BUILDING IN THE CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

After serving in Haiti, I was assigned to serve as a missionary in the Central African Republic. Later, I had the privilege of serving there as a traveling overseer and then as branch overseer.

In those days, many Kingdom Halls were extremely simple. I learned how to collect straw in the bush and how to thatch a roof. Seeing me struggle with this new trade was quite a spectacle for passersby. It also encouraged the brothers to become more involved in constructing and maintaining their own Kingdom Halls. Religious leaders mocked us because their churches had tin roofs and ours did not. Undeterred, we continued with our simple straw-roofed Kingdom Halls. The mockery stopped when a severe storm hit Bangui, the capital. It lifted the tin roof off a church and crashed it down onto the main street. The thatched roofs on our Kingdom Halls stayed put. To provide better supervision for the Kingdom work, we constructed a new branch office and missionary home in only five months to the day.d

MARRIED LIFE​—WITH A ZEALOUS COMPANION

In 1976 the Kingdom work was banned in the Central African Republic, and I was assigned to N’Djamena, the capital of neighboring Chad.

About two years later, the ban in the Central African Republic was lifted. We returned there and served in the traveling work. Our home was a van with a folding bed, a barrel that could hold 53 gallons (200 L) of water, a propane-gas refrigerator, and a gas burner. Travel was difficult. On one trip, we were stopped at no less than 117 police checkpoints.

Temperatures often rose to 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50°C). At assemblies, it was sometimes difficult to find enough water for the baptism. So the brothers dug into dry river beds and little by little collected sufficient water for the baptism, which was often performed in a barrel.