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Jehovah’s Witnesses—1993 Yearbook Report1993 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses
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Eastern Europe
At the end of 1991, the Governing Body invited seven branches of the Watch Tower Society in Western Europe to provide food and clothing for their needy brothers in Eastern Europe.a What happened when the Witnesses in Sweden first learned of the need? Truck after truck rolled in from congregations far and near. Even after the Sweden branch was filled to capacity with clothing and other goods, more and more materials kept coming, making it necessary to rent a hall outside the branch complex to hold all the donated items. Brothers and sisters from nearby congregations came to help. An average of 35 volunteers worked at sorting and packing clothing until 15 semitrailers were ready to start rumbling toward their destinations. Another three semitrailers trucked more than 51 tons of foodstuffs to Russia.
Within just days of the announcement, the food provisions, divided up into 750 boxes, each containing about 44 pounds [20 kg] of basic food products, such as flour, cooking oil, canned meat, and dried milk, were ready for the first truck shipment—destination St. Petersburg, Russia. On December 19, 1991, with all customs papers translated into Russian and in good order, the first truck passed through border checkpoints without any problems. The Witnesses in St. Petersburg were anxiously awaiting the shipment and were already prepared to reload the cargo onto smaller vehicles for delivery to different distribution centers, from which the food could be quickly given to those in need. What a reception when the truck arrived! The waiting, happy brothers heartily embraced their Swedish brothers.
For the donation of clothing, congregations searched their closets for neat and clean items. Others went out and bought new clothes. One Witness went to a men’s store to buy five suits. This aroused the merchant’s curiosity. When the reason was explained to him, he donated five more suits. Another brother went to buy several packages of socks, gloves, and similar items at an outlet and explained the reason for such a large purchase. The owner compassionately offered him a consignment of 30 new suits for the price of 2. Hardly able to contain himself, the brother quickly accepted. Another brother brought a huge pile of clothes to the dry cleaner and told him what was being done. The owner then gave him all the clothing that customers had never claimed. When the owner of a sporting goods store heard that the consignments were to go directly to the ones in need, he picked a hundred pairs of brand-new winter shoes and boots from the shelves as a donation.
The sorting organization was set into gear. A group of ten sisters with a good eye for quality sorted the clothes into men’s, women’s, and children’s collections. Ten other sisters deftly packed the sorted items into cartons. A team of hefty brothers taped the cartons shut and stacked them on pallets, ready for shipment by truck. Altogether, 1,400 cubic feet [40 cu m] of clothing and shoes were packed daily.
The Witnesses in the Netherlands and Switzerland had the privilege of participating in this relief work too. Brothers in the Netherlands contributed 52 tons of food, together with 11 truckloads of clothing, and those in Switzerland prepared 600 food parcels weighing a total of 12 tons. What about the children? When the Witnesses in Ukraine received 72 tons of clothing, they discovered that the parcels containing children’s wear included toys donated by Witness children for their unknown little friends. Also, quite a few chocolate bars had found their way between the layers of clothing.
Thus, during the winter of 1991/92, the relief ministration consisted of 400 tons of foodstuffs and large amounts of clothing for men, women, and children. These were distributed to practically all parts of the territory of the former Soviet Union, as far as Irkutsk, in Siberia, and Khabarovsk, near Japan.
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Jehovah’s Witnesses—1993 Yearbook Report1993 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses
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[Pictures on page 12]
Witnesses in Switzerland preparing food and clothing parcels for Eastern Europe. Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden also helped in the relief ministrations
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