After the assembly, Brother Knorr and his secretary, Milton Henschel, spent three days in Cape Town at the branch office, giving counsel and encouragement to the Bethel staff.

But we can imagine how thrilled they all must have been when the news came through in October 1947 that Brothers Knorr and Henschel were due to visit them in January 1948. Thousands of leaflets, hundreds of posters and many banners were prepared to advertise the talks to be given by Brother Knorr to Africans and Europeans in Bulawayo and Salisbury. About this time, Eric Cooke, Southern Rhodesia’s first missionary from Gilead School, also arrived on the scene.

Difficulties arose in Salisbury when the Native Administration Department canceled the arrangements previously made for the use of the hall in Harari Township for the convention period, January 16-18, 1948. They also canceled the sleeping accommodations that had previously been arranged for African brothers. So on January 13 Brother Cooke had an interview with the director of the Native Department to find out the basis for his objections. It was found that he had a wrong idea concerning the Society, believing that it was ‘against the government.’ Brother Cooke overcame this erroneous idea by reading a section of the Yearbook Jehovah’s Witnesses. This impressed the official so much that he restored the use of the hall in Harari and made sleeping accommodations available for the thousands expected to attend the assembly. Thus the way was opened for a successful assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses, with a peak attendance beyond the 6,000 mark.

During his short visit Brother Knorr took time to call on government officials to discuss certain important restrictions on the Society’s literature due to shortage of dollars in sterling countries. Brother Knorr ironed out this problem with officialdom by saying that all literature supplies for Southern Rhodesia would be sent in free, thus avoiding currency problems.

It was during this visit that Brother Knorr arranged for the depot to become a branch office on September 1, 1948, with Eric Cooke as the branch overseer. It was the beginning of a new chapter for the Kingdom work in Southern Rhodesia. At that time the peak in publishers there was 4,232.