Among those baptized at this convention was a young man, Christian Rømer, who had come in contact with the Bible Students on his home island, Bornholm. Before World War I, his father had received a gift subscription to The Watch Tower, and one day in 1919, Christian, then 20 years old, found a copy. “What happened to me that day was so great an experience that words fail to express it,” he relates. “This was the truth I knew had to be in the Bible, and now I got it, now I had it.”

During the convention in Copenhagen, he attended a meeting for colporteurs. Here he met Kristian Dal​—and his life course was set. He began serving as a colporteur in Bornholm, June 1922.

Pioneering in Jutland

Now began a more intensive work in the rural territories. In January 1924 three colporteurs, Knud and Kristian Dal and Christian Rømer, formed a “colporteur column” and were dispatched to Jutland with the town of Skive as their first station. Brother Lüttichau opened the campaign with a public talk in the largest hall of the town, followed by meetings in pubs and community halls throughout the entire area with talks by Kristian Dal. Newspaper advertisements and handbills announced the talks. After the discourse, the colporteurs would go through the territory, placing books and booklets.

In the spring of 1924, the trio arrived in Haderslev, South Jutland, a province that was once part of Germany but that was reunited with Denmark by popular vote in 1920. Young men from that area were conscripted to fight on the Western Front. Quite a number of them had left their faith in God buried in the French trenches.

Christian Rømer describes how it was to preach to these people: “It was a somewhat peculiar but interesting territory to work. Their political fight had made them approachable.”

One of those whom the colporteurs met on their first round through the territory was Anton Hansen, a clogmaker in Over Jerstal. He too lost his faith on the Western Front. Along with a couple of war comrades, he attended the lecture “What Do the Scriptures Say About Hell?” The following day he was visited by Knud Dal, and after a heated, three-hour-long discussion, he accepted The Harp of God. That book rekindled his faith so much that together with his wife, Kathrine, he became prominent in the preaching work in South Jutland.

Up until the fall of 1925, the three colporteurs in the “Dal column” used bicycles or trains for transportation, but now a brother made an automobile available to them. Christian Rømer traveled to Copenhagen to pick it up. “It was a big event! A delightful old tin lizzie, with folding top and all,” he fondly recalls. “And as the only one who had a license, I was the chauffeur. The car lasted a year. Then we traded it in for the elegance of the time, a 1923 Ford sedan​—enclosed and warmer in the winter. Quite a posh vehicle!”

These colporteurs gradually worked through all of Jutland and Fyn, until March 1929, when the funds for this special activity were exhausted.

More Colporteurs Join in the Work

In the meantime Ella Krøyer, from Copenhagen, and Kristine Poulsen, a schoolteacher with a Grundtvigian background, had begun to preach through southern Sjælland. Here too the territory was untouched. The autumn of 1926 found the sisters witnessing around the town of Vordingborg. Sister Poulsen remembers: “It was in the sugar-beet season. There was no asphalt on the roads, and the traffic of sugar-beet wagons during the day along with the rain during the night made deep ruts in the muddy roads. At times we had to give up visiting a farm or a house because we just couldn’t get through on the road.”

One day the sisters spotted just what they needed to conquer the mud​—high-top rubber boots! Each quickly bought a pair. But rubber boots were a novelty in those days, so they drew a lot of attention wherever the sisters walked. A trip to Copenhagen to rest up a bit brought their boots into the limelight. A sister in the branch office at Ole Suhrs Gade was so thrilled with their new footwear that she picked up the boots, which were standing in the entryway, and pranced around the office showing everyone how well-equipped the colporteurs were!

A third unit of colporteurs, Anna Petersen and Thora Svendsen, also covered the territory in Fyn and Jutland. Sister Petersen says: “We pioneers were usually sent to areas where there were no congregations. We would go to the general-store keeper and ask if he knew who in town had a room to let. Our kitchen consisted of a little kerosene stove and a couple of pots on an old table or a couple of crates we would get from the storekeeper.”

Sometimes the two sisters joined the “Dal column.” The result? Sister Petersen and Brother Rømer decided on a more permanent union. They married in 1933, and even though Sister Rømer is now confined to a nursing home, Brother Rømer is still in the full-time ministry.

Organized to Preach

In the meantime much had happened in Denmark. In 1922 the historical appeal to “Advertise the King and Kingdom” had been sounded at Cedar Point, Ohio, U.S.A. Now, not only the colporteurs but all associated with the congregation were to preach regularly.

[Picture on page 87]

In the 1920’s colporteurs preached with unflagging zeal. Kristian Dal, left, Christian Rømer, far right, with Anna Petersen, Søren Lauridsen, and Thora Svendsen