting mod podge on a foam brush and applying to the back of the marble and
then the marble was pressed to the image. Once the image was dry, using scissors
or an x-acto knife we cut it out and then using scissors we cut around to make
sure no excess image was sticking over the edges. Then we applied another layer
of mod podge to the back of the marbles. Once the second layer was dry we took
a roll of self adhesive magnets and cutting pieces down to size applied to the
back of the marbles and voila marble magnets.
We placed one of
each set per bag and then added a message for the delegates. Each message we
wrote we then used mod podge and placed different color and designed scrap book
paper to the back and then placed the messages inside the bags.
We met different people
from Sweden, Canada, USA, Japan, all over. During breaks for lunch and before and
after the convention sessions we saw the international delegates dressed to
represent each of their countries and it was pretty cool. I was taking it in
and didn’t get any pictures of them in dress but my mom did and one is below,
though in one of my pics you can see the back of two women with outfits that look
German kind of.
The last day we all
waved cut out hearts and sang Kingdom songs and didn’t want it to end. The programs
themselves were full of so many things to help us show love more and to endure.
The drama video was about Josiah and that was very good. This convention was so
wonderful and everyday since then I wish I could be back there.
That Saturday my
Nephew Jakob, 12 years old, was one of 224 who got baptized.
Here is a link so
you can read about the convention:
