IT WAS on October 25, 1945, that two missionaries of Jehovah’s Witnesses, graduates of the third class of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead, stepped off a DC-3 plane in La Paz. Their names were Edward Michalec and Harold Morris. It was from that time that the work of making known God’s kingdom started in real earnest in Bolivia. These missionaries were all alone in a vast and challenging land, ranging from the lofty Andes mountains and the bleak and barren Altiplano, to remote tropical valleys, virgin jungles and frontier lowlands. This was the land of the giant condor and prideful llama.

Now, more than thirty years later, a peak of 2,476 proclaimers of the Kingdom are active in 58 congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout Bolivia. They rejoice that the spiritual challenge has been met, and that all kinds of people in this land of variety have been gathered into Jehovah’s spiritual paradise.

Due to problems of terrain, travel and communication, Jehovah’s Witnesses have found it necessary to serve fourteen separate areas with semiannual circuit assemblies. In early days, some of these assemblies were very small. At an assembly in Camiri in 1966, only nineteen persons were in attendance. And there was the humorous situation that all nineteen were called on to share in one program on the platform, leaving no one in the audience! However, the spiritual benefit was felt by all. Today, circuit assemblies usually have attendances three times the number of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the area.

However, despite this superstitious Altiplano environment, Jehovah’s work is flourishing among nearly twenty congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

As Jehovah’s Witnesses got busy in the various mining areas of Bolivia, truth swept superstition aside. Congregations of God’s people have now been established in sixteen of the major mining districts.