Brother and Sister Clarke arrived back in Auki in July, accompanied by Steven and Allan Brown of Auckland. They brought with them equipment donated from the completed New Zealand branch construction site. The New Zealanders planned their visit with the intention of finishing off the roof structure of the hall, but instead, their work centered around demolishing much of the previous year’s structure.

To obtain the logs, the sisters of the Auki Congregation built a 20-foot-wide [6 m] road, cutting a half-mile-long [0.8 km] swath through thick jungle from the logging site to the main road. They mustered all their strength to cut down trees, build bridges over ditches, and remove obstacles from the new roadway. Then the selected trees could be felled, trimmed of their branches, and milled square with chain saws.

“We Are Like Ants”

The new timbers had been cut 14 inches [36 cm] square and 21 feet [6.4 m] long. But how would these huge logs reach the main road half a mile away?

The congregation members responded: “We are like ants! With enough hands we can move anything!” (Compare Proverbs 6:6.) When additional brothers and sisters were needed to carry the logs, the cry would resonate in the logging area: “Ants! Ants! Ants!” Brothers and sisters would come streaming from all directions to lend a hand. Forty brothers and sisters would lift a half-ton log by hand and carry it down the road to the main highway, to be carted to the building site by truck.

Setting the pillars and posts in place was a risky operation. Once again, the native way of doing things proved to be most successful. On arrival at the site, each pillar was placed about three yards [3 m] away from the deep hole into which it was to be lowered and then set in concrete.

Thirty brothers and sisters lifted the top end of a pillar onto a crisscross frame. They then pushed the pillar rapidly across the ground, with the bottom end skidding toward its designated hole. Two of the most courageous brothers stood holding thick pieces of board on the opposite side of the hole, and when the skidding log hit those boards, it would come to an abrupt stop, so that the forward momentum propelled the pillar into an upright position, whereupon it dropped into the foundation hole.

In December 1987, Brother Henry Donaldson, a roofing contractor from New Zealand, arrived. The project was crowned with a beautiful 12,000-square-foot [1,100 sq m] roof. Now, as passenger trucks carrying their tormentors passed the construction site, the brothers and sisters at last could sing and dance​—pointing excitedly to the nearly completed structure!

Imagine their joy when, a few days later, the hall was used for the first time. Viv Mouritz from the Australia branch, serving as zone overseer, addressed an audience of 593. He commended all the volunteers who had worked so hard on this massive project for their spirit of self-sacrifice and endurance.

[Pictures on page 243]

Logs carried from swamplands and cut square with chain saws are loaded onto a truck. Squared-off log (wall post) is put in foundation hole for Assembly Hall at Auki

[Pictures on page 244]

Huge roof trusses weighing up to five tons are made by bolting eight logs together. The trusses are positioned on top of 20-foot-high [6 m] support pillars without the aid of heavy construction equipment