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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, April 25, 1980
Page 3
Report From the Dutch Work
Mr. Bram de Bree,Regional Director for the Netherlands, wired this report
after the Feast of Unleavened Bread:
"Greetings from the sunny Netherlands�
"After dull and cool spring weather, finally the sun brought balmy tempera·
tures. Our Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread went very well indeed.
Every member of both churches attended the Passover which was held in two
places, Tilburg and Zwolle. At the first holy day our attendance was 9.8%
higher than last year and at the last day 1.5%. Offerings for the first
and last holy day combined gave us an overall increase of 2.5%.
"Income for the month of March gave us a healthy increase of 13.6% over
the same month last year. Two people were baptized in March bringing
total active membership up to 143 for both churches. Church attendance
increased by 8.7% compared to one year ago. Due to our automatic renewal
program we lost 3,185 readers of the Plain Truth and added 1,033. The
April issue of the Plain Truth will be sent to 10,000 inactive readers
with a letter enclosed inviting them to rejoin again. We also had several
meetings with our advertising agency to review our ad program. Rather
than advertising a booklet we decided to offer the magazine alone, making
use of the April cover and contents. This ad will be placed in three
major newspapers at the beginning of May in different parts of the Nether
lands as a pilot project.
"The month of March also gave us the opportunity to have two public lec
tures in the city of Amsterdam. One percent of the invited people re
sponded to the invitation and came back for the follow-up lecture. The
last one
in
this series is scheduled for April 25th. The public lectures
in Zwolle have now been concluded and the new people who have been attend
ing these past winter months have now been invited to attend a once-a
month Sabbath Bible study starting April 26th. The reqular activities of
the Dutch speaking work as of April are as follows:
--Once a week Sabbath services
in
Tilburg and Bilthoven.
--Once a month Sabbath Bible studies in Antwerpen and Zwolle."
New Zealand/South Pacific News
The following update for the month of March was prepared by our New Zea
land office:
"This month's income figure was the second highest monthly figure ever
recorded by the office here. It was 17.1% higher than the record-breaking
figure achieved last March, bringing the year-to-date figure to 21.2% for
the first quarter of 1980.
"Mail from the Pacific Islands has stepped up noticeably this year, averag
ing 1,370 items per month compared with an average of 660 items per month
during 1979. Our recent opening of Post Office boxes in Fiji and Tonga
has contributed significantly to this increase.