Ten Years

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.

"Yuck. Give us more jokes next time."