Volunteers building Jehovah’s Witnesses Hall

The new Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall on Moosa Boulevard is expected to be complete by May 10, thanks to the help of about 400 daily volunteers.
“The building will be completed with one four-day work weekend and two three-day work weekends,” said Harry Simon, an elder with the local Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation. “There are no paid contractors in this project. All the labor and skill comes from within the congregations in this region from the engineer to the project manager to the close out.”
“When we need to renovate or rebuild, we organize with our volunteers.”
Volunteers from the Jehovah’s Witnesses LA-2 Region, which includes the area from the Texas-Louisiana state line to Slidell and from just south of Alexandria to the Gulf of Mexico, must take a safety course before participating in a hall renovation or building. The Jehovah’s Witnesses regional volunteer system is also used in other regions throughout the state, country and world when a project or natural disaster occurs.
“Many of the volunteers at the new hall are the same each day,” Simon said. “They travel in at their own expense, and the rooming committee finds the volunteers rooms with local congregation members or they help to negotiate hotel rates.”
“We also feed them three meals a day. That’s 1,200 meals a day.”
Volunteer Clark Blanchard, a commercial and residential state contractor, traveled in from Pierre Part to help with the project.
“Our volunteer system is highly structured and highly organized,” he said. “It’s so easy to build a new building with our free workforce.”
The Eunice Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation has about 50 members, and there is also another hall and congregation in the Opelousas area. The old Eunice Kingdom Hall on College Road was built in the 1960s, and the building and property will eventually be sold.
“This new building has been in the works for about two years,” said John Wenzel with the LA-2 regional building committee of Jehovah’s Witnesses. “The other building was old, and it was time for something fresh and new.”
The land for the new hall was donated to the congregation by an anonymous benefactor, and site development began last December. The main feature of the new building will be an auditorium to seat 120 members and visitors. Materials for the new building were paid for with money from a world-wide fund that is contributed to by Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations around the world, and the fund is used to renovate or rebuild all Kingdom Halls around the globe.
“The $600,000 price tag includes the building and factoring in what labor would have cost,” Wenzel said. “Worldwide, the Jehovah’s Witness faith averages five new halls each day to keep up with increase in our congregation. Our volunteers are a benefit to us.”
“The new structure will serve the immediate needs of the local congregation,” he added.
“This new hall is the talk of the town,” Simon said. “Nearly everyone in town knows about the new hall.”