“And How Long Are You Going to Stay?”

On June 2, 1946, shortly after Brother Knorr’s visit, the other two missionaries from the group assigned to Venezuela arrived. They were Donald Baxter and Walter Wan. Young Rubén Araujo was on hand to meet them in Caracas. Eyeing them dubiously, no doubt with the previous missionary’s experience still fresh in his mind, Rubén asked in his broken English: “And how long are you going to stay?”

Rubén had arranged for a Watchtower Study, and it was held the very day that the missionaries arrived. He tried to put into practice the instructions that Brother Franz had given him. He did the best he could, but it was a one-man study. Rubén read the question. Then he answered it. Then he read the paragraph. He remembered that the study was not to exceed one hour, so he obediently stopped on time even though he had covered only 17 paragraphs, which was not the whole lesson! Experience would come with time and patience.

Today, reflecting on the sudden departure of the first missionary, Rubén Araujo adds: “A short time after that, the emptiness that he left was filled by the two new Gilead graduates. How happy we felt about this gift from Jehovah’s organization in the form of these missionaries to aid us in the Venezuelan Macedonia!” (Compare Acts 16:9, 10.) Previously, Brother Knorr had said to Brother Baxter: “Stay in that assignment, even if it kills you!” Well, it did not, and Brother Baxter still serves in Venezuela nearly 50 years later.

Getting Adjusted to New Surroundings

The first missionary home in Caracas was at 32 Bucares Avenue, in a section called El Cementerio. This is also where a branch office was opened on September 1, 1946, with Donald Baxter as branch servant. Living conditions were far from ideal. The road was unpaved, and there was no running water. Understandably, the missionaries were quite relieved in 1949 when the branch and missionary home moved from El Cementerio (the cemetery) to El Paraíso (paradise), a location with running water.

Brother Baxter recalls the missionaries’ “teething” problems with the language and their feelings of frustration. They were eager to use their Gilead training to help, but when they arrived they were unable to communicate. However, this temporary difficulty was more than offset by favorable results in the field. Regarding the first street witnessing that they did, Brother Baxter recalls: “We decided to go to the area in the center of town known as El Silencio and see what would happen. My partner, Walter Wan, stood on one corner and I on another. People were very curious; they had never seen anything like this before. We hardly had to say anything. The people actually lined up to obtain the magazines, and we placed all our magazines in 10 to 15 minutes. How different this was from what we were used to in the States!” Walter Wan said: “On taking inventory, I found to my amazement that during four eventful days of praising Jehovah on the streets and in the marketplaces as had Jesus and the apostles, I had placed 178 books and Bibles.”

The first report sent by the branch to the headquarters office in Brooklyn, New York, showed a total of 19 publishers, including the two missionaries and four regular pioneers. Those pioneers were Eduardo Blackwood, Rubén Araujo, Efraín Mier y Terán, and Gerardo Jessurun. Eduardo Blackwood had begun to pioneer during the month of Brother Knorr’s visit, and the other three had enrolled soon afterward. Nine were preaching in the interior of the country. Winston and Eduardo Blackwood, who lived in El Tigre, were witnessing as far south as Ciudad Bolívar and as far east as the oil camps near Punta de Mata and Maturín. Pedro Morales and others were preaching in Maracaibo. On the east side of Lake Maracaibo in the oil camps of Cabimas and Lagunillas, Gerardo Jessurun, Nathaniel Walcott, and David Scott were preaching. Later they were joined by Hugo Taylor, who in 1995 was still serving as a special pioneer. All together, they were covering a vast area of the country. Brother Baxter and Brother Wan soon found out from personal experience what it was really like.

Setting Out to Visit All the Groups

During October and November 1947, the two missionaries traveled both to the far west and to the eastern part of the country to see what could be done to help the small groups. Their objective was to organize these groups into congregations. “We traveled by bus, which really was quite an experience in Venezuela,” recalled Brother Baxter with a smile as he thought about that memorable expedition. “The seats in the buses were small and close together, as most of the Venezuelans are small; so we two North Americans found there was hardly enough room for our legs. On top of the buses, it was not uncommon to see beds, sewing machines, tables, chickens, turkeys, and bananas, along with the baggage of the travelers. If a passenger was going only a short distance, he would not bother to put his chickens or small articles on top but would bring them into the bus with him and pile them up in the aisle between the seats. The bus broke down, so for several hours, until another bus came along, we were stranded in a wilderness where only cacti and goats lived. After that we ran out of gas.”

At each of the four locations visited, they found a group of about ten who were meeting in someone’s front room. The missionaries showed them how to conduct meetings, how to report their activity regularly to the branch office, and how to obtain literature for their preaching activity.

While in El Tigre, Brother Baxter noticed that Alejandro Mitchell, one of the new brothers there, had taken quite literally the admonition at Matthew 10:27 to preach from the housetops. He had set up a loudspeaker on top of his house, and every day for half an hour or so he would read aloud selected portions from the book Children or The New World as well as from other Watch Tower literature. He did it with the volume turned up so loud that he could be heard for several blocks! Not surprisingly, this upset the neighbors. It was suggested to him that it might be better to preach from house to house and to abandon the loudspeaker.

The trip to visit the various small groups was very beneficial. During the two months of traveling, the brothers were able to baptize 16 people.

Missionaries Arrive in Maracaibo

Maracaibo, in the northwest part of the country, is the second-largest city in Venezuela. Two of its outstanding features are its heat and its high humidity. It is also Venezuela’s oil capital. The new part of the city is a vivid contrast to the old town near the docks; that older part, with its narrow streets and colonial-style adobe houses, has hardly changed since the last century.

Six missionaries arrived in Maracaibo by cargo ship on December 25, 1948. They were loaded down with heavy winter clothing because they had just come from cold New York. In the group were Ragna Ingwaldsen, who had been baptized in 1918 and who still pioneers in California, Bernice Greisen (now “Bun” Henschel, a member of the Bethel family at the world headquarters), Charles and Maye Vaile, Esther Rydell (Ragna’s half sister), and Joyce McCully. They were welcomed into the small home of a couple newly associated with the Witnesses. Here the perspiring missionaries arranged their 15 trunks and 40 cartons of literature as best they could. Four slept in hammocks and two on beds made of book cartons until they found a house to rent for their missionary home.

Ragna recalls that the six of them looked very strange to the Maracuchos, as the inhabitants of Maracaibo are popularly called. Several of the missionaries were tall and blond. “Often when calling from house to house, we would have up to ten naked little children following us, listening to the strange way we spoke their language,” Ragna later said. “Not one of the six of us knew more than a dozen words in Spanish. But when they laughed at us, we would just laugh along with them.” When these missionaries arrived, there were only four publishers in Maracaibo. Early in 1995 there were 51 congregations with a total of 4,271 publishers.

His Prayer Was Heard

The couple that had kindly welcomed the six missionaries into their home were Benito and Victoria Rivero. Benito had received the book “The Kingdom Is at Hand” from Juan Maldonado, a pioneer from Caracas. When Pedro Morales later called on Benito to offer a study, Benito was enthusiastic; not only did he study but he immediately began to attend the meetings of the small group. He also encouraged his wife to attend, telling her​—because she liked to sing—​that the songs they sang were very pretty. She would go with him, but she really did not understand all that was being said, so she would often fall asleep.

One night at home, thinking his wife was asleep, Benito prayed aloud to Jehovah and asked him to enlighten her. She overheard the prayer and was deeply moved by it. Following Benito’s death in 1955, Victoria became a regular pioneer and then a special pioneer.

Reaching Rural Areas Around Maracaibo

Among those who embraced the truth in the Maracaibo area was the father of Rebeca (now Rebeca Barreto). She was only five years old when Gerardo Jessurun began studying the Bible with her father, who progressed to baptism in 1954. She holds wonderful memories of sharing in the preaching work as a young person. “We would hire a bus, and the whole congregation would travel out to the rural areas,” she recalls. “The countryfolk had little money but appreciated the literature. It was quite a sight at the end of the day to see the brothers and sisters pile onto the bus with eggs, squash, corn, and live chickens that had been given to them in exchange for literature.”

But not everyone was glad to see them. Sister Barreto recalls an incident that took place in the village of Mene de Mauroa. She says: “As we went from door to door, the local Catholic priest followed behind us, tearing up literature that people had accepted and telling them not to listen to Jehovah’s Witnesses. He stirred up a mob that included many young people and managed to get them into a furious mood so that they threw stones at us. Several brothers and sisters were hit.” The group of Witnesses ran to the prefecto of the town for help. Being kindly disposed toward the Witnesses, he told the priest that he would have to keep him in his office for a couple of hours ‘for his own protection against these preachers.’ The crowd, now without a leader, dispersed, and the Witnesses joyfully spent the next two hours, free of harassment, giving a thorough witness in the town.

More Help Arrives

The territory was vast, and additional help would be needed to care for it. More workers who had recently graduated from Gilead School arrived in September 1949 to share in the spiritual harvest. They were willing, yes, eager to have a part, but that does not mean it was easy for them. When the lights of the port came into view through the porthole of her cabin on the ship Santa Rosa, Rachel Burnham felt that she had never been more relieved to see anything in her life. She had been seasick ever since the ship had left New York. Although it was three o’clock in the morning, she excitedly woke up the other three girls. Her sister Inez and the other girls, Dixie Dodd and her sister Ruby (now Baxter), had enjoyed the journey but were glad to be arriving in their new assignment.

On hand to greet them was a group that included Donald Baxter, Bill and Elsa Hanna (missionaries who had arrived the preceding year), and Gonzalo Mier y Terán. They boarded a bus to take them from the port to Caracas. The driver seemed to want to make the journey extra hair-raising for the newcomers, and he certainly succeeded. Around hairpin turns, one after another, he went, often along the edge of a precipice and at a rate that seemed much too fast! To this day the sisters still talk about that ride.

They were assigned to the branch and missionary home in El Paraíso. Rachel served faithfully in the missionary field until her death in 1981; Inez, in 1991. The others of that group are still loyally serving Jehovah.

As Dixie Dodd looks back on the first months in their assignment, she says: “We felt so homesick. But we couldn’t even have gone to the airport if we had wanted to. We didn’t have enough money!” Instead, they focused their attention on the fact that Jehovah’s organization had entrusted them with an assignment as missionaries in a foreign land. Eventually, they stopped dreaming about going home and applied themselves to the work.

Misunderstood

For most of the new missionaries, the language was a problem​—at least for a while.

Dixie Dodd recalls that one of the first things they were told was to say “Mucho gusto” whenever they were introduced to someone. That very day they were taken along to a Congregation Book Study. En route on the bus, they repeated the expression again and again: “Mucho gusto. Mucho gusto.” “But when we were introduced,” says Dixie, “we’d forgotten it!” In time, however, they did remember.

Bill and Elsa Hanna, who served as missionaries from 1948 until 1954, long recalled some of their blunders. Once when Brother Hanna wanted to buy a dozen white eggs, he asked for huesos blancos (white bones) instead of huevos blancos. Another time, he wanted to buy a broom. Afraid that he had not been understood, he tried being more specific: “To sweep ‘el cielo’” (the sky), he said, instead of el suelo (the floor). With a touch of humor, the storekeeper replied: “What a lot of ambition you’ve got, Mister.”

When Bill’s wife, Elsa, went to the embassy, she asked them to remover (remove) her passport instead of to renovar (renew) it. “What did you do, Lady,” asked the secretary, “swallow it?”

Genee Rogers, a missionary who arrived in 1967, was a little discouraged at first when after each carefully rehearsed presentation, the householder would turn to her companion and ask: “¿Qué dijo?” (What did she say?) But Sister Rogers did not stop trying, and in some 28 years as a missionary, she has helped 40 people to learn the truth and progress to the point of water baptism.

Willard Anderson, who arrived from Gilead with his wife, Elaine, in November 1965, openly admits that language has never been his forte. Always ready to laugh at his own mistakes, Willard says: “I studied Spanish in junior high school for six months until my teacher made me promise I would never take his class again!”

But with Jehovah’s spirit, perseverance, and a good sense of humor, the missionaries soon came to feel at home with their new language.

Even the Houses Have Names

It was not only the language that was different for the missionaries. They needed to use a different system for keeping track of homes where they wanted to call again. In the early days, many houses in Caracas did not have numbers. Each house owner chose a name for his house. The better-class homes are known as quintas and often are named after the lady of the house. For example, one’s address might be Quinta Clara. Often it is a combination of the children’s names: Quinta Carosi (Carmen, Rosa, Simon). The owner of the first branch and missionary home that the Society rented had already named his house Quinta Savtepaul (Saint Vincent de Paul), and as it was on a main road, it quickly became well known as the place where Jehovah’s Witnesses met.

In 1954 when a brand-new house was bought to serve as branch office and missionary home, it was up to the brothers to use their imagination and choose a suitable name. Bearing in mind Jesus’ admonition to “let your light shine before men,” the name Luz (Light) was chosen for the house. (Matt. 5:16) Although the branch office was later moved to larger premises, early in 1995 Quinta Luz was still home to 11 missionaries.

The center of Caracas has an address system all its own. If you ask the address of a certain business or apartment building, you may be told something like, “La Fe a Esperanza.” ‘“Faith to Hope”? But that doesn’t sound like an address!’ you may say. Ah, but in the center of Caracas each intersection has a name. So the address you are looking for is on the block between Faith and Hope.

From Venezuela to Gilead and Back

Over the years 136 Gilead-trained missionaries, including 7 who benefited from the Ministerial Training School course, have come to Venezuela from other lands​—from the United States, Canada, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, England, Puerto Rico, Denmark, Uruguay, and Italy. Between 1969 and 1984, no new missionaries arrived in Venezuela from Gilead, as it proved impossible to obtain visas. However, during 1984 a concerted effort to obtain permission for two couples to come into the country met with success, and two more missionaries arrived in 1988. Six local Witnesses have also benefited from Gilead training.

When Brother Knorr visited in 1946, young Rubén Araujo asked whether he might qualify someday to attend Gilead. “Yes, if you improve your English” was the reply. “Needless to say, I was very happy,” says Rubén. “Three years later, in October 1949, I received a letter of invitation from Brother Knorr to attend the 15th class, scheduled to begin during the winter early in 1950.”

The other five brothers who attended Gilead from Venezuela are Eduardo Blackwood and Horacio Mier y Terán (both of whom got baptized in 1946 during Brother Knorr’s first visit), Teodoro Griesinger (about whom more will be said), Casimiro Zyto (who had emigrated from France and became a naturalized Venezuelan), and, more recently, Rafael Longa (who has been serving as a circuit overseer).

[Picture on page 199]

Inez Burnham, Ruby Dodd (now Baxter), Dixie Dodd, and Rachel Burnham leaving New York in 1949. Before the boat left the dock, everyone felt just fine!

[Pictures on page 200, 201]

Some of the missionaries who have served in the Venezuelan field for many years: (1) Donald and Ruby Baxter, (2) Dixie Dodd, (3) Penny Gavette, (4) Leila Proctor, (5) Ragna Ingwaldsen, (6) Mervyn and Evelyn Ward, (7) Vin and Pearl Chapman