Branch Letter

Dear Kingdom Publishers:

A text that is a favorite among many of us here at Bethel is Psalm 27:4: “One thing I have asked from Jehovah—it is what I shall look for, that I may dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of my life, to behold the pleasantness of Jehovah.”

Bethel means “house of God,” and Bethel has the largest theocratic family on earth, 1,813 living in Brooklyn and 588 at Watchtower Farms. We have 371 married couples, 1,622 single brothers and 37 single sisters. The oldest member is 88 years old and has been working here for 61 years. Fifty-eight are of the anointed.

The 52 kitchen and dining room workers in the Bethel homes prepare and serve over 7,000 well-balanced meals a day for the family, who eat in 10 dining rooms. Most of the food consumed by this large family—milk, cheese, eggs, meat, vegetables, fruit, and so forth—is grown on the Society’s 2,418 acres of land located in New York and New Jersey. Personal services for the brothers also include washing over 67,000 pieces of laundry a week. There are 160 housekeepers to look after the cleaning of over 1,274 rooms. The 1,407 brothers who work in the factory are eagerly looking forward to printing and binding the 23 million books and Bibles they now have scheduled to meet the needs for the congregations and branches for the next six months.

The family starts the day with an upbuilding, 15-minute discussion of the daily text. Then after working for approximately eight hours in the home, factory or farms, they spend their Monday evenings at a family Watchtower study. On other evenings and weekends they are with one of the 312 congregations in the New York city area or rural areas surrounding the farms, attending meetings and participating in the field service and caring for some personal matters. Bethel elders may be requested by the congregations as weekend speakers within a radius of 200 miles, once a month.

You family members and friends back home miss those who left for Bethel service, and you can be sure they feel the same toward you. But we know how pleased you are to have them here doing such a vital work that benefits so many.

We invite all of you single brothers between the ages of 19 and 35 who are wholeheartedly devoted to Jehovah, and in good health, and who are interested in enlarging your privileges of service, to come to Bethel for at least a year but with a view to staying much longer. Get a Bethel application at your district assembly, when your circuit overseer visits your congregation, or by writing the Society. Fill it out and make yourself available to become a part of the largest theocratic family, sharing in one of the grandest privileges of service on earth.

Your fellow servants,

BROOKLYN BRANCH OFFICE