Witnessing in Bogotá

Meet Agustín Primo, a member of the Colombia Branch Committee. He learned the truth in 1972, from a North American Witness who was serving in Bogotá when the need for Kingdom preachers was very great. Sixty years old and now retired from secular employment, Agustín works full-time at the branch. He tells us that the present branch office and factory are too small to care adequately for the country’s more than 40,000 publishers and 600 congregations, even though the buildings were dedicated just ten years ago.

From where is the increase in publishers coming? Looking at the evangelizing work done in this sprawling city of some five million inhabitants can give us some clues.

Witnessing in wealthier parts of the city is difficult because of guarded apartment buildings and condominiums, where dwellers enter and leave mostly by car. And when calling on the private homes in these sections, publishers face the challenge of getting past the housemaids to reach family members. But it is in the growing middle-class sections where stimulating Bible conversations are often possible.

In the less pretentious, working-class neighborhoods, you will find many people who are well informed about world events. Thus home Bible studies are easier to start with them, and they progress in the truth quite rapidly.

And finally, there is the bane of so many overcrowded cities in developing countries​—the shantytowns and squatter settlements that seem to spring up overnight on unoccupied flatlands and denuded hillsides. These are the last camping grounds for the endless streams of people who abandon rural areas for the strange life of the city. Among the scores of thousands living there, many listen to the comforting message of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and some respond by embracing the Kingdom hope.

[Pictures on page 71]

Witnessing in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, and in subtropical Cali, left