Brother Mo

Ian and Carol Craig were among the first to arrive in Monto to set up a Kingdom Hall at the request of the Australasia branch. That was many years ago in 1974, but they are still here and still supporting the congregation 45 years later. (Ian, you may remember, is Tim’s dad whom I met on the muster). The hall itself had been built by the local brothers and was officially dedicated in 1981, but as the years passed, it became evident that it needed a major update. (Up until just a couple of years ago, one might lift a toilet lid to find it already in use by a frog.) So when the Local Design Committee brothers announced plans for the Kingdom Hall here to receive a renovation, the local brothers were quite happy. They were even happier when, last year, they had the opportunity to work side by side with the volunteers who had come to help undertake the project with them. Many new friendships and many nice memories were made over the weeks that the work lasted. Despite some extremely hot days laboring in the merciless Queensland sun, smiles and laughter abounded. It was just what the friends here needed. They now finally had a hall that looked like any other Kingdom Hall you would walk into anywhere in the world. It was clean, cool, and welcoming. There were now two video monitors, a new sound system, and a special feature whereby someone could have the meeting audio sent directly to their hearing aid. The much noticed renovation project had caught the attention of most people in town, and already brought much praise to Jehovah’s name, but now it could continue to do so for years to come.

This new building was where I was now headed for my first Sunday meeting. It was about a half an hour’s walk from the house, as I would discover later, but by car it took only five minutes. The parking lot didn’t have designated spaces so much as a general ring around the hall where spaces could be made in the grass or on the bitumen (asphalt), but this provided ample space for the few cars that filled those spaces. There was a covered area for dropping people off at the side and a nice little entry with a stone façade on the front. The whole building was probably the size of the Stow Kingdom Hall’s auditorium alone, but it was very cozy and it took only a few moments to learn where everything was.

I was greeted by Tony and Michele Elmer, whom I had met the day before, as well as Rod and Ann Egan. The Egans were lovely people and I was told I wouldn’t need to worry about buying eggs as they had several diligent ducks and chickens. They had visited the area years before and had fallen in love with the quietness and open space, so they stayed. The Elmers had been friends of the Egans back in Brisbane and had heard favorable reports from Monto as well as learning about the need for extra help. After much deliberation and many prayers for guidance, they followed suit and moved here as well.

Three other couples were not present, but I would meet them in due course. The peak attendance at the hall had at one time been about thirty, but today there were eight people so far, including myself. As it happened, a Watchtower reader was needed that morning, so I got my first assignment. There were three air conditioning units on the walls and so the building was nice and cool. In addition to Tim and Khiara, another brother from Gladstone had also come to visit, He was a soft spoken older man who had grown up in the bush, received schooling through a correspondence course, and had only recently learned to read.

By the time the meeting started there were nine of us. Of that number, three brothers had duties. So there were six in the audience for WT. Due to the low number of people, the brother handling the sound booth also carried the microphone. At a future meeting, there wasn’t even a mic carrier, so the sisters sat together and passed the microphone back and forth to give answers. In addition, the general rule here was that the brother coming off of the platform would adjust the stage microphone for the brother coming up next. It would not be uncommon at upcoming meetings for one brother to be responsible for up to three parts on a meeting, but it was great cross training for us.

Now you might think that it would be difficult to pull answers from such a small group of people, but actually the comments here were excellent! At a typical meeting back home, there are many people raising their hands, and so you may only give a few answers during a question and answer part. But because there are so few people here, everyone knows that they need to prepare well ahead of time. As a result, the number of answers each person can give is quite high and the quality of those is very good. Despite its small size, the comments given here are some of the best I’ve heard. And not just once in a while, but at every meeting! There were three elders, no ministerial servants, and no pioneers.

I learned something else that meeting too: there was no drinking fountain, so people brought their own water. I actually came to really like this feature once I got used to it because it meant that I didn’t have to get up and walk to the back of the room to get a drink during the meeting. However, my reading that morning featured a lot of mouth noise as a result. I actually was never bothered by this phenomenon in the past. I had noticed that NPR’s Terry Gross had some mouthy sounds when she spoke, but they were subtle and actually kind of nice. After a stint attempting to record audio books, however, and having to deal with listening to those kinds of sounds up close and removing them, the noisy, poppy, clicky sounds of a dry mouth were something I was never able to unhear again. Especially my own. They became the bane of my public speaking existence. After that first reading, I made sure to never be without water if I had to be on stage.

Having brought my introduction letter and publisher card with me must have expedited the process of appointment, because only a few weeks after this first meeting, I was officially appointed an elder in the Monto cong, bringing the overseer tally to four. I was later privileged to be invited to conduct the Watchtower study each week. This would prove to be invaluable training for me and a great benefit, because from then on I never failed to study each week.

Among the missing cong (congregation) members that day were Peter and Carolyn Condoleon, who were in Melbourne for the International Convention. I had spoken to Peter a year earlier when I was trying to arrange housing in Monto before arriving. He had been in Hungary at the time and had offered that I could stay in their house and use their car until they returned. It had been very generous of them. As they lived just around the corner from the house I was living in, they would end up giving me many rides during my stay here. They were spiritual stalwarts and very kind people.

Ian and Carol Craig lived just up the road in a house that had been converted from a large shed. Ian had largely done the work of building and renovating it himself. On the front of their property was the panel beating (Body shop) business that his son owned and where Tony Elmer worked as a car painter. The Craigs had wonderful views of kangaroos and breathtaking sunsets from atop the hill on which they lived. Like Peter and Carolyn, they had spent many years serving wherever there was a need.

Another couple were Mick and Beryl Reynolds. Mick was a tall, imposing man with one eye, but he was very personable, kind, and quite friendly. He had worked with cars for many years and loved to talk about them whenever the chance arose. His wife was a quiet lady, but she was also very friendly. They were a sweet couple and always eager to help care for the lawn at the hall, offer a ride to someone, or help out wherever help was needed. Like the Condoleons and the Craigs, they each had their own health issues, but they had been faithful witnesses for a long time and continued to be pillars in the congregation.

Finally there was Sister Patricia. She was a character, but she had also had a long history in supporting Kingdom interests and was a very generous person. She had a boldness that could at times border on indiscretion, but she also had a zeal for the Truth that couldn’t be denied.

And that was our mob. We few. We happy few. We band of brothers and sisters.

During my first outing in the ministry in Gladstone, I had been addressed as “brother Mo”. This was odd to me because for years I had gotten used to being called by my last name. But I soon got used to it. It was the practice here to call on the friends as brother or sister first name.

There were a few more differences of note in this hall. One was that we had hall cleaning every month. However because most everyone pitched in, we usually had the inside and outside finished in about an hour. Another difference was that we would often play recorded video parts from other meetings, in order to give the friends a break. Sometimes these were parts, but most often they were the doorstep demonstrations. The two congregations we would stream from were North Apopka in Florida and Chester Hill in Sydney. Over time we got to be very familiar with the brothers and sisters in those places! There also were no metal doors or peep holes here; only simple glass doors with a lock and no security system. Crime really isn’t much of a problem around here.

It’s a truly amazing feature of Jehovah’s organization that wherever we go in the world, we have close friends on hand. Even if we don’t personally know our brothers or speak their language, the friends immediately recognize one another as family. We had a sister from the Philippines who was visiting her daughter here for three months. She came to the meeting one day and was immediately embraced by the local friends even though her English wasn’t perfect. Her name was Gertrudes (HET-ro-deez). She came often after that and was all smiles. She even commented and came to help with the hall cleaning, even though she didn’t have to. She was a very sweet and faithful sister who had endured much to stay loyal to Jehovah. Even though she was far from her home and the people and language she knew, she felt immediately at home with the people she knew were her brothers and sisters. It was wonderful to see.

The same thing had begun to happen to me even before I had arrived in Australia. I knew the names of people who had already offered to help and support me, but now I was beginning to put faces to the names, as well as meeting all new friends. I felt as though I had a big, supportive family in Monto. It was a glimpse into the paradise soon to come, when all people everywhere on the Earth will be one big, united, happy family.

I would get many more glimpses into that promised future as the days passed, but the most notable of these would occur at a little camping area, and nearby dam, a bit North of here at the top of the Coominglah State Forest in a place called Cania.