A Tenfold Increase

“A group of young brothers completed a 200-seat hall on a scenic island in the Maroni,” reports Branch Committee coordinator Wim van Seijl, who recently visited the area.

Similar increase was evident in other parts of the country too. Many congregations reported meeting attendance of double the number of publishers, making Kingdom Halls too small to handle the crowd. Thus, early in 1987, the Governing Body gave the branch the green light to build a large 110-foot [34 m] by 200-foot [60 m] Assembly Hall and four Kingdom Halls. It was a timely decision.

“Shortly after we bought cement,” recounts Henk Panman, then caretaker of the Assembly Hall, “the country ran out of cement. Construction sites folded, but we worked right through.” Later, the Netherlands branch helped out by sending four containers of building materials. The construction crew and hundreds of volunteers worked for a year and a half and completed four attractive new meeting places.