OFF TO SOUTH AFRICA!

At Brooklyn Bethel, the four of us brothers received three months of training in hot-lead typesetting for letterpress printing. Then we boarded a cargo ship bound for Cape Town, South Africa. I had just turned 20. It was evening when we began the long train journey from Cape Town to Johannesburg. The first stop at dawn was at a little town in the Karoo, a semidesert area. It was dusty, smoky, and hot. The four of us peered out the window and wondered what kind of place this was. What were we getting ourselves into? In later years, we would revisit this area and come to appreciate those charming little towns and their peaceful way of life.

My assignment for a few years was to operate the amazing and intricate Linotype machine, setting lines of lead type for printing the Watchtower and Awake! magazines. The branch office printed the magazines in many African languages not only for South Africa but for many countries to the north. That new rotary printing press that brought us halfway around the world was being well-used!

Later, I worked in the Factory Office, which cared for various aspects of the printing, shipping, and translation work. Life for me was busy, satisfying, and meaningful.

BACK TO BETHEL

My assignment at Bethel was with the Service Department, where I had the privilege of working along with many mature, experienced brothers. In those days, each congregation received a letter in response to a report from the circuit overseer after his visit. The letters were meant to encourage and to give any direction that might be needed. This involved much work for our secretaries who translated correspondence from Xhosa, Zulu, and other languages into English and then from English into the African languages. I appreciated those hardworking translators who also gave me insight into the difficulties that our black African brothers and sisters faced.

At that time, South Africans lived under the apartheid system of government. Each racial group had designated living areas, so there wasn’t much socializing between people of different races. Our black African brothers spoke their own languages, preached in their own languages, and attended their own language congregations.

I did not know many black Africans, since my congregation territory assignments had always been English-speaking. Now, though, I had a chance to learn about the black Africans and their culture and customs. I learned of the challenges our brothers faced in dealing with local traditions and religious beliefs. How courageous they were in breaking free from unscriptural traditions and in facing severe opposition from their family and village when refusing to follow spiritistic practices! In rural areas, there was much poverty. Many had little in the way of a formal education, but they respected the Bible.

I had the privilege of working on some legal cases involving freedom of worship and neutrality. It was so faith-strengthening to observe the loyalty and courage of young Witness children who had been expelled from school for refusing to join in prayers and hymns.

The brothers faced another challenge in the little African country that was then called Swaziland. When King Sobhuza II died, all citizens were required to carry out certain mourning rites. Men were to shave off their hair, and women were to cut their hair short. Many brothers and sisters were persecuted for refusing to participate in this practice that was related to ancestor worship. How their loyalty to Jehovah warmed our hearts! We learned a lot about faithfulness, loyalty, and patience from our African brothers, and that built up our faith.

BACK TO THE PRINTERY

In 1981, I was assigned to assist with the development of computerized printing methods. So back to the Printery I went. What an exciting time it was! The printing world was changing. A local sales representative gave the branch a phototypesetter to try out, without any obligation. This resulted in replacing the nine Linotype machines with five new phototypesetters. A new rotary offset printing press was also installed. Things were speeding up!

Computerization led to devising new composition methods using MEPS, the Multilanguage Electronic Publishing System. What a long way we had come from the cumbersome, slow Linotype machines and hot-lead printing presses that had brought us four Canadian Bethelites to South Africa! (Isa. 60:17) By then all of us had married good, spiritually-minded pioneer sisters. Bill and I were still serving at Bethel. Ken and Dennis had started raising families nearby.

Branch activities were increasing. Bible literature was being translated and printed in an increasing number of languages, and it was being shipped to other branches. Consequently, a new Bethel complex was needed. The brothers built one in a beautiful area west of Johannesburg, and it was dedicated in 1987. It was a pleasure to be part of all that expansion and to serve on the Branch Committee in South Africa for many years.