The Word of God Keeps On Growing in Chile
By “Awake!” correspondent in Chile
IN THE long, mountainous country of Chile it is true as it was in Palestine in the days of the apostles of Jesus Christ: “The word of God went on growing, and the number of the disciples kept multiplying.” (Acts 6:7) The most recent striking evidence of this spiritual growth is the Watch Tower Society’s new branch office and home, dedicated on November 21, 1970, with 255 persons attending the special program.
Located in the city of Santiago under the towering Andes Mountains, the beautiful, new two-story, L-shaped building is made of reinforced concrete specially designed to withstand earthquakes, for which Chile is noted. Up to this time there have been two strong tremors and not a crack has appeared. Over 4,000 sacks of cement and twenty-two tons of iron rods as reinforcement have gone into the building. The construction work has been done mainly by Jehovah’s witnesses. In fact, one congregation chartered a bus on different occasions to bring the Witnesses of their congregation to the job site, setting up a field kitchen where the women prepared the meals.
Many of the neighbors were impressed by the deportment of the Witness workers. Some stated: “We have never seen anything like this. You people work here day after day and we have never heard a foul expression all these months!” One neighbor family expressed their appreciation by contributing a cedar tree to be planted on the property.
When the Growth Started
The preaching of the Word of God by Jehovah’s witnesses has been growing in Chile particularly since 1930. In that year the first witness of Jehovah came to Chile. He was a young German, Ricardo Traub, who had been living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when he learned God’s truth. He was invited to open up the preaching work of Jehovah’s witnesses in Chile. Some 6,000,000 persons lived in Chile in 1930, and in true missionary spirit Witness Traub began preaching God’s Word in the capital city of Santiago.
Other zealous full-time preachers of God’s Word joined Traub in those early years. There was Theodore Laguna, who had been fired by enthusiasm at the Washington, D.C., assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses in 1935, as he listened to the discourses of the then president of the Watch Tower Society, J. F. Rutherford. Determined to go to another land to preach the Word of God, Laguna came to Chile.
Two women Witnesses, Beta Abbott and Kay Palm, arrived in 1936. The latter Witness relates: “I worked from Chile’s northernmost town of Arica to its southernmost possession, Tierra del Fuego (2,700 miles), taking the good news to sulphur camps in the high Andes Mountains, to nitrate camps in the Pampa of Tocopilla, Iquique and Antofagasta, to silver mines and to the great sheep ranches in the south of Chile. Those shepherds and ranchers were great readers, so they welcomed the literature explaining God’s Word.”
Gilead Graduates Arrive, a Branch Set Up
In the year 1945 a branch office of the Watch Tower Society was set up in Santiago with the arrival of the first two graduates of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead, and the preaching work was put on a more organized basis. One of these Witnesses, Albert Mann, is still working here as a circuit supervisor. That same year, 1945, saw the first visit of the Society’s president, N. H. Knorr, to Chile; and a convention was arranged for the eighty-three Witnesses in the country. It was a pleasant surprise to see 480 persons attend the public talk.
In the following years many other missionaries came to Chile. For example, Robert Hannan and his wife went to the city of Concepción in the year 1946, and they are still there. One of the persons with whom Sister Hannan first studied the Bible later told her: “At the beginning I did not understand anything that you were trying to teach me. However, my son who had studied English understood you better and thus we made progress. But your faithfulness in coming so far in all the rain and mud convinced me that what you were teaching was the truth.” The Hannans have seen the few they started with grow to two congregations in Concepción and ten congregations in the surrounding areas in which they have preached the Word of God! They have become spiritual parents and grandparents to hundreds of Jehovah’s witnesses in that area.
Meantime, the desert region to the north, one of the driest places on the face of the earth, was receiving attention. Missionary Evelyn Valenzuela was assigned to open up the preaching work in the town of Pedro de Valdivia. On arriving there, she could find no home in which to live, but instead of being discouraged and leaving, she arranged to sleep on the floor of the home of a woman whom she had met in another city. In addition, she cooked her meals in the home of a woman who had shown interest in the Kingdom message.
With full faith in Jehovah she began her work, and in the first month started ten Bible studies on one street, thereafter gathering them together in one place to conduct a Watchtower study with them. In the second month she arranged for a hall in which to gather these people, and by the third month all the meetings of Jehovah’s witnesses were being regularly conducted. “You can imagine my joy,” she relates, “when, after beginning my work in May, I was able to have twenty-five persons accompany me in the preaching activity the following December 25!” This was a company-owned town, and later the administrator provided the land and material for the building of a Kingdom Hall to accommodate the new congregation that was formed.
Gaining Momentum
By the year 1952 the preaching of God’s Word was gaining momentum, with 832 publishers of the good news, which was a 66-percent increase over the previous year.
Opposition began to manifest itself. The General Conference Corporation of the Seventh-day Adventists tried to stop the circulation of The Watchtower. They argued that the name La Atalaya (Spanish for The Watchtower) was similar to the name of their magazine El Atalaya. The matter was taken to court. The court ruled that the subtitle “Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom” made the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society’s magazine distinctive. The Adventists appealed the case, but the appeal court upheld the trial court’s decision, observing that The Watchtower began to be published long before the Adventist magazine. Last year 1,119,714 copies of The Watchtower were placed in the hands of the people of Chile.
Now the time had arrived for God’s Word to spread to Punta Arenas, one of the southernmost cities of the world, which is sometimes swept by winds of up to ninety miles per hour. The missionaries who were sent there for the first time in 1956 soon learned why the trees were permanently bent in one direction, for they had to bend into the wind as they made their way from door to door.
Missionary Stella Semezyszyn, one of the original group who is still working in Punta Arenas, relates: “We arrived in June of 1956. There had been a flood and the weather was wet and cold. Most of the Catholic people not only did not have a Bible, they did not know what a Bible was!”
Some of the people responded to the preaching of the Word of God. One of the first men to become a Witness in Punta Arenas relates: “As a member of the Chilean navy in 1950 I was traveling on a ship when I overheard a conversation between one of Jehovah’s witnesses and the famous painter Pablo Picasso. Since I had always been interested in the Bible, I approached the Witness later and obtained literature. However, it was not until 1956 that I could have a Bible study in my own home, and in 1957 I was baptized.”
There are now two congregations in Punta Arenas, with 140 ministers of the good news. At a recent circuit assembly 362 attended the public talk. What a difference from the first Bible lecture given at the Polar Radio Station, where there was only one interested person in attendance!
Disciples Multiply
In the year 1960 there were 2,013 preachers of God’s Word in Chile’s sixty-five congregations. The disciples kept multiplying and by 1966 the number had grown to 4,112. Great has been the hunger of the people of Chile for Bible knowledge, and many Bibles and Bible study aids have been brought to them. Why, 77,745 Bibles have been sent out from the branch office in the past four years. In addition, 160,593 copies of the book The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life have been distributed. And at the present time 9,361 Bible studies are being conducted throughout Chile.
Illustrating the fine potential for future growth is the large number of persons who attended the latest celebration of the Lord’s Evening Meal. There were 19,850 in attendance!
The capital city of Santiago now has thirty-three congregations of disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the presiding minister of one of them is Ricardo Traub, who, forty years earlier, opened up the preaching work of Jehovah’s witnesses in Chile.
The 7,572 witnesses of Jehovah in Chile, including sixty-three missionaries, thirteen of whom have been here for more than twenty years, are busy indeed spreading the good news of the Kingdom. They rejoice over the new branch office and home that has just been dedicated, and are thrilled at this new evidence that the Word of God keeps on growing in Chile.
[Picture on page 24]
The Watch Tower Society’s new branch office and home in Chile