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HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PAST YEAR

Animated Videos Touch Righteous Hearts

Animated Videos Touch Righteous Hearts

Caleb, the little boy in the jw.org video series Become Jehovah’s Friend, is now known all over the world. The first video of this amiable little fellow has already been translated into over 130 languages, and hundreds of letters have been received about this video series.

The following letter came from an 11-year-old and her 8-year-old sister: “We would like to make a contribution to the worldwide preaching work. We earned this money by raising two beef calves and selling them. Their names were Big Red and Earl. We wanted to give you this money because we thought you could use it to make more Become Jehovah’s Friend movies. We thought it would be cool if Caleb got a new baby sister and had to deal with all of the attention being taken away from him. The Caleb movie is our favorite movie!”

Many children have memorized the entire video, including the song and even the narrator’s comments. One sister wrote that her congregation of 100 publishers has 40 children, most under the age of ten. She was sitting in the third row when song number 120 was sung at the conclusion of a meeting. It brought tears to her eyes to hear all the children singing “their song” so enthusiastically.

A grandmother related that after her granddaughter watched the video twice, she announced: “I have to clean up my room so that nobody falls on my toys and gets hurt.” She was so intent on her mission that she insisted on tidying up her room before she sat down to eat her meal.

In a rural village in South Africa, scores of children were coming and going from a Witness home every day. Some thought that it was because the family used to sell candy. But the village children had been invited by other children to see the animated video Listen, Obey, and Be Blessed in their language—Xhosa. Eleven children were present at one time, and all had memorized the words of the song.

In Ecuador two non-Witness Quichua-speaking boys, eight-year-old Isaac and his five-year-old brother, Saul, used to save their daily snack money to buy toy guns, swords, and action figures. One day their mother asked them to tidy up their room and to put all their toys in a cardboard box under the bed. Later, the boys were given the new Become Jehovah’s Friend DVD as a gift, and they watched it together. A week later, while the mother was cleaning the house, she found that the cardboard box under the bed was empty except for a toy car. She asked the boys, “Where are the toys?” They answered, “Jehovah doesn’t like those toys, so we threw them in the garbage.” Now when other neighborhood children play with toys that promote violence, Isaac tells them: “Don’t play with that. Jehovah doesn’t like it!”

Croatia: Kingdom songs touch the hearts of our young ones