James Allen Schwarz

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Jim's Memorial

The memorial of Jim Schwarz took place on Saturday, September 5, 2020. A memorial service in Spanish was held the following Saturday on September 12, 2020. Due to social distancing requirements it was held via Zoom. To protect the privacy of the online event, we did not share the Zoom link publicly.

For those that attended, thank you so much for sharing our dad's life with us. For those that missed the event, we have posted the recording of the english memorial below. The video is password protected, so please reach out to us for the password.

We look forward to a time when we can hopefully see you in person soon.

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"What is the Truth?"

"What is the truth?"

The shape of my dad’s life was one singular lifelong quest. The biggest quest there is. The quest to find the truth about God, the meaning of life.  And if found, to share it and live it, pure and full.

He searched everywhere, but couldn’t find satisfying answers. He had the heart of a poet, but a scientific mind. So nothing endured deep scrutiny, everything was empty. Only after he found the courage to disown the secular world, sacrificing all material pursuits to prioritize his spiritual search did God finally answer him.  He found more than answers, he found his people. Others just like him. Once broken-hearted by a suffering world, like sheep without a shepherd, the few who also sacrificed everything to seek truth and find God. 

His quest, once solitary, became a shared journey.  He found the dearest of friends, from all ethnicities, ages, and backgrounds with one beautiful thread uniting them all- intense love for Jehovah their God.  He found the love of his life, his best friend, the best partner in the world to share in this one epic journey he would have on this earth.  And then Jehovah continued to provide him with an inheritance, a vast spiritual family. 

But why was he so sure of his faith? Despite many pains and difficulties he faced along the way, what renewed his conviction?  When he faced a decision, and he prioritized God's will, he would inevitably observe Jehovah’s hand in his life, smoothing out the path. Then he witnessed this pattern repeat in the lives of others, hundreds of times, over and over, for decades. It was his own life and all of you, his precious spiritual family, seeing God's spirit active in your lives. This was continued evidence of God, evidence of the truth he first learned half a century ago, in action.  To this point he loved Proverbs 10:22 - It is the blessing of Jehovah that makes one rich, And He adds no pain with it.  

Matt 5:3 - Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need, since the Kingdom of the heavens belongs to them.

Jim In The Words Of His Daughter

My dad had a poet’s soul. When my dad wrote me a card, it was always in the form of a poem. And the pains, difficulties but also the joy and wonderfulness he experienced in life made him especially sensitive to the needs and pains of others, and he lived his life the best way he could, showing love to those he came across, doing his best to reflect the qualities of his heavenly father. If you were ignored, maybe a bit of a misfit, hurting, broken, lost, he shined Jehovah’s brilliant loving light on you, and became your champion, helped you to know you had a family you could depend on and gave you a place in his heart. He epitomized mercy and reasonableness. He took the words of james 3:17 as the ways of his heart, ‘But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, reasonable, ready to obey, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, not hypocritical.’

He was the most in love student of the bible I've known. His theocratic knowledge was encyclopedic, as my brother recently said. When posed a complicated issue I was uncertain of, I would always say “I will ask my dad, see what he says.” He was a faithful defender of Jehovah’s truth and representative of his kingdom, the one true hope for everything that hurts humankind and our beautiful earth. He’s onto his next assignment where he will do even more of what he did while he was here, to our joy and Jehovah’s joy.

Many may not know this but I was like my dad in so many funny little ways, from our love of peanut butter, red curry & whiskey, having a box of kleenex in every room, our love of music from practically every genre, and always having cough drops on hand.

I know my brother, Amanda, and I will do our best to take care of my mom, but it will never compare to how my dad took care of my mom. That is one of the things I love most about my dad, how utterly and completely in love with my mom he was. He thought she hung the moon and was the best at everything, best cook, best singer, best piano player, best wife, best mother. “Yeolan’s spaghetti is the best I’ve ever had!!” If you knew my father, you may have noticed his penchant for using superlatives. He was never exaggerating, he really meant it. He said what he truly felt..I have always felt so grateful to have their brilliant shining example of what Jehovah expects from husbands and wives.

These photos are from when we went to Lake Sammamish state park and they very playfully re-enacted when their lifelong relationship started. It was so fun and I was so happy to experience something of their life from before I even existed. My dad always requested to never be put on social media but I think this he would approve.

So please please please hold on to your loved ones so tight, because they can be taken from you so quickly, with no warning. Love on all of them every day, love on people you don’t know super well, and love on strangers you don’t even know.

Be like Jim Schwarz and LOVE LOVE LOVE

Be brilliant. Be shining. Be love.

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A Beautiful Life

Jim was born February 19, 1948 in Yakima, Washington. In the 1950's, Yakima was just a small town, surrounded by farms and apple orchards. His parents, Walter and Betty Schwarz, already had 2 sons when Jim was born. The oldest was Walter III (who everyone called "Trip" short for Triple, him being the third Walter in a row), and the middle son was John. Jim wasn't the youngest for very long, soon after he was born, his sister Suzanne was born, then Nelly, then Francis, then Damian, Mary, Barbara, Joseph, and then finally Caroline. Yes, that's 11 children! All his brothers and sisters have survived Jim, except for Trip, John, and Francis.

Jim's father, Walter, was a principled man unimpressed with material things and social pressure. Instead of pursuing wealth he prioritized time with his family, and so he chose to work a reliable job for minimum wage. This was the large family's only income, so Jim grew up very poor. They didn't have a car, TV, access to healthcare. He had to be resourceful, learning to repair, repurpose, and reuse things. Nearly all of Jim's clothes were at least double hand me downs, worn for a year or two by Trip, then John for a year or two, then Jim at the end of the line, right before the trash heap. He said he was teased at school for his thrifty appearance, and this made him very shy growing up.

Besides these challenges, Yakima sounded like an awesome place to grow up for a young boy with lots of family, brothers, sisters, and neighborhood kids always around. The Schwarz house had a kind of open door policy and was the social hub of the neighborhood, frequently the spot of spontaneous gatherings, games, football, even live jazz. It was constantly buzzing with people, music, and laughter. They had a piano, which his mother would play frequently, and the boys would play guitars and sing songs. From their house they could walk to the yakima river where they would swim in the sun and catch fish for dinner.

Jim's School years in Yakima 1953 to 1966.
Like his dad, Jim thrived playing sports, especially swimming and football. He was on the swim team and played football in grid kids then for Marquette High School where he played offensive and defensive end. His teammates described his passion saying "that guy was always 100%". Just like his father, he was an athlete, but he wasn't a jock. Playing sports helped him gain confidence and even allowed him to partially overcome his shyness. Football took its toll though. A disappointing string of knee and back injuries forced him to quit, and left him with injuries that factored in the rest of his life. Also formative in his youth was his experience with bullies. He was bullied at school and even by his older brother John growing up. He developed a special hatred of bullies, and an immense soft spot for their victims. The bullying continued until one day in high school one of his neighborhood tormentors confronted him, trying to start a fight at school. As the story goes, without breaking a stride "Jim knocked him out flat", and this bully never harassed anyone else again. Besides wrestling with his brothers, I'm pretty sure this was the only fight Jim ever got into. His friends described him as someone who "would never start anything, but he wasn't afraid."

University of Washington 1967-1971.
In 1967 he received a partial scholarship to the University of Washington. Although he couldn't play sports, fortunately Jim also had a very curious mind and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. He loved science, literature, and engineering. Especially any subject that provided answers. He wanted to know how everything worked. Never satisfied with surface knowledge he was known for attacking his professors like no other students would, with deep and difficult questions to try to get to the root of matters. He was most fascinated with chemistry since it promised to reveal the building blocks of everything. He chose chemical engineering as his major since it sounded like it would combine his love of chemistry with his interest in engineering. However, a couple years into it, he was disappointed to find out his career was most likely going to be working in the oil and gas industry. While this was a hot career with high pay, he absolutely didn't want to work for an industry responsible for so much pollution. So he switched his major to Oceanography. As an Oceanography student he would go on research vessels in Puget Sound for days and weeks at a time, testing and recording water salinity. Then he would take the results and manually enter them into the mainframe computer at the UW computer department. Computers also fascinated him. He mostly loved spending time on the ship and fell in love with the ocean. During his time at UW, the Vietnam war was ramping up as were protests against it. The war disturbed him deeply, he even wrote a letter to President Nixon asking him to stop the bombing. To his surprise, the Nixon administration actually responded. They wrote to acknowledge receiving his letter, but also to serve him an official Draft Summons. It seemed certain he would be sent to Vietnam to fight and maybe die in a war he despised. When the day came, he showed up to be processed for the draft, but... he failed the physical, discovering that his back injury was actually a crushed disk in his lower vertebrae.

The search for the truth about God.
Jim was raised in a strong Catholic household, with very strict rules, including a 7 pm bed time that was famous in the neighborhood. In fact when he was young he was a chapel boy. As a young man finally on his own, attending college, living in the melting pot of Seattle, at the height of the 60's cultural revolution, he encountered many new scientific, religious, and philosophical ideas all competing for attention. As the Vietnam war dragged on and his awareness grew of how much suffering and injustice existed all over the world, answering the big questions became more and more of a priority. What's the actual truth about God, religion, why do we live, die, where's all this headed, why are we even here? While still attending UW, with an open mind he shifted his focus to finding plausible answers to these questions. He read the Bible, he read the important books on western and eastern religions, he explored various offshoots of christianity, islam, etc. He looked to philosophy and science to get familiar with what the "great thinkers" in human history had written about these questions. He asked his professors, friends, family, strangers. However the deeper he searched, the more viewpoints he gathered, the less sure he became that there were any answers at all. His heart sank as he considered he may never find satisfying answers to the only real questions that mattered.

One night, with graduation just weeks away, he poured his heart out in prayer, pleading with God to show him "the truth". He was desperate, promising God he would quit school, quit his career, quit all worldly, secular, and material pursuits if God would answer him. In fact, he would even quit school the next day, even though he was just a few weeks away from earning his Bachelors Degree in Chemical Engineering and Oceanography. Since he was praying to the God of the Bible, he decided the Bible would be the first place he would focus his search for the truth.

The next morning, he woke up early to follow up on the commitment he made, and headed off to school to resign. It was about a 15 minute walk from his apartment on Eastlake Avenue, along Lake Union, over the University Bridge, and into the U District to the administration offices. Along the way, he had a strange encounter. He noticed up ahead there was a young black man about his age, all dressed up, standing on the sidewalk by himself. He was kind of eyeing Jim as he approached, and he had a peculiar sense he was being singled out. He looked like he was standing there for a purpose but he wasn't talking to any of the people walking by him on the street.

As Jim got close, sure enough, the young man stopped him and began to chat him up, finally asking him a very pointed question, "Who is the ruler of this world?".

Jim replied, "Jesus, of course."

The man then read him 2 Corinthians 4:3,4 and then 1 John 5:19. "The whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one." He then asked Jim, "Who do you think is this 'wicked one'"?

Jim thought about this, reasoning that it couldn't be Jesus. It must be Satan the devil? He had read so much of the Bible, how had he never seen this scripture before? What else did he not know? It hit him like a bolt of lightning, and it suddenly just made so much sense. No wonder the world is so messed up, it's ruled by Satan.

The young man then handed him a small blue book entitled "The Truth That Leads To Eternal Life". He accepted the book, but at first he didn't notice the coincidence of the title "The Truth" matching the same words he spoke in prayer the night before. The young man introduced himself as Stan George, and Jim gave him his address for follow up. He then continued on his walk to the University of Washington where he resigned from school.

A few days later, Stan followed up, visiting Jim at home. He lived in an apartment on Eastlake Ave which overlooked Lake Union. He was excited to see Stan, and invited him in. He was having a birthday party and he wanted Stan to meet his friends. Well, Stan politely declined the offer, but instead asked him if he had a chance to look at the book yet. Jim had not, but he promised to, and so that evening he began to read. As he read, he just couldn’t believe what it was saying, since it was so different from what he was raised to believe as a Catholic. God has a name? The dead will be resurrected to a paradise, on earth not heaven? Surely this is just their translation of the scriptures? So he got his Catholic bible out and read each scripture from his bible and found it to be accurate. Surely then this is just taking each scripture out of context and presenting it in a biased way? So for each scripture he would read the surrounding chapters just to make sure the scriptures weren’t being quoted out of context. As he kept reading and confirming, gradually he realized what he had been taught was wrong, and these were truths about the bible and God he had never heard.

That night he couldn't sleep, he just kept thinking about what he learned. So he got up and started reading again. He read the entire book that night, in one sitting, and by dawn, he knew he had found the truth. As dawn arrived, so did his realization, and as he looked out across Lake Union, the daylight beginning to stretch over the water, before his eyes a full rainbow suddenly appeared with one side touching down right into the water in front of him. This was the first time he finally understood the meaning of the rainbow. Awestruck by this sight and what he had just learned, he couldn’t accept it was coincidence, but it must have been God answering his prayers and his search for the truth. He said a prayer to Jehovah, the name of God he just learned, and dedicated his life.

Learning The Truth.
Later that morning he called his dad to tell him what he found. They were very close.
"Dad I found the truth! The Jehovah’s Witnesses have the truth!"
His dad knew a little about Jehovah's Witnesses, they had knocked on their door in Yakima a few times, he may have even chatted them up, but the Catholic Church was certainly not a fan. His dad then responded in his frequently metaphorical way “Well Jim, I think you got moldy figs”.

Why would his dad say this? He had so many questions, but then he had no way to contact Stan George or anyone. So he opened the phone book and began calling Kingdom Halls one by one. There was no answer, because unless there is a meeting going on, a Kingdom Hall is empty. Finally, when he dialed a kingdom hall outside of Seattle in Lake Forest Park someone answered. He immediately said “I just found out you guys have the truth, I have some questions and I need to talk to someone! Can you please have someone visit me at home?” The man said he would come over right then, and within an hour, he arrived at Jim's home with another brother. They talked with Jim for a few hours and helped answer his questions. Then they gave him the address to the Central Seattle Kingdom Hall, located on Capitol Hill, which was the nearest. He went to the very next meeting where he reconnected with Stan George, who was attending this congregation. Soon after, he went out in the ministry for the first time. On his very first door a man answered and sternly told him "You are misled". He then handed Jim a book and said it would debunk the Jehovah's Witnesses. Imagine that being your first door! He was polite to the man and said he would check into it. After reading it though he realized the claims were all false, they misrepresented what the Jehovah's Witnesses actually believe to make them sound bad. Instead of exposing Jehovah's Witnesses, it redeemed them, and exposed these writers as liars. Instead of destroying his faith that he had found the truth, it significantly reinforced it.

So even though he had already read the Truth book, he began studying with Stan, but it was more like a Q&A than a normal bible study. Jim would have questions and they would discuss them, research information. He also learned a lot from Vern Davis, an anointed brother in the congregation, who lived with his wife in the apartment attached to the Kingdom Hall. Vern would let him into the Kingdom Hall on off hours so he could access the library. Since he had quit school and now had zero career intentions, he had ample free time to dedicate to learning. So everyday he went to the Kingdom Hall to study and was determined to read all the books in this library and to learn as much as he could. Since Central Seattle was one of the original Kingdom Halls in Seattle it was unique in that it had an unusually large library of publications, Bible translations, and scholarly books on the Bible. My dad fell in love with this library and engrossed himself in this study. He especially enjoyed reading all the "Questions From The Readers" in the Watchtower bound volumes dating as far back as he could find.

Baptism and Early Ministry.
On July 16, 1971, about 6 months after he first learned the truth, he was baptized at the district convention in Portland Oregon. He began pioneering immediately, doing part time construction work to make ends meet. His first 3 bible studies also got baptized soon after him, and 2 of them also began pioneering along with him in the Seattle Central congregation. One of these was Richard Sessions, who became Jim's roommate. When Richard was accepted to Bethel, he moved into a small basement apartment on Capitol Hill. He still had almost no possessions. His bed was a hand built bunkbed on top of a makeshift bookshelf stacked full of bible publications. This was the very beginning of a bible themed library that he would grow to be very large over the years. His entire life was studying and the ministry. Public speaking was Jim's greatest fear in life. He had recurring nightmares about it all his life growing up. But he knew he would have to overcome this fear. For his first talk, he was so nervous he couldn't face the audience from the podium. So instead he sat at a table with another brother seated across from him, and he delivered the talk by speaking to him and not the audience. After that, he gave a talk from the podium, and then after a few more talks his fear of public speaking diminished, but it was years before he felt comfortable. In 1974, he was appointed as an elder. This was unusual, since he was only 26, and the central Seattle congregation was conservative in their appointments.

Meeting Yeolan.
In the summer of 1973 Jim went to an international convention in Vancouver Canada. During the lunch time break he met a young Korean sister named Yeolan who had just migrated to the United States from South Korea a few months earlier and still spoke very little English. Though it was difficult to communicate, they discovered they could both help each other in important ways. Yeolan's sister, also newly migrated to the US, had just moved to the central Seattle area and did not know how to get to the Kingdom Hall to attend meetings. Yeolan was worried about her and asked Jim if he could help her sister and he agreed. Jim then told Yeolan about a young Korean sister in his congregation who was attending UW and was missing a lot of meetings, he asked if maybe she could reach out to her and encourage her. She agreed to help. They made arrangements to meet the next day at the convention, Yeolan suggesting in front of the stage at lunch, so Jim could meet her sister Pilan. Jim agreed to the plan, nodding happily. The next day, Yeolan and her sister went to the stage at lunch and waited, but Jim never showed. This seemed so strange since Yeolan's first impression of Jim was that he was well put together, reliable, and loving. So why would he no show?

Three months later Yeolan started attending meetings at the Central Seattle congregation with her sister. She immediately recognized Jim, and although he was nice to her, he acted like he didn't know her. Perhaps because he was "cultivating singleness" and he was 100% focused on his spiritual activity in the congregation, pioneering, and he had applied for Bethel service. They had very little interaction until one day they both went to a congregation picnic at Lake Sammamish. Yeolan's English had improved significantly, and so after talking for a bit, Jim suddenly realized this was the same impressive girl he had met in Vancouver. She had changed her hairstyle and dress and spoke much better English and so he hadn't recognized her. Yeolan then learned why he never met her in front of the stage in Vancouver, he had no idea what she was saying at that point in the conversation, and was just nodding politely and smiling.

Yeolan was also pioneering, so they would occasionally work together in field service. They would also both come to the meetings very early, Jim to study in library, and Yeolan to practice playing the grand piano at the Kingdom Hall. In those days, before sound systems were common, the kingdom songs would be played live on a piano, so each Kingdom Hall usually had one. Yeolan's father had been a well known violinist and orchestra director, and so she was trained in classical music and very skilled at the piano. When she came to America, she didn't have access to a piano, she missed playing. So her solution was to arrive early to meetings and play.

Jim would hear Yeolan playing in the distance while he studied quietly in the library, this impressed him so much and is probably when he started falling in love with her. However he was cultivating singleness, and his dream was to go Bethel, and maybe someday if it was Jehovah's will, he could assist the Writing department in some way. So he couldn't even think of starting a relationship. He and his roommate Richard both applied, and they were in the waiting period for months to learn if they were accepted. Only Richard was accepted, Jim's application was denied. Bethel wrote in a letter explaining that he was qualified but because of his back injury, they couldn't accept him, the work they had required hard physical labor. Incredible. And crushing. That back injury was the superlative example of double edged swords, first ending his dreams of being an athlete, only to then save his life from the Vietnam war, and finally now ending his greatest dream of all, serving full time at Bethel. Of course he was disappointed, but he was learning to really trust Jehovah, and that if he put him first in his life, everything would work out for the best. So he decided to continue his focus on pioneering and serving in his congregation. Naturally this led to spending more time with Yeolan, some days they would be the only 2 out in field service, but neither of them had a car, so they would walk to the territory and go door to door together.

After they had been dating for a while, and their growing relationship became obvious, Jim and Yeolan really wanted to begin sitting together at the meetings. However, this was controversial. As they sat down together for the first time at the start of the meeting, an elder in the congregation approached Jim and explained they could only sit together if they were engaged. So Jim looked at him, then at Yeolan, and said, "Well then, I guess we are engaged!"

On March 29, 1975 they were married at the central Seattle Kingdom Hall by Vern Davis. Jim had a rough time remembering his marriage vows. This was hilarious because everyone was worried about Yeolan, who still had difficulty speaking English, and she had memorized her vows perfectly. For their honeymoon they went to Canon Beach, Oregon. Their early married life was very simple. They were both pioneering full time, with a goal to apply to Gilead and serve as missionaries. They didn't need to earn much because they were invited to live rent free in the tiny apartment attached to the Kingdom Hall. Jim worked part time as a painter and Yeolan part time as a data entry clerk at Swedish hospital. All their furniture was donated to them by friends, Jim owned only one chair and a book case, Yeolan owned even less. But then they found out Sarah was on the way, and once again they would have to adjust their plans.

Building a family.
With Yeolan pregnant with Sarah, they felt like they might have to quit pioneering. There was another newly married pioneer couple in the congregation, Peggy and Ron Travis, so they decided to give them the Kingdom Hall apartment and get their own place. Jim quit pioneering so he could work full time and earn some money to prepare for having a baby. So after living in the Kingdom Hall apartment for just 6 months they moved to an upstairs 1 bedroom apartment at 1810 East Republican Street in Seattle. It was a "Co-op" building, which meant it was furnished and move-in ready. Somehow everything just worked out. They had close friends living in the same building just downstairs, they would spend time helping each other daily with cooking and house repairs. Sarah was born in April 1976. A short while after she was born, they decided to restart pioneering together, and so they were invited to move back into the Kingdom Hall apartment. The Kingdom Hall needed a number of major repairs including a new roof, so Jim worked to complete those projects while they continued full time service with little Sarah. They had settled into this life for about 2 years when another change forced a major adjustment. Another baby was on the way, this time it was Michael. So once again, they quit pioneering and moved out of the Kingdom Hall apartment. Jim began working full time and they rented a small house in the Greenlake neighborhood a few minutes north of Seattle. Michael was then born in June of 1979.

As Jim tried to balance his spiritual priorities with his growing family priorities, he looked for ways to optimize his income. How could he earn enough money to provide for his family, but then also have enough time and energy left over to pioneer and help the congregation? It seemed unsolvable, and so he prayed for Jehovah's help on the matter and left it up to him. He then discovered that the Seattle waterfront would occasionally hire untrained workers for day jobs with excellent pay. Everyone complained how inconsistent this job was, it was feast or famine, you would make great money when there was a cargo ship to load or unload, but the rest of the week there was no work and therefore no money. But to Jim, this seemed like the perfect job. It was relatively low skill, didn't require any degree, and had high pay. It was not a 9 to 5, it was completely flexible, you worked when you wanted to. So if he kept his overall expenses low, he could essentially work part time, pioneer, and still earn enough to cover the family cost of living. He considered this was maybe the answer to his prayers, and his solution for being able to pioneer and still provide for his family. So he quit his full time job as a journeyman electrician, and went all in on this idea. The goal was to make it into the longshoreman's union, where he would get the most consistent and flexible work and pay, with great benefits. And he loved working on the waterfront, being near the ocean, around ships, it reminded him of his days as an oceanography undergrad. But he needed to accrue a substantial amount of work hours in a short period of time to show his commitment. To do this he would have to go to the dispatch hall almost every day and take any job they would give him. So for a few years, this is what Jim would do. He would go to downtown Seattle to the longshore dispatch hall, "Peg in" on the board, and if he didn't get a job that day, he had just enough time to change his clothes and still make the morning meeting for field service. This philosophy stuck with him, he would always advise young people trying to decide what career to choose saying "Its simple, choose what makes you the most amount of money with the least amount of TIME. That way you can pioneer." Over his career at the waterfront he showed dozens of friends how they too could get into the longshore union and many made it their career too.

Jim and Yeolan loved living in Seattle, all their friends were there. But violence and crime were on the rise, and he was worried about the challenge of raising kids to be spiritually strong in an urban environment with all its distractions.  He decided that to protect his family he would move out of the city. The Schwarz family set a goal then to build a financially and spiritually stable foundation by buying an affordable house in a safe area, continue to live simply, and get back to pioneering ASAP. In 1981 he doubled his efforts as a non-union longshoreman, working whatever day shifts, and even night shifts he could without sacrificing his spiritual responsibilities. As a family, they cut costs down the absolute minimum, and they were able to save $6,000 in 6 months, which at the time was enough for a down payment on a house if you were willing to move to a cheaper suburban area and deal with a longer commute. Later that year they bought a newly constructed 3 bedroom house but with an unfinished ground floor for $73,999. The house was 30 minutes north in the suburb of Lake Forest Park. They would start attending the Lake Forest Park congregation, and coincidentally this was the same congregation he called the morning after he read the Truth book 10 years before. This began a new unfamiliar chapter in their life. For the first time as a family, they would need to make new friends, in a new congregation where they didn't know anyone. Finally, after moving in, completing the construction work on the house, and then saving up some emergency money in 1984 Jim was finally able to rejoin the pioneer ranks. He returned to his life's #1 priority, joining Yeolan in the full time service again. He saw Jehovah's hand helping them the whole way through, everything was just working out beautifully. 

Jim continued pioneering with a few short pauses for the next 3 decades or so and served as an elder in the various congregations he was assigned to. Remember his dream of going to Bethel? In the 1990s he was able to partially live out this dream by serving as a temporary Bethel worker where he used his experience as an electrician to do electrical work several times. He loved the Bethel lifestyle, he was thrilled to be right in the bullseye of Jehovah's organization, and he was constantly encouraging all the young brothers to make Bethel a goal. Remember his dream of going to Gilead with Yeolan and serving as missionaries in a foreign land? In 2000, he was able to live out this dream with Yeolan when they decided to both learn Spanish and serve locally in the rapidly growing Spanish territory around Everett, WA. The growth was unprecedented in his life as he saw the congregation grow so fast it split 4 times in 10 years. I remember the absolute joy in his voice as he described it to me "I have 10 bible studies! Can you believe it!! It's so fun, it's just AWESOME!" In 2013, Jim finally retired from his job as a supervisor on the Seattle waterfront, and so after 13 years in the Spanish congregation near Everett, WA they moved to a home they purchased in Goodyear, AZ. They decided it was time for another change. HE COULD NOT WAIT to get to Arizona, experience life in the desert, and start to dry out from 46 years of Seattle rain. Jim and Yeolan started out in the Estrella Spanish congregation but after a few years, decided to move back to English. They began attending the Sarival English congregation in 2016. Jim was truly delighted to serve in this congregation. He was still active as ever, faithfully serving as an elder and pioneer when he passed away suddenly on August 19, 2020. We all miss him. So much.

At this point, it makes sense to stop and ask what would be Jim’s message for us today? What would he want to tell his friends and family?
My dad was imperfect, but he worked relentlessly his whole life trying to reflect Jehovah and Jesus.  So because he taught me to know Jehovah, and I will always have Jehovah with me, then I will always have my dad with me. So I know exactly how my dad would answer this question, or any question. 
I can picture him, clearly hear his voice say: "Trust Jehovah. Put him first. Then, look closely for his hand in your life. It will all work out, I promise you." And then, he would probably suggest memorizing Proverbs 3:5,6 because he just loved that scripture.

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