Distributing French Awake! in Quebec
“A DARK rainy night, just after supper, found us at St. Jerome busy putting ‘raincoats’ on folded Réveillez-vous! [French Awake!] After some 550 of them had been carefully tucked inside of waxed paper held by elastics we went out into the stormy night and distributed them. With what result? A few days later we received word from the Society that someone had sent in a coupon from one of those rain-coated copies of Awake!
“We immediately followed up this interest, and to our surprise found three brothers living together who had on their own left the Roman Catholic Church some eleven years previously, and since then had roamed from church to church in search of the truth. All they had was a firm conviction that the Bible was true, even though they did not clearly understand it. They had some five different translations of the Bible. With what little they understood they had interested others to put faith in the Bible. For over an hour the most learned of the brothers tried to explain the Bible, only to be corrected repeatedly by our quoting other texts to prove that our conclusions were right.
“After thus continuing for more than an hour this meek and teachable man threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender and said: ‘Your knowledge is far ahead of mine, you take over and tell us about salvation.’ This we gladly did. One of the three brothers declared: ‘Before, when we found people interested, we, due to lack of knowledge, had to send them to other churches, but now we are going to send all of them to you.’ The following week a Bible study was started and after two hours of study, when it was suggested that it was quitting time, they did not want to quit even though it was midnight. The following Sunday found two of them at the Kingdom Hall and the following week one began to take part in the study by giving comments, which comments gave evidence of his having well studied his Watchtower; much to the delight of all of us.
“The result of the Awake! tossed that rainy night is: two Bible studies started, five subscriptions taken, fourteen bound books placed along with several booklets and magazines, three persons are already speaking the truth to their neighbors, two are anxious to send their resignations to the Catholic Church (the three brothers had already sent their resignations even before hearing of the truth). They realize that to be in the new world they must preach, and they are eager to do so.”