Bethel

We whisked Gail, Allyse and Simone off the plane, hosed them down, and headed right to Bethel.  The South African branch is in a particularly lovely setting.  Fortunately it’s on a very large piece of land, since I don’t believe they’ve stopped building and expanding since the branch was dedicated in the late 1980’s.

A friend of Damon and Shelby’s, Tiana, who has recently started serving at Bethel, gave us our tour.

The highlights from our visit include learning about RTOs – Regional Translation Offices.  The brothers who are able to translate in specific and small language groups are sent to live the area where that language is spoken so that they can, not only translate the publications, but actually get feedback from the common speakers of the language – the brothers in the congregation – regarding uses of phrases and expressions.  You can understand the need since there are over 200 languages for this branch to translate publications into and one Watchtower can take two and a half months to translate per language.  Hence the need for RTOs to make sure the translations are not only accurate but, far more importantly, reach the heart of the readers.

Translation work, and Patrick explains the reason for the layout of Bethel's buildings (a taste of the legacy of Apartheid)

Art in motion

Allyse plays with the children's interactive toys

Bethel goes through a little bit of paper...

South Africa is one of only four branches in the world to have MAN Roland printers.  On the day of our visit the printer was being repaired… after being run continually 24 hours a day for 3 weeks.  At first we were disappointed not to see it running, but then one of the brothers who help run the printer invited us to go inside the soundproof walls to see the machine up close.  I reckon he noticed the lovely single sisters in our group and wanted to impress them!

Brothers working on the "broken" insides of the MAN Roland printer

Simone is strong enough to work in the bookbindery!

The countries served by the South African branch

The Bionic Arm which ensures accurate picking and packing of congregation orders

Some leather artwork created and donated by brothers and sisters to the branch

We all really enjoyed the conclusion of our tour, a visit to the roof deck on one of the resident buildings.  A storm was threatening to roll in, making for a lovely view with a moody sky.

Selfie!

Stormy skies

Our whole travelling circus!

At the end of our tour Tiana invited us back to her room for a cup of coffee and we got to meet her husband, Chris.  Naturally we now have new friends and hope to have a reason to see them again soon.

Our lovely hosts

Images credit: Damon O'Reilly