• Romania
    2006 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

    • The first to be trained was Nicolae Bentaru, who in turn taught others. As was often the case, literature production at the Bentaru home was a family affair, each member performing certain tasks.

  • Romania
    2006 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

    • [Box/​Picture on page 136, 137]

      Jehovah Trained Me

      Nicolae Bentaru

      Born: 1957

      Baptized: 1976

      Profile: Served as a printer during the Communist era and now serves as a special pioneer with his wife, Veronica.

      I started to study the Bible in 1972 in the town of Săcele and was baptized four years later when I was 18 years old. The work was then under ban, and the meetings were held at the group study level. Nevertheless, we received a regular supply of spiritual food, even Bible dramas, which were presented as audio recordings along with color slides.

      After my baptism, my first assignment was to operate the slide projector. Two years later, I received the additional privilege of purchasing paper for our local underground printing operation. In 1980, I learned how to print and shared in producing The Watchtower, Awake!, and other publications. We used a mimeograph and another small, manually operated press.

      In the meantime, I met Veronica, a fine sister who had demonstrated her faithfulness to Jehovah, and we married. Veronica proved to be a great support to me in my work. In 1981, Otto Kuglitsch from the Austria branch taught me how to operate our very first sheetfed, offset duplicator. We set up a second press in Cluj-Napoca in 1987, and I was assigned to train the operators.

      After the ban was lifted in 1990, Veronica and I along with our son, Florin, continued in the work of printing and distributing literature for eight months. Florin helped to collate the printed pages before they were pressed, trimmed, stapled, packed, and shipped. In 2002, all three of us were assigned to pioneer in the town of Mizil, which has a population of 15,000 and is about 50 miles [80 km] north of Bucharest. Veronica and I serve as special pioneers, and Florin, as a regular pioneer.