Four months after we arrived in Tahiti, we boarded a small sailing boat filled with a cargo of dry coconuts. Five days later we reached our new assignment—the island of Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands. About 1,500 people lived on the island, but there were no brothers. Only us.

Conditions were primitive at the time. We lived in a small house made of concrete and bamboo. There was no electricity. We had a water tap that worked sometimes, but the water was muddy. Most of the time, we used rainwater that collected in a cistern. There were no paved roads, just dirt tracks.

To reach distant parts of the island, we had to rent horses. The saddles were made of wood—very uncomfortable, especially for Babette, who had never ridden a horse before. We carried a machete to cut through bamboo that had fallen across the track. It was a big change from life in France.

We held Sunday meetings, although only the two of us attended. Initially we didn’t have the other meetings since there were only us two. Instead we read the meeting material together.

After a few months, we decided that it was not good to continue that way. Michel relates: “I said to Babette, ‘We must dress properly. You sit down there, and I will sit here. I will start with a prayer, and then we’ll have the Theocratic Ministry School and the Service Meeting. I’ll ask the questions, and you’ll answer, even if you are the only other person in the room.’ It was good we did that because it’s easy to become spiritually lax when there is no congregation.”

It took time to get people to come to our Christian meetings. We two were by ourselves for the first eight months. Later, we were joined by one, two, or sometimes three others. One year, just the two of us started the annual celebration of the Lord’s Evening Meal. After ten minutes, some people came, so I stopped and started the talk again.

We learned patience on Nuku Hiva. We had to wait for everything apart from the most basic necessities. If you wanted a book, for example, you had to write for it, then wait for two or three months before it arrived.