Pursuing My Purpose in Life
As told by T. E. Klein
IT WAS a beautiful summer day in 1917 when, as a lad of ten, I picked up a tract from the sidewalk in Blue Island (suburb of Chicago) advertising a Bible lecture: “The Rich Man in Hell.” My brother and I went to hear it. Upon our explaining to mother what the speaker had said, she agreed it was the truth, even though our father was a Methodist preacher. With my brother I began to attend those Bible study meetings; also, on Sundays, beginning at five in the morning (as was then the custom), we engaged in distributing Bible tracts. There were few young folks in the truth then; nevertheless it was a real pleasure for me to take the older ones out in the service in my car every Sunday. They were up in years but mature in the truth and I very much enjoyed their company.
I appreciated the truth and by 1925 I had symbolized my dedication and was regularly talking about the Kingdom, thus pursuing my purpose in life. In the cold winter of 1930 one of the Society’s traveling representatives, while visiting the Chicago congregation, spent a few nights at our home. We got to talking about the pioneer work. He pointed out what a privilege it was to be in the full-time service as a theocratic warrior for the only government, the theocratic government. I lost no time in making up my mind that there was nothing more beneficial or more important and nothing I would like to do more than to spend all my time in the pioneer work. I informed my employer about quitting my job and at once entered the pioneer work. As I look back now over the past twenty-seven years, to me it has been just as the apostle Paul wrote the Ephesians: that God can “do more than superabundantly beyond all the things we ask or conceive.”
In 1931, on the first day of April, the weather was still brisk as my wife and I left Chicago for Iowa, roughing it for three months by sleeping in the car. Pioneering there was a happy experience. Many obtained the Kingdom message and most people received us kindly. Three months slipped by and it was time to leave for the international convention held at the Columbus (Ohio) State Fair Grounds, at which convention all of us learned our new name. The initials J w on the printed program had everyone guessing. Could it be Jehovah’s warriors? Or Jehovah’s worthies? These and other questions many asked. Before the convention ended we had learned it was Jehovah’s witnesses.
Following that convention I obtained a trailer, a comfortable home on wheels. Soon we were on our way to the next assignment, Gulfport, Mississippi, and the county. In Gulfport and Biloxi there were several Watchtower subscribers and these were organized into a study group. One young couple that had some knowledge of the truth accompanied me in the service for the first time. When next heard of, many years later, both of them had been through the Bible School of Gilead and were enjoying their foreign assignment.
Upstate Mississippi was our next territory. In that cotton-raising area we found much poverty, but the Kingdom message really sounded good to these humble folk. As many as sixty books a day were placed with them. In 1933 the Society announced a new feature for use in Kingdom service, the portable transcription machine and recorded sermons. Many interesting experiences were enjoyed as lectures were given at night under trees, on porches, in school auditoriums and in churches. To advertise these lectures the grapevine or mouth-to-mouth method was very effective. Long before the lecture was to begin the church was packed. From far and near they came to listen to the good news of the Kingdom, always taking away with them a free copy of the talk. What a contrast to what they had been accustomed to!
In the fall of 1934 a new assignment—operating a sound car, traveling from New York to California by way of Florida. The sound equipment was mounted on a ton-and-a-half chassis, there being two 30-watt amplifiers and a steel mast that telescoped to a height of sixty-five feet to hold aloft four Bud units mounted to a three-foot flare speaker. The lectures delivered from this equipment could be heard two miles away. Many were our interesting experiences and the comments from those who heard. On our arrival in California in the spring of 1935 the sound-car trip ended. Here I was assigned five counties in the high Sierra Mountains, where many eagerly received the Kingdom message. The sound equipment on our car was used to good advantage.
While witnessing in this territory I met a young couple who had almost everything money could buy: a fine home among the pines, a car, milk, cream, butter and eggs in abundance. They had a good knowledge of the truth. The pioneer work was explained to them, that it is a life free from all worries, cares and burdens of this old world, a happy life; yes, the only life. There was no Gilead then, but when I next heard about them they too had been through Gilead and were serving in Panama.
After we spent more than a year bringing the Kingdom message to the ranchers, rangers and mountaineers among the Sequoia forests, the national parks (including Yosemite and Lake Tahoe) and the beautiful mountain streams and waterfalls fed by the snow-capped mountains decked with flowers growing just a few feet from the snow line, a letter came from the Society assigning us to the desert country of Yuma and Phoenix, Arizona. The change in scenery and climate at first seemed terrific. The temperature was over 100 degrees F., and there was no shade. The scenery? A desolate barren waste. But in just a matter of days I adjusted myself to the new surroundings with all its unique beauty. There were the mirage, the many varieties of cacti with their pretty flowers, and the animal life, which at first we had not noticed. The people of the desert were easy to witness to, even the Indian on the reservation. This was a new experience. He would listen and listen as long as you talked to him, with never an expression on his face and with nothing to say, but invariably availing himself of the message.
With mixed feelings I left the desert country with its people, whom I had learned to love. Now we were assigned to work the business sections of Texas cities, Sweetwater, Brownsville, San Angelo and Beaumont. I found the businessmen pleasant listeners. Then came the 1937 convention at Columbus, Ohio. Here Brother Rutherford announced that a number of pioneers would be assigned to what he called the “flying squad.” The main feature of this work was presenting the transcribed Bible lectures in various languages, replacing the several hundred radio stations then broadcasting them. Galveston, Texas, and Lafayette, Louisiana, were my assignment. There the lectures were well received. French-speaking people of Lafayette never had heard such interesting Bible talks and such good French. They enjoyed them immensely, but not so the Catholic priest. He instigated our arrest. When explaining the Kingdom message to the police, I was reminded by one of them: “The City of Lafayette and not Jehovah signs our pay checks.” But the city judge was eager to let me out after I was in jail for five days.
In 1938 the zone work began and I was assigned to Zone 1 of Louisiana. While I was serving the New Orleans congregation out in the field “the Church” again had me arrested. Here the police, unlike those in Lafayette, wanted to know why. They were happy to receive every piece of literature I had in my brief case. The court received a good witness, after I had spent part of a day and a night in jail. The case on appeal was dismissed.
The zone work coming to a close in 1941, my next assignment was special pioneering in Gretna, Louisiana, among many Catholics. They listened, though, and soon a study group was organized. Here a letter came from the president’s office inviting me to attend the first class of Gilead (February, 1943), with the prospect of going to a foreign field. Thrilling indeed was this, freshly spurring me to pursue my purpose in life. After graduating and while awaiting my foreign assignment, I was sent to Del Rio, Texas, to serve many Mexicans. Among these humble people we had as many as thirty Spanish Bible studies a week, and a congregation was organized. In 1945 I was assigned to Denver, Colorado, where the Englewood congregation made good progress. With them we shared the privilege of building the city’s first Kingdom Hall, on Broadway. Shortly after its completion I started for my foreign assignment, the Virgin Islands.
Leaving New York January 3, 1947, on the Marine Tiger, we arrived January 7 in the quaint little town of Charlotte Amalie, V. I. After our getting located, witnessing started in earnest the following day. The Watchtower campaign was on and this actually was virgin territory. Several hundred subscriptions were taken, making it necessary for the post office to inaugurate rural delivery. So many studies were started that for the first two years it meant regularly coming home about midnight in order to care for all of them.
The first public lecture in the Market Square had a thousand in attendance. To these, 800 booklets in English, French and Spanish were given free. At the lecture in Coral Bay, St. John, V. I., the school was packed. A man standing at the door was invited to sit down; he refused, saying that if he did not like what was said he would leave. Shortly he was seen trying to share another’s seat. After the lecture no one cared to leave; they wanted to hear more, and they did. The Watchtower study and other meetings were announced. With at first three and four present, gradually the attendance grew. These experienced some service joys, too, as they promptly took part in helping to advertise the public lectures with handbills.
But now our assignment has been changed once more and at present we are continuing our missionary service in Cayey, Puerto Rico, where many joys are ours daily as we pursue our purpose in life.
Knowing that patience is meant for salvation, one soon learns to exercise the greatest patience and kindness among his newly found brothers and sisters, and they love the missionary for it. To him they become dearer in each passing year as he sees them grow to maturity, bearing Kingdom fruit, preaching the Kingdom message from house to house, making revisits, starting and conducting their own Bible studies. As I have kept on seeing Jehovah’s blessing upon the Kingdom service the joy of pursuing my purpose in life cannot be described in writing. It is Jehovah’s doing, and all who possibly can will eagerly desire to share in this feature of service.