Thursday, August 29, 2019

2019 International Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses “Love Never Fails”

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: