First Meetings

The course of the meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses is remarkably similar in both method and purpose, to home studies. Ostensibly, the Bible is studied there, but in reality this is far from the case. In group classes, either in someone's home or at the Kingdom Hall, a chapter from a book by Jehovah's Witnesses was studied. In midweek meetings, the first hour we were taught to preach using the publications of the "witnesses," and the second hour we studied the Theocratic Ministry Bulletin according to the same system. On Sundays, the first hour we listened to talks that repeated the outline of the Watch Tower Society (Jehovah's Witnesses) emblazoned with several Bible texts, and the second hour we listened to The Watchtower. In other words, of the five hours we spent in meetings during the week, four were directly devoted to studying their publications, and the fifth was indirectly devoted to the same thing. Since the "witness" had to study all these materials first, and then spend time going from house to house conducting classes there, he physically did not have time to figure out how true what he was taught was, and gradually he fell under the increasing influence of this propaganda.

At the end of the meeting, several people came up to me. They greeted me and asked if I was following the classes, what book I was studying, who exactly I was studying with. I tried to ask them questions about the sermon, but they told me that I should ask these questions to the person with whom I was studying. At that moment, Augustine came up and led me out of there to escort me home.

From house to house

Over the weeks, I continued to insist on my desire to go out from house to house to preach. When I went to the Kingdom Hall on Sundays (now without Augustine), I was thrilled to think of how few years, even months, or even weeks, were left. The desire to attend meetings outweighed any interest in other things.

One day, when I was at the foot of a steep hill, a real downpour poured down. I was much closer to home than to the Kingdom Hall, and it would have been logical to go back, since I had neither an umbrella nor a cloak. I went on, however, while streams of water rushed towards me, and soon my shoes were filled with water, and my trousers were soaked above the knees. On the top of the hill lived the sisters. I knocked on their door, hoping to find some warmth and shelter from the rain. That day I attended the meeting in the trousers of the father of one of them, while my own were drying by the stove.

I also happened to leave the house a few hours before the beginning of the meeting for fear of being late, and I came to the door of the Hall an hour or more before the opening. As I took refuge in the lobby of the Assembly Hall and jumped up and down to keep warm, I felt deeply happy that I could thus be cleansed for the coming Kingdom that was to come any minute. If it had come now, I would have been near one of the Halls, and there could not have been a safer place to hide.

And yet, all this was nothing compared to the enthusiasm with which I was for the idea of going out in the field ministry.

At the end of one of the Sunday meetings, Augustine introduced me to a sister named Janie. She was a preacher. A preacher for Jehovah's Witnesses is the same as a missionary. Usually, national organizations send pioneers, or activists, to preach from house to house for a certain number of hours, month after month (usually more than a hundred hours a month). There were many classes of preachers, who differed chiefly in the number of hours they spent preaching from house to house.

The next day, when I left school, I found Janie. I'll never forget that morning. The dazzling sun was shining. I was wearing a jacket made of light fabric and a chestnut knitted sweater with a high collar. In my hands I held a blue bag, in which among my books lay the Bible of Jehovah's Witnesses. First, we paid a visit to a lady who was not at home last time. Then Janie told me that she was going to explore new territory. Since it was the first day for me, she did not let me speak. She knocked, then made a brief address—for twenty or thirty seconds—urging people to buy The Watchtower and "Awake!"; she added that the price only covered the cost of printing, so that we could continue our publications for the benefit of more people.4 On that first day I intervened only once to explain a text to a girl, and when Janie thanked me afterwards, I felt a great sense of satisfaction.