New Missionaries Enter the Field
LAST summer some unusual students spent five months together in the United States, in Brooklyn, New York. They were the thirty-eight members of the seventy-third class of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead, and they were unusual because, in this age of skepticism and selfishness, they had offered themselves to serve as missionaries in foreign lands. Would you like to know what sort of people choose to be Christian missionaries in this modern, materialistic age?
Different Paths to Gilead
For some, missionary work had been a longtime ambition. Carlton and Georgina Bailey had both wanted to be missionaries since they were growing up in California. When they got married they pursued the goal together. They viewed their full-time preaching work both in very wealthy and in poor neighborhoods, as well as among Seminole Indians and Spanish-speaking minority groups, as preparation for missionary work. Now they will use this experience in their assignment in El Salvador.
For others, the desire to be missionaries came later in life. One of these is Gunnar Stanzen, who, fourteen years ago, was a promising young actor in his native Sweden. At that time he wanted nothing more than to succeed in his chosen career. Then one night his cousin phoned to say that Jehovah’s Witnesses were coming for a visit, and Gunnar should come too if he wanted a good argument. Gunnar went. During the discussion he found himself defending the Witnesses against his cousin, and that contact eventually led to Gunnar’s abandoning his acting career and entering the full-time preaching work. He is now on his way to a missionary assignment in Zaire, along with his wife, Noomi.
Martin Witholt, too, is a friendly kind of person, but when he was younger nothing was further from his mind than being a missionary. At one time, in fact, he lost all hope for mankind, left his native Holland and sailed away with a friend in a thirty-five-foot boat, intending to find some isolated island where he could forget the modern world. But the boat sprang a leak, so they had to put into port at Alicante, Spain. There Martin met Jehovah’s Witnesses and learned for the first time about God’s kingdom. Subsequent events have led him and the girl he later married, Catharina, not to an isolated island, but to an interesting missionary assignment in Kenya.
All the students were, like Martin, concerned about world problems. Some at one time had tried to find solutions of their own. Christine Sowers joined a religious “Crusade on Campus” back home in California. Stephen Richards, from New England, followed a family tradition and got involved in politics. Tom Gilmore toyed briefly with the idea of being a priest and then threw his energies into proenvironment and antiwar movements.
They were sincere, but sooner or later they found that the answers did not lie in those directions. They came to realize that only God’s kingdom could successfully tackle the huge job of removing war, dishonesty, injustice and all the other plagues of this twentieth century. They now want to be missionaries to spread the good news about this kingdom as widely as possible.
The Gilead Course
What did the students encounter when they came to Gilead? Hard but rewarding work. “All that studying!” one of them gasped. There was a chapter-by-chapter study of the whole Bible, as well as detailed discussions of such things as Bible doctrine, Bible law and Bible history. A longtime Christian elder discussed “Giving Counsel from God’s Word” with them. Another, with many years’ experience as a public speaker, helped them to improve their reading and speaking ability. An instructor who had been a missionary in the Philippines and in Vietnam gave a series of lessons on the everyday problems of missionary life.
The students also enjoyed listening to lectures by members of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, including a talk entitled “Faithfulness Under Persecution,” delivered by Martin Poetzinger who spent many years in Nazi concentration camps because of his faith. And the president of the Watchtower Society, Fred Franz, gave them two lectures analyzing the operations of the holy spirit.
How did the students feel about the School? For Tim Lockwood of New York State the love and teaching ability of his instructors is a happy memory that he will carry to his assignment in Panama. Tim Kinyon and his wife, Yvonne, will take to their new home in the Dominican Republic a deeper appreciation of how Jehovah’s spirit acts on his organization.
Catharina Witholt, Martin’s wife, said that studying in Gilead was “like coming into the truth all over again,” while Tom Gilmore was impressed by the practicalness of the courses. One speaker, for example, listed fourteen big problems that new missionaries usually meet up with in their assignments. “That is valuable information,” said Tom. “Forewarned is forearmed!” Mary, Tom’s wife, said that Gilead had taught her to be a better student of the Bible. “Now I know how to use Bible literature to extract real ‘jewels’ from the Bible,” she said.
All in all, the students came from six countries and they are being sent to sixteen lands. Jehovah is surely blessing the worldwide preaching of the good news of the kingdom when he raises up such fine new missionaries for the work.—Matthew 24:14.
On September 12 the class graduated at Jehovah’s Witnesses Assembly Hall in Queens, New York. The students put on an entertaining and instructive program for the large Brooklyn Bethel family and also heard some final words of counsel from their instructors and other speakers. The Society’s president spoke on the subject “United Under a Shepherd That Is Greater Than King David.” Then the students went their separate ways to their distant assignments. Although their time at Gilead has become just a memory, it is one they will treasure all their life. May Jehovah bless them as they join the thousands of graduates from previous classes of Gilead who are still faithfully serving full time in the field, which is the world.—Matthew 13:38.
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WATCHTOWER BIBLE SCHOOL OF GILEAD
In the list below, rows are numbered from front to back and names are listed from left to right in each row.
(1) Gomez, L.; Gilmore, M.; Koh, Y.; Murakami, L.; Dela Cruz, N.; Stanzen, N.; Stubenvoll, C. (2) Payne, J.; Koh, C.; Sowers, C.; Kinyon, Y.; Bailey, G.; Witholt, I.; Elb, A. (3) Sowers, R.; Shannon, J.; Madsen, S.; Ferguson, C.; Garland, R.; McClung, P.; Gomez, S. (4) Stanzen, G.; Kinyon, T.; Currie, K.; Garland, D.; Richards, B.; Ford, W.; Stubenvoll, T.; Bailey, C. (5) Payne, J.; Stringer, R.; Witholt, M.; Gilmore, T.; Lockwood, T.; Richards, S.; Elb, T.