The project began early in 1987. Many IVCWs (International Volunteer Construction Workers) flew to Bogotá and were soon adjusting to life on La Granja in Faca (The Farm in Facatativá). During 1989 there were some 75 of them on the job. Also, Colombian volunteers swelled the size of the family. Nearby in Faca, townspeople looked on with curiosity and admiration as a large dilapidated rooming house that the Society bought was remodeled and spruced up, transforming it into Las Torres (The Towers) to provide comfortable lodging for 80 additional workers.

With the drone of earth-moving equipment and the rhythmic clanging of the concrete-pile driver, the project began to take shape. On weekends and holidays, enthusiastic volunteers from the 100 congregations in the Bogotá area went out to La Granja to work shoveling sand and concrete or shaping and tying steel for concrete piles and thick wall panels, to be tilted up by cranes and fastened in place. In the kitchen, volunteers assisted in preparing noon and evening meals for these hungry workers.

Hundreds of temporary IVCWs, scheduled by the Society, pay their own way to Colombia and spend two weeks or a month or two on the project. One foreign worker, when back home, wrote to the branch: “I was able to spend the most enjoyable two weeks of my life as a worker at the construction site in Facatativá, Colombia. I had the opportunity to see that something very special and unusual was happening there.”

Local visitors too, during tours of Bethel and the Faca work site, have been impressed, surprised at the organization and the magnitude of the work of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Colombia. They cannot conceive that all those people are volunteers and pay their own way to go there to work. One company executive said that his family “just had to see this.” The mayor of the town and city council members, after lunch and a tour of the site, said that they would like to have their city employees “come out here and really learn how to work.”

Hundreds of temporary IVCWs, scheduled by the Society, pay their own way to Colombia and spend two weeks or a month or two on the project. One foreign worker, when back home, wrote to the branch: “I was able to spend the most enjoyable two weeks of my life as a worker at the construction site in Facatativá, Colombia. I had the opportunity to see that something very special and unusual was happening there.”