The weirdest things can trigger
memories.
A few days ago I was laying in my
hammock (as usual) and I suddenly recalled a conversation I'd had
when I was 17. Specifically, someone asked if there was a question I'd
very much like an answer to, and my immediate response was “What
will my life be like in ten years?”
The true shock of my remembering this
conversation was the realization that it has now been that ten years
since the conversation. And let me tell you, there's no way I could
have possibly predicted my life would turn out this way.
What I was doing then: I was 17. I was
regular pioneering and had just recently finished pioneer school and
doing my first ever visit to seldom worked territory (Cynthiana,
Kentucky if I do recall correctly). It was a gob of fun, but my
interests laid elsewhere. Ever since I was about 4 years old I wanted
to work at Bethel. I don't know why exactly this line of work
appealed to me so much at that age, though I do remember being quite
fond of a paper shredding machine that misprinted literature got
chucked into. But of course, one must be 19 before applying, so
really everything I was doing up to the age of 17 was merely to pass
time until I could apply for Bethel and score my cushy dream job of
manning that sweet shredder.
I had never heard of Guyana. I had
never met nor could comprehend the existence of the people I now call
my closest friends.
If during that conversation you told me
that in less than a year I'd be hiking through a jungle up a mountain
carrying two boxes of literature on a continent I'd never seen in a
country I hadn't known existed, I would've been utterly baffled at
what bizarre string of events could have possibly led to that life
decision.
Honestly, even looking back on it with
the full knowledge of what happened, I'm still baffled by the whole
thing. Here's what essentially happened: somebody mentioned Guyana, and suddenly I knew I
should move there. At that point I may or may not have believed it
was in Africa.
(Allow me to clarify just in case
anyone is wondering: Guyana is not
in Africa. It is in South America. Kinda between Venezuela and
Brazil. See any South America map for reference)
And if
after mentioning to me this strange mountain jungle hike, you
proceeded to go on and tell me a summary of what would happen to me
over the next ten years, I would have laughed in your face. I'm not
even going to try to attempt mentioning all these things because oy,
that's over a hundred blog posts worth of material.
The
strangest part to me is that if you told me all this, but also told
me that I would in fact get to work at Bethel, but then voluntarily
give it up to return to a life of living in a jungle in a secluded
congregation, with no musicians to jam with, no Subway, no Morning
Worship or Monday night Watchtower study, no ice cream sandwiches,
etc … more than anything, I would flatly deny it was possible.
Bethel was the dream. Bethel is what I was thinking of when I got
baptized and when I applied to auxiliary and then regular pioneer.
Guyana was a one year diversion to kill time until I could apply. How
could that side project become my life? And yet, as unrealistic as it
would have seemed to me 10 years ago, that's how it went. And that's
how I want it to be.
So in
answer to 17 year old Josh Westfall's question “What will my life
be like in ten years?”:
It's
going to be great. It's also going to be stressful, chaotic,
confusing, exciting, depressing, exhilarating, frustrating, and at
weird little moments you're going to hate it more than anything else
in the world.
But
yet, at the end of the day, you wouldn't trade it for anything.
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| "Yuck. Give us more jokes next time." |
