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.

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.”