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Assemblies Are for Children Too!The Watchtower—1969 | February 15
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with her mother. However, she was invited to go along to an assembly. She accepted and was so surprised at what she saw and heard that she immediately became interested in study and in Kingdom Hall meetings. After only six months she got started in the preaching service from door to door. She also now witnesses effectively to her schoolmates.
ALL MUST PLAN
For your family to enjoy the blessings of the assembly together, there is need for planning. Choice of assembly site must be made, in line with assembly dates and the available vacation times for both parents and children. Arrangements have to be made in advance with employers. But, perhaps more important, the family finances have to be budgeted so as to provide for the cost of the trip. Setting aside the funds that will be needed certainly will be less of a burden if commenced well in advance and faithfully adhered to, despite the temptations of a materialistic world.
Children, too, can help in this matter. Indeed, it would show real appreciation on their part to have some concern over how the family can manage financially. Worldly children do not have this appreciation and are continually asking more and more of their parents without any real gratitude. Godly youngsters have a different attitude. They have a balanced outlook. They think about what is involved, and they strive to lessen the burden on loving parents.
Among reports from Australia, for instance, came that about a young lad of eleven who rose at five o’clock each morning to collect bottles before school, and who sold papers in the evenings, cut lawns and did other odd jobs for the neighbors in order to earn his fare to the convention city. Not to be outdone, his sister, aged nine, grew flowers and sold them, and performed various jobs for the neighbors. These youngsters knew that there were blessings in store for them at the assembly, and they did not take it for granted that their parents would be able to take on full responsibility for the costs of the trip.
Then, too, in Panama in 1966 one little fellow of five began picking beans months in advance so as to be able to relieve his parents of some of the burden of his fare to the convention city. Surely that is wonderful evidence of youthful appreciation!
There was also the experience of the young girl in Surinam who was eager to get to the assembly. But how? She worked for a lady, but had to take all of her earnings home to help out with the family’s current expenses. The lady asked her to get someone to wash her car. The girl offered to do it herself, and so the lady offered her 25c for the job. She did it so thoroughly that the lady not only gave her this job regularly but also doubled her usual wage. And, when the employer learned why the girl wanted the extra money, she even consented to hold the funds for the girl so they would be safe and available when the time came to pay for assembly travel.
Another example of the effect of assembly attendance on young people is the case of the third-year law student at Tokyo University. He was contacted by Witnesses engaged in magazine distribution, and happened to learn about an upcoming assembly. Since he was on vacation at the time, he decided to attend. Deeply impressed by the experience, he privately studied several of the Society’s publications, arranged for a Bible study to be conducted with him and then started attending meetings regularly. Two months after the first contact he was baptized. On graduation he became, not a lawyer, but a full-time preacher of the “good news.”
FAMILY TOGETHERNESS
When attendance at an assembly is tied in with vacation for the whole family, what an unforgettable occasion for all it can turn out to be! Amid new associations and new surroundings the members of the family are drawn closer together. Each day members have so much to tell each other about the day’s proceedings, the people they have met, the experiences they have heard, and, above all, the sessions of the convention from which they have benefited. And this goes on day after day even after they have settled back to their routine of life at home.
Then, too, such a family vacation could include other joys shared together. Perhaps there might be an opportunity for a few days of camping in the country, exploring the beauties of God’s creation. Or there may be a possibility of spending some time by the sea, if the home of the family is inland. Or the family might visit historic spots where lessons in history can be so easily impressed. It may even be possible to arrange for the family to witness in some territory that is altogether different from the home territory.
Attendance at the district assembly as a family group can have many fine results. Young and old find that their appreciation for their place in the theocratic organization is deepened. Each one is helped to see more clearly his responsibilities toward others—be it to one’s parents, to one’s children, to the congregation of God, or to Jehovah himself. Children and youths as well as adults can benefit from the broadening influence on the mind, coming to know people from other lands and getting a feel of the truly global extent of the preaching of the “good news” now being done.
Is it not a fact that assemblies are for children too?
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Following ‘Your Light and Truth’The Watchtower—1969 | February 15
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Following ‘Your Light and Truth’
As told by Calvin Prosser
“SEND out your light and your truth. May these themselves lead me.” Those words of the psalmist have been my prayer for some sixty years now. Not only that, but Jehovah God in his undeserved kindness has all these years answered my prayer by ‘leading me in the tracks of righteousness for his name’s sake.’—Ps. 43:3; 23:3.
My grandfather was a geologist from Wales and homesteaded near Johnstown, Pennsylvania. This city is some seventy-five miles from Allegheny, where the Watch Tower magazine was published for thirty years, from 1879 until 1909. Grandfather was among the first to begin the mining of coal in this area. It was on this homestead in a coal-mining village called
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