In 1976 the Guam Kingdom Hall, built in 1964 and expanded in 1969, was demolished by Typhoon Pamela. “Guam looked as if a steamroller had flattened the island,” a brother said.

Instead of rebuilding the modest-sized meeting place, a new L-shaped branch facility was constructed, consisting of an office, a printery, six bedrooms, and a spacious 400-seat Kingdom Hall that could also accommodate assemblies. To withstand typhoons, it was built with steel-reinforced, 8-inch [20 cm]-thick concrete walls. A brother who had moved over from Hawaii commented: “It was so big, we thought we would never fill it. There were only 120 Witnesses on the entire island, and we bounced around in that place like marbles in a shoe box.” Just a few years later, that enormous Kingdom Hall was straining to contain assembly audiences.

Do-It-Yourself Building Projects

Other building work also needed to be done. Early in the 1980’s, Jim Persinger, in the United States, decided that his cement plant was taking up too much of his time, so he and his wife, Jene, chose to simplify their lives. They built a 50-foot [15 m] concrete sailboat, named it Petra, and set sail for Guam. The Persingers’ boat proved invaluable on construction projects.

Between 1982 and 1991, missionary homes and Kingdom Halls were built on six of the Micronesian islands. Lack of materials made construction a challenge. On some building projects, the brothers had to make their own concrete blocks by hand. They would pour cement into a small mold and let it set. They made their own gravel by smashing coral, and they had to provide their own sand. To transport supplies and workers from one island to another, the Petra was often used. “When we were building the Kingdom Hall in Chuuk, you couldn’t buy sand on the island,” Jim Persinger explains, “so we would sail out to a small island where nobody lived, and we would shovel sand from the beach into bags. Then we would load it onto the boat and sail back to the construction site.”

Ray Scholze, who had military engineering experience, was overseer for most of the Micronesian construction projects. At the core of his work crew were Calvin Arii, Avery Teeple, and Miles Inouye, who had come from Hawaii to help build the new branch and then made Guam their home. Together, they often improvised to get a job done.