In 1940, Brother Brown, a Trinidadian employed at the oil refinery, performed the first baptism in Curaçao​—that of five people with whom he had studied. Among these were Martin and Wilhelmina Naarendorp

Anita Libretto, daughter of the Naarendorps, reminisces: “In 1940, I was six years old. I remember that my parents were studying with an English-speaking brother. They spoke only Dutch and could barely understand English, but they struggled through and in six months’ time were baptized. Meetings were held at our house, but they were not as well organized as now. They were study evenings that lasted until after midnight, as my parents struggled to understand books written in English.”