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.

Janie knew many techniques for preaching from house to house. She knew how to get people's attention and get them to buy our magazines before they knew what they were doing. When a door did not open, she would put her finger through the keyhole, or move the mat slightly, and in this way she would determine whether the owners had long since left, or whether the house was completely uninhabited.

The following week she explained to me in some detail the system of house-to-house preaching. The city was divided into zones between the communities of Jehovah's Witnesses. The zones, in turn, were divided into sections, which were distributed by a special minister in charge of the area among the brothers, who were to go around them by knocking from door to door. Each preacher could easily have three or even more precincts.

When we came to someone who showed at least some interest or accepted some literature, we entered in a small notebook data about his civil status (age, sex, characteristics, etc.) and what exactly he had acquired. A few days later, we were returning for a so-called "follow-up visit." This time our goal was to leave him a book, usually The Truth That Leadeth to Eternal Life, and to begin his studies immediately. During these first months, although I had to study a lot in school because I was going to university the following year, I spent twenty to thirty hours a week, sometimes even more, in the ministry.

First Report

After I had been preaching for two months, I was asked to write a report. To do this, I had to fill out a few printed forms, including the number of magazines, books, and issues of The Watchtower sold in a month, as well as the number of hours I spent on them. If someone was being taught, another form had to be filled out with the name, address, personal circumstances, how many times a month the class was held, and relevant comments on the course of the class.5 With such reports, the Watchtower is able to monitor the work of its adepts perfectly, and to blame or reward people according to their results.