Proverbs 3:5, 6 made a tremendous impression on me: “Trust in Jehovah with all your heart.” When I was younger, I probably said: “All right. Let me try it and see if it works.” As much as I loved what I was learning from Jehovah, I was still leaning a lot on my own understanding. Obviously, when we make decisions in our lives— A spiritual person will review and think, ‘Let’s do this Jehovah’s way.’ And that was something that I had lost sight of at that moment in my life. There was considerable opposition to the work. We expected that when we did street work, we might be picked up and taken to jail. But Jehovah’s organization had explained to us how we were to handle it. I do remember when the police finally picked me up, and they drove me down to Chicago. It was about an hour’s drive, and they asked me, “So, what did you do wrong?” So I had one hour to witness to them. And as I recall, I kept track of it, and I counted the time too. Things didn’t disturb us because we were being trained by Jehovah’s organization. We knew what to do. So I ended up in a jail in Chicago for a weekend, and there was nothing I could do about it, so I put up with it. So I was home for a day or two. And then I went back to my assignment, and I kept on working. I left the rest in Jehovah’s hands, and he handled it very nicely, whether we were in jail or whether we were not. Eventually, I stumbled upon the punk rock anarchist scene. And this really called out to me because here I could be myself; I could establish my own standards. But that scene eventually led me down to a very dark path of immorality, drug abuse, drunkenness, and a lot of violence. I felt lonely. I felt betrayed. I felt that nothing made sense. I remember thinking back to when I was learning about Jehovah and how simple things were. I decided to give Jehovah another shot. Reading Matthew 16:24 hit me really hard, where it says to ‘disown yourself,’ because I knew that scripture, but I still hadn’t really focused on what it meant for me. I knew I had to let go of certain parts of my personality and of my old lifestyle. I’d never really given Jehovah a completely fair chance. So I started applying more fully the principles I found, and I started trusting Jehovah more. Very quickly things started falling into place: the determination that I had to serve him, the changes that I needed to make —changes that I never thought I could make. I felt that spiritual progress was appointments and assignments. I think pride got the best of me there. Very shortly after we got to the congregation in Brooklyn, I’m out in service with the coordinator, and he says to me: “The letter came back, and you weren’t recommended as a servant. Do you know what happened?” So I said, “Well, you know, I think those brothers have some problems over there.” And he said: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! “Stop for a second here. “You don’t need to tell me anything negative about the brothers in that hall. “Focus on what you need to do, and Jehovah will take care of the rest of it.” It really did feel like Jehovah was just saying: ‘OK, stop. Right now you need to focus on you.’ And that really just allowed me to relax and focus on what was really a lot more important than whether I had a certain position in Jehovah’s organization. The humility and the patience and the love and the adjustments that I needed to make —being a more obedient servant of Jehovah— those were the things that were so important that I had forgotten about for a while. All the time that I spent pursuing my own interests always led to disappointment. And now that I’ve learned about Jehovah and living by his principles, I have been having the time of my life. To know that Jehovah just simply wants to make me the best version of me and teach me to enhance my personality and to become better, that really endeared me to Jehovah. Jehovah really cared about me enough to mold my thinking. It was kind of like my life was back in focus, and I was able to just relax and serve Jehovah happily. And then, of course, the blessings started really pouring in after that. Everything I’ve done connected with the truth, I have enjoyed every speck of it. You might have some great idea, but I found out: You do things Jehovah’s way and the end result is nothing but good.