Women With Real Missionary Spirit

While much of the world was still trying to cope with conditions resulting from the first world war and while Adolf Hitler was stirring up trouble in Europe, two of Jehovah’s Witnesses living in Texas, U.S.A.​—a woman named Kate Goas and her daughter Marion—​decided they would like to do more to spread the message of peace contained in the Bible. They wrote to the Brooklyn, New York, headquarters of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society asking where they could best be used; they explained that they had a knowledge of Spanish. Their assignment? Venezuela.

They arrived by ship in 1936 and rented a room in the capital, Caracas, which back then had a population of 200,000. Already, over a decade earlier, some Bible Students​—as Jehovah’s Witnesses were then known—​had visited Venezuela and had distributed thousands of Bible tracts in the principal cities, but they did not remain in the country. However, Kate Goas and her daughter were not in Venezuela for just a brief visit. Though rather refined and delicate in appearance, Kate carried an enormous bag of literature and a phonograph as she called from door to door. She and her daughter systematically covered all of Caracas. This having been accomplished, they moved into the interior of the country, traveling long distances by bus on dusty, unpaved roads. They preached in such places as Quiriquire, El Tigre, Ciudad Bolívar in the east, and Maracaibo in the west.

However, in July 1944 they had to return to the United States because Marion had contracted malaria. Kate Goas, in a letter to the Society dated August 2, 1944, wrote the following: “We have placed lots of literature . . . After witnessing practically throughout the Republic, we continue to find people that like our literature and read it each time we come round . . . Now, after a two-year constant witness in Caracas, seven persons, six sisters and one brother, have taken their stand for righteousness, having been baptized . . . These brethren are very happy in their Christian knowledge of Jehovah and his Kingdom . . . A good witness has indeed been given over and over again in all Caracas, and the content of the literature is well known . . . Yours for His Theocracy, Kate Goas.” The “one brother” here mentioned was young Rubén Araujo, about whom we will hear more later. (Incidentally, the seven who had been baptized by Sister Goas were rebaptized in 1946 by a brother, in harmony with the Bible pattern that shows baptisms being performed only by males who were in an approved relationship with Jehovah.)

Laying the Foundation for an Expanded Witness

At the time that Kate Goas wrote her letter to the Society, plans were being made in Brooklyn to send to Venezuela missionaries trained at the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead. Nathan Knorr and Fred Franz, at that time the president and the vice president of the Watch Tower Society, traveled to Latin America repeatedly to lay the groundwork for expanded missionary work there. They scheduled a visit to Venezuela for 1946. Three missionaries, graduates of Gilead School, had been assigned to Venezuela, but so far they had not received their visas. Who would organize things for the president’s visit on April 9-12, 1946?

One of the three missionaries was sent ahead on a tourist visa. He arrived by air and stayed at the home of Jeanette Atkins, a hospitable person who had learned the truth from Kate Goas. But three weeks after his arrival, the missionary mysteriously disappeared. His landlady and friends checked with the police and the airlines, finally discovering that he had returned to the United States with a bad dose of homesickness!

Before that occurred, however, Brothers Knorr and Franz had a most beneficial visit with the group in Venezuela. Rubén Araujo recalls that on the very day of their arrival, a meeting was held in the patio of the home of Jeanette Atkins, where 22 people heard talks by the visiting brothers.

Among those present was Pedro Morales, who was all fired up with the good news. “In the late 1930’s,” he later said, “Kate Goas and her daughter placed the book Riches with me in the main market of Maracaibo. Years later, I began reading it, and it opened up the Bible for me. When I got to the part about marking deserving ones in the forehead, it was like fire! (Ezek. 9:4) This started me looking for people who had this literature. I found four people who had been receiving books from a Trinidadian. We met together to study Riches every night, using each one’s home in turn as a meeting place.”

Love for Bible Truth Impelled Them

Before the arrival of the missionaries, the Society’s headquarters office in Brooklyn had been receiving reports from the tiny group formed by Sister Goas. There was just a handful of publishers, with very little literature. Books often had to be lent to interested people. The report sent in for March 1946 showed nine proclaimers of the good news in Venezuela, with Josefina López looking after the group, since she was the most active one in the group.

Rubén Araujo recollects the sterling example set by Sister López: “I was a teenager at the time . . . Josefina López was a mother of four sons and two daughters and very enthusiastic about what she was learning from Sister Goas. Almost every day after school, I would go to her house and discuss with her the new things she was learning about the truth. Although a busy housewife, Sister López managed to go out preaching from house to house and to conduct Bible studies every day after lunch, after her husband and oldest boys went back to work in the afternoon. She was a good example to all of us and really had the pioneer spirit, averaging between 60 and 70 hours a month as a publisher. After more than 40 years, there are still living letters of recommendation on her behalf in Caracas.”

Another in the original group was Domitila Mier y Terán, a widow. She had always had an inclination toward spiritual things. Her father had a Bible that she loved to read, and when he died, she searched his house to find it. His Bible was the only inheritance she wanted. What she found was just a part of the Bible, the rest having been torn by misuse. Yet, she treasured even that portion and used it until she was later able to buy a complete new Bible for herself. One day a friend who had acquired the Society’s book Reconciliation brought it to Domitila, saying that as an avid Bible reader, Domitila would appreciate it more. In an earnest effort to locate the publishers of the book, Domitila visited the Adventists and other Protestant groups. Finally, to Domitila’s delight, Kate Goas called at her home, and immediately Domitila agreed to study the Bible with her. Two of her sons, baptized during the first visit of Brothers Knorr and Franz, later served as circuit overseers, and a third, Gonzalo, as a congregation elder. Yet another son, Guillermo, though present when Kate Goas first called at their home, was not baptized until 1986.