So, 2 weekends ago, my wife is showing an apartment to a potential buyer in the financial district of San Juan and walks the buyer over to the balcony to show her the awesome views. The buyer looks down at a crowd approaching Puerto Rico Coliseum (aka Jose Miguel Agrelot Coliseum) and asked my wife: "Are those Jehovah's Witnesses?" My wife looks down from 19 stories up, notices the "pioneer pace" of the crowd and says: "Yes. But they only use the coliseum a few times a year." The buyer responds: "Thank God".
Anyway, cutting to the chase... my wife called me after the buyer signs the contract and asks me if I knew what was going on in the coliseum since she can see J-Dubs all over the place (from 19 stories up). She also mentioned that the assembly appears to be less than 2 hours long and she'd already seen 2 crowds so far with a possible 3rd crowd starting to arrive. My wife and I have been out for several years and I had no idea what this was about so, later that day, I called my co-worker who is starting to fade (thanks to me). He tells me that the main purpose of the 1 hour 45 min program was to have have a few Brooklyn bethelites announce the closure of the Puerto Rico Branch. They threw in the Watchtower rag study for good measure and a talk.
While the Brooklyn bethel guys talked about the closure of the Puerto Rico Branch, they also mentioned that the big guys (Parkin and Truman) will be sent to Brooklyn bethel for whatever few years of life they have left (so much for life in a tropical paradise). So the English-to-Spanish Watchtower magazine translating department (the one that changed Steve hit Selma to Steve got furious with Selma) will obviously be closed down and the translation for the Watchtower rag will now be done in Spain.
What I want to know is this... Is it a NEW thing to rent entire coliseums just to announce the closure of a branch? I've never heard of this... please do tell...