He returned to Lagos and reported to Brother Brown on conditions in the field. After the Watchtower Study that Sunday, Brother Brown asked the audience: “Who are those who want to go to eastern Nigeria to find Jehovah’s sheep there in the preaching work?” Alfred Nduaguibe, Peter Otudoh, and three others volunteered.

Such long-distance traveling was both tiring and dangerous. Brothers Brown and Otudoh, for example, narrowly escaped from robbers armed with knives and machetes on the road from Benin City to Agbor. They avoided the roadblock by swerving the car to one side and then had to drive fast in order to escape the pursuing bandits.

A POWERFUL INSTRUMENT FOR SPREADING THE GOOD NEWS

New equipment and a new technique​—use of the sound car—​appeared in January 1936. Let Brother Brown tell about it:

“It is a pleasure to enter a village for the first time with the sound car, everyone looking with astonishment. . . . We always inquire for the center of the village, and from there we operate, commencing with a lively song record. You can see the people coming toward the car from all parts. In some places the farmers are almost a mile away from the village, plowing the farms, and on hearing the voice from the records . . . they look around and above to see where the voice of God is coming from. Not seeing anyone, they rush toward the village . . . After the lecture we announce the books and booklets; then they rush. . . . Some days we distributed over 1,400 penny booklets.”