We Experienced God’s Undeserved Kindness in Many Ways

AS A God-fearing young man, my father, Arthur, hoped to become a Methodist minister. However, his plans changed when he read the literature of the Bible Students and began to associate with them. He was baptized in 1914 at 17 years of age. World War I was then raging, and he received a call for military service. Because he would not bear arms, he was sentenced to a ten-month term in the Kingston Penitentiary in Ontario, Canada. After his release, Father entered the full-time ministry as a colporteur (pioneer).

In 1926, Arthur Guest married Hazel Wilkinson, whose mother had learned the truth in 1908. I was born on April 24, 1931, the second of their four children. Our family life centered on the worship of Jehovah, and Father’s deep respect for the Bible nurtured in us a lifelong appreciation for God’s Word. We regularly engaged in the house-to-house ministry as a family.​—Acts 20:20.

MAINTAINING NEUTRALITY AND PIONEERING LIKE DAD

World War II broke out in 1939, and the next year the activity of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Canada was banned. Public schools held patriotic ceremonies that included saluting the flag and singing the national anthem. My eldest sister, Dorothy, and I were dismissed from the classroom during these sessions. To my surprise, one day my teacher tried to shame me by saying that I was a coward. After school, several classmates assaulted me and knocked me to the ground. But that attack actually strengthened my resolve to “obey God as ruler rather than men.”​—Acts 5:29.

In July 1942, at the age of 11, I was baptized in a water tank on a farm. I enjoyed serving as a vacation pioneer (now called an auxiliary pioneer) during yearly school breaks. One year I joined three other brothers in witnessing to loggers living in unassigned territory in northern Ontario.

On May 1, 1949, I became a regular pioneer. Since the branch was doing construction work, I was invited to help and became a member of the Canada Bethel family on December 1. I was assigned to the printery and learned to operate the flatbed press. I was on the night shift for several weeks, printing a tract related to the persecution that Jehovah’s people were experiencing in Canada.

Later, while working in the Service Department, I interviewed pioneers who were visiting the branch office on their way to serve in Quebec, then a hotbed of opposition. One of the visitors was Mary Zazula from Edmonton, Alberta. Because she and her elder brother, Joe, refused to stop studying the Bible, they were expelled from home by zealous Orthodox parents. In June 1951, both were baptized, and six months later, they began pioneering. During the interview, I was impressed by Mary’s spiritual attitude. I said to myself, ‘Unless something negative turns up, this looks like the girl I will marry.’ We got married nine months later​—on January 30, 1954. One week later, we were invited to receive training for circuit work, and for the next two years, we served a circuit in northern Ontario.

As the worldwide preaching work mushroomed, a call went out for missionaries. We thought that if we could take Canada’s ice-cold winters and the annoying mosquitoes in the summer, we should be able to survive adverse circumstances in any assignment. We graduated from the 27th class of Gilead School in July 1956, and by November we were in our assignment​—Brazil.