• Lands of the Former Yugoslavia
    2009 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

    • By 1992, the group that met for the Congregation Book Study and the Watchtower Study in the city of Herceg Novi had increased to 15.” Savo, along with his wife and daughter, continued to make progress and were baptized in 1993. Today there is a Kingdom Hall with 25 publishers in this picturesque coastal city.

      In the early 1990’s, a group of publishers met in the capital city of Podgorica. The group continued to grow, and in 1997 plans were made to purchase property for a Kingdom Hall. The land that the brothers purchased had a wall that they decided to keep for privacy. But a police officer living in the basement of the neighboring building asked if they would remove the wall so that more light could reach his dark apartment. To promote good relations with the neighbor, the brothers agreed to take down the wall and replace it with a fence. What a blessing their neighborliness proved to be!

      When other tenants of the building made trouble for the brothers, the police officer warned the tenants that if they attacked the Kingdom Hall, he would see that they were prosecuted. Now the brothers have a beautiful Kingdom Hall as well as a house for special pioneers and a large covered parking area that can also be used for assemblies.

      Things did not go as well, though, for the brothers in the town of Nikšić. They purchased property in 1996, but the community was hostile to having a Kingdom Hall. Brothers guarded the building project day and night, fearing that neighbors would try to sabotage it. One day a local priest recruited a mob of 200 people, who stormed the property with guns and sticks. They fired their weapons into the air and began to tear down the Kingdom Hall brick by brick. The police stood by without taking any action.

      When the situation could not be resolved peacefully, the brothers looked for other property. Four years later they found a building, which they renovated and converted into a Kingdom Hall. At first, there seemed to be no problems with the community, but a few months later, the Kingdom Hall was suspiciously destroyed by fire. Our determined brothers, however, did not give up. They set to work yet again and rebuilt the hall. Since then they have had no more problems.