2005 - 09-02-05

Witness workers turned up from California,
North Carolina, Oregon, Washington State,
Pennsylvania, Missouri, and many other
places. A Virginia Regional Building
Committee that usually builds Kingdom Halls
(the places where they meet for
worship) sent a group of 18 Witnesses to
repair roofs. It took them 18 hours to
drive down. Relief workers took vacation
time or leaves of absence from their jobs
and drove across the country, hundreds and
even thousands of miles, to reach their
fellow Witnesses in distress.

There was a group that came from the
Charleston area in South Carolina. They had
experience with Hurricane Hugo back in 1989.
They knew what to expect and soon organized
relief supplies, including electric
generators and building materials. Within
two weeks volunteer crews had dried out some
800 homes and had repaired many roofs.

Even the media noted how well the Witnesses
were organized. The Savannah Evening Press
carried the headline “Jehovah’s Witnesses
Find They Are Welcome in South Florida,” and
The Miami Herald declared: “Witnesses Care
for Their Own—and Others.”

It stated: “No one in Homestead is slamming
doors on the Jehovah’s Witnesses this
week—even if they still have doors to slam.
About 3,000 Witness volunteers from across
the country have converged on the disaster
area, first to help their own, then to help
others.... Any military organization
might envy the Witnesses’ precision,
discipline and efficiency.” In contrast, an
Air Force officer was quoted as saying about
the relief effort in another area: “All the
chiefs just want to be chiefs, but nobody
wants to get down and actually do the dirty
work.”

Jehovah's Witnesses have organized hundreds
of Regional Building Committees all over the
world to construct Kingdom Halls and large
Assembly Halls. Thus, they have trained
manpower ready to respond on a few hours’
notice.