Meanwhile, at neighboring Bulolo, Wally and Joy Busbridge’s zealous preaching aroused the ire of the New Tribes Mission, which regarded the area as its exclusive domain. As a result of pressure from the mission, Wally’s employer gave him an ultimatum, “Give up your religion, or find another job.”

Popondetta, a small town southeast of Lae, heard the good news through Jerome and Lavinia Hotota, who returned to their home province from Port Moresby. Jerome had plenty of initiative and used the Scriptures persuasively, while Lavinia was a warmhearted woman who showed real personal interest in others. True to form, when they started witnessing, the Anglican bishop and a large group of his followers soon arrived at their house demanding that they stop. But Jerome and Lavinia refused to be intimidated.

By 1963, the good news had reached Wewak, a town on Papua New Guinea’s remote northern coast. Karl Teynor and Otto Eberhardt, two German builders, worked on the Wewak hospital by day and studied with over 100 interested people during evenings and weekends. Their preaching enraged the local Catholic priest, who gathered a mob and threw Karl and Otto’s motorbikes into the sea. One of the priest’s accomplices, a prominent village leader, had a son who later became a Witness. Impressed by the improvements he saw in his son’s lifestyle, the man’s attitude softened, and he granted the Witnesses permission to preach in the villages that were under his control.

‘BAN THE WITNESSES’

All this progress did not sit well with our opposers. From 1960 onward, the combined forces of Christendom’s churches, the Returned Services League (RSL), and the local media launched an orchestrated campaign to vilify and ban Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Matters came to a head when a pamphlet explaining our position on blood transfusions was distributed to selected doctors, clergymen, and government officials. Typically, Christendom’s clergy were the first to react. On August 30, 1960, the South Pacific Post trumpeted the headline “Churches Angry on Blood Question.” In the accompanying article, church leaders denounced the Witnesses as “anti-Christ [and] an enemy of the Church.”

Subsequent articles lyingly claimed that Jehovah’s Witnesses were subversive and that their teachings promoted school truancy, nonpayment of taxes, cargo cults, and even poor hygiene. Other reports falsely accused them of using an imminent solar eclipse to whip up fear and “gain control of primitive native minds.” One editorial even berated the Witnesses for “living, eating, and working with villagers.” The South Pacific Post criticized them for teaching that “all men are equal” and claimed that the Witnesses were “a menace greater than Communism.”

Finally, on March 25, 1962, the RSL called on the colonial authorities to ban the Witnesses. The Australian government, however, publically rejected the request. “This announcement had a good effect throughout the country,” says Don Fielder. “Fair-minded people could see that the claims of our opposers were simply not true.”