Kingdom Proclaimers Report
God’s People Offer Themselves Willingly
HIS name was Joseph, and he was a native of the island of Cyprus. He was among the first-century Christians who sold fields and houses in order to contribute financially to the advancement of Christianity. Because of his warmheartedness and generosity, he became known as Barnabas, meaning “Son of Comfort.”—Acts 4:34-37.
Such genuine interest in others has always been a trademark of true worshipers of Jehovah. Jehovah’s Witnesses today are no different, as is highlighted by the following experience from the Solomon Islands.
A group of over 60 Witnesses from Australia and New Zealand traveled to Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands on Guadalcanal. They came to assist with the construction of an Assembly Hall for large Christian gatherings. It took them only about two weeks to erect a hall with a seating capacity of some 1,200!
About the same time, the local authorities of the small town of Munda, on the island of New Georgia, granted the congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses a plot of land right in the center of town. They wanted to build a Kingdom Hall, a place of worship. And they truly needed one. They had been meeting in the living room of a small leaf house, but they had no resources to build a Kingdom Hall.a The congregation was made up of mostly elderly and infirm people and children, and there was no one with experience in the construction trade.
About 235 miles [380 km] away, on the island of Guadalcanal, the Witnesses in the city of Honiara offered themselves willingly. (Psalm 110:3) They reasoned: “If our brothers in other countries were willing to build us an Assembly Hall in two weeks, then we can surely assist our brothers in Munda and build them a Kingdom Hall in two weeks.”
That is what happened. One day a ferryboat loaded with happy and eager Witness volunteers arrived in Munda. Men and women, old and young, all busied themselves in unloading their cargo and got ready to start building with the timber, cement, roofing iron, and other materials that had arrived in Munda ahead of them.
Soon after the work started, a severe electrical storm cut off the town’s water supply. However, this did not prove to be an insurmountable problem. The Witnesses dug a well that supplied water during the entire building operation. What about food for all the workers? That was not a problem either. The volunteers from Honiara had been sent on their way with plenty of food provided by the Honiara congregations. They even brought their own cooks!
The neighbors watched the progress of the project with disbelief. One of them said: “Things don’t happen in days here. They take years.” Another neighbor, a religious leader, admitted that his church has been under construction for the past 20 years and that it is still not finished. In contrast, the new Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Munda was finished in just ten days!
[Footnotes]
a A leaf house is made from materials cut from the bush or jungle. The frame is made of sticks and poles, and the roof and walls are covered with panels made from palm leaves folded over sticks and stitched with vines.
[Maps on page 24]
(For fully formatted text, see publication)
South Pacific Ocean
SOLOMON ISLANDS
Munda
GUADALCANAL
Honiara
[Map]
AUSTRALIA
NEW ZEALAND