FYI
As of May 2011: Greetings! From worldwide report a brother from Wallkill shared during congregation May 10, 2010.
There are now 16 printing branches in the world, all of them are electronically connected so if one branch had to shut down because of disaster such as an earthquake, all they need to do is transfer the files to another branch and shift the workload there.
The Truth book referred to as the “blue bombshell” was printed in 117 languages – totaling some 107 million copies. To date the Bible Teach Book has reached some 216 languages – 161 million copies.
They are no longer printing soft covered Bibles and only Wallkill prints Bibles for the entire world – 40,000 a month. The New World Translation is available in 90 languages with an additional 6 in Sign Language. To date 166 million copies.
The Kingdom Hall program began in 1999, 144 countries are in it with 2000 brothers working with it. At the start there was a need for 22,613 KHs worldwide now it’s down to 6,877. In 2010 alone, 1,942 KHS were built.
In 1999 Malawi described JWs as “a people without churches”. By September 2010 the brothers have put up 1000 KHs. The dictionaries in their language now describe JWs as “a people who build many churches”.
In one Asian country where our work is banned, the brothers were building a KH and they hired a building contractor to work along with them. The contractor was so impressed by the neat appearance and diligence of the brothers that he asked them who they were and what they were building. To maintain confidentiality, the brothers replied ‘they are just ordinary construction workers’ and are ‘building an office for their owner’. He said he had been working in construction for over 20 years and ‘this is no ordinary construction site – your owner must pay you a lot to demand such a high standard’. The brothers said that ‘clean clothing and good work habits are required’ by the owner and ‘ALL are happy with the pay the owner is giving them’!
In Haiti all the witnesses are housed now while the country has not made any progress in helping their citizens. By means of our donations to the Worldwide Work, our brothers have built 1700 wood/with galvanized sheeting homes for the brothers. The Governing Body has approved of sending 4 missionary homes that are pre-fabricated - built in China – shipped in containers and a crew will assemble them. Then Wallkill will send the appliances, furniture and other necessary items and they’ll be ready for the missionaries to move in. If it is successful, they will do this in other countries as well.
In 2010 there were 51 million visits to the Societies website, an average of 113,000 daily on wt.org alone. 4.5 million hours were spent reading our publications on the web. An average of 100 daily requests for bible studies received.