Witnesses throughout the country volunteered to help with the work. The spirit that they showed was outstanding. There were 400 regular workers, on an average, at the construction site daily, along with approximately 200 “vacation” workers at any one time. During the four years of building, no less than 15,000 different Witnesses volunteered their services.

One brother recalls: “Regardless of weather, regardless of difficulties, whether it was warm or cool or even freezing cold, things moved ahead. At times when others would have closed down operations, we were just getting started.”

Some help also came from other lands. Even traveling thousands of miles to help out was not too far for Jack and Nora Smith, along with their 15-year-old daughter, Becky, from Oregon, in the United States. They were at the international convention in Munich when it was announced that the Society was planning to build new branch facilities in Germany. “What a privilege it would be to work on a new Bethel construction!” they said. They let it be known that they were available. Jack recalls: “While doing preconvention work in 1979, we received an application and an invitation to come as soon as possible. We were so excited that we could hardly concentrate on our work or on the assembly.”

It was possible to do most of the work ourselves. A brother still says in amazement: “None of us had had any experience working on such a large project with a constantly changing work crew. We often thought that in one area or another we had reached a standstill, because for certain jobs the needed specialists were unavailable. But many times just at the last minute, an application from a qualified brother would suddenly turn up. As brothers were needed, they appeared.” They thanked Jehovah for his direction and blessing.