After my father’s repeated invitations, though, I decided to sit in on the Bible study. I was struck by how accurate the Bible is when touching on scientific matters. In time, I was convinced that the Bible is God’s Word and that Jehovah’s Witnesses are teaching it accurately and living by its standards. I was baptized in 1970, on the same day as my father. My mother and my two sisters got baptized some years later.

 Many of my peers seemed interested only in partying. I admit that, at 17 years old, I was attracted by their carefree lifestyle. But the Witnesses who studied with me radiated such joy in their full-time service that I wanted to join them. I eventually did so, at 21 years of age.

 I discovered such a deep-seated joy in pioneer service that I regretted not starting earlier. I especially enjoyed witnessing at the port of Göteborg, where I shared the truth with the foreign-language crews of the cargo ships.

 Over the last five decades, I have enjoyed a unique way of making the good news available to people of various language groups. Let me explain how it all began.

Working With MEPS

 To support myself in the pioneer ministry, I worked part-time as a typographer. At the time, the printing industry was entering a new era. Rather than using lead type, text and images were being transferred photographically. I learned to use the latest computerized typesetting equipment to prepare plates for the printing press.

 In 1980, I married Helene, a regular pioneer who, like me, loved meeting people from different parts of the world and discovering new cultures. Our goal was to attend Gilead School and to serve as missionaries.

 However, because of my experience in typography, Helene and I were invited to serve at Bethel in Sweden. The organization was interested in adopting new technologies to make our printing methods more efficient. Therefore, in 1983, we were sent to Wallkill Bethel in New York to receive training with the new Multilanguage Electronic Phototypesetting System (MEPS) a that the brothers were developing.

 MEPS, we found out, is a computer system that allows text to be typed in many different scripts or alphabets, merged with accompanying artwork, and composed into pages. Our role would be to help develop new scripts using MEPS so that our literature could be printed in more languages. Now, decades later, Jehovah’s Witnesses publish the good news in well over a thousand languages!

 In time, Helene and I received an assignment in Asia to help with adding more languages to MEPS. We were ready and eager to assist with making the good news available in more languages!

A Culture Shock

 In 1986, Helene and I landed in India. What a culture shock that was for us! Upon our arrival in Bombay, now called Mumbai, we were overwhelmed by the unfamiliar surroundings. The Swedish and Indian cultures seemed poles apart! For the first week, we seriously considered returning home.

 After that first week, though, we both came to the same conclusion: ‘We have always wanted to be missionaries. So now that we have finally received a foreign assignment, how can we give up? We must overcome these obstacles.’

 Therefore, instead of running away, we decided to learn as much as we could about this completely different way of life. As we did so, Helene and I quickly fell in love with India. In fact, we have since learned two Indian languages, Gujarati and Punjabi.

To Myanmar

 In 1988, we were sent to Myanmar, a land nestled between China, India, and Thailand. The political scene in Myanmar was tense, and most of the country was under martial law. MEPS did not yet support the nonroman script used there, and no other software could do the job. So our first task was to help design the characters for the new script and then bring the files back to Wallkill for uploading to MEPS.

 At the airport, Helene was carrying the character artwork in her handbag. In the unstable political climate of that time, we risked arrest if the border guards were to catch us carrying Myanmar-language literature. But when Helene was searched, she simply held the bag in her raised arms. Nobody noticed the handbag!

 In addition to new scripts, the translators in Myanmar were provided with laptops, printers, and MEPS training. Most of these translators had never seen a computer before, but they were willing to learn new skills. Soon, they no longer had to rely on antiquated commercial printing presses that needed the lead type to be set by hand. This meant that the quality of our publications immediately improved.

On to Nepal

 In 1991, Helene and I were assigned to provide support in Nepal, a country along the southern slopes of the Himalayas. At the time, only one congregation existed in the country and only a few publications were available in the Nepali language.

 Before long, more publications were translated and distributed in the territory. Today, there are about 3,000 Witnesses in more than 40 congregations in Nepal, and over 7,500 people attended the 2022 Memorial of Christ’s death!

A Brochure in Lahu

 In the mid-1990’s, missionaries based in the city of Chiang Mai, Thailand, began preaching to people of the Lahu hill tribes. Lahu is spoken by people who live around the borders of China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. However, we did not have any publications available in that language.

 A young man who was studying with the missionaries translated the brochure “Look! I Am Making All Things New” from the Thai language to Lahu. Then he and other Lahu villagers collected money and sent the brochure and the money to the branch office. In the accompanying letter, they wrote that they wanted all Lahu-speaking people to be able to hear the truth that they had learned from the brochure.

 A few years later, Helene and I had the privilege of training Lahu translators to use MEPS. One of the translators was a recently baptized brother serving in the translation office at Chiang Mai. What a surprise it was to discover that he was the young man who had translated the “Look!” brochure into Lahu!

 In 1995, Helene and I were back in India, where we worked with the translators at the branch to provide them with the MEPS tools they needed to do their work. Today, there is sufficient literature available in many of the languages spoken there to help people to study and progress to baptism.

A Rewarding Life

 Helene and I have served in the Britain branch since 1999. We work with the MEPS Programming team at world headquarters. What a joy it has been to spend much of our time in London preaching in the Gujarati and Punjabi fields! Whenever a new language becomes available on jw.org, we look for opportunities to preach to those in our territory who speak that language.

 I am so happy that early on I set spiritual goals, instead of following the “party crowd.” As Helene and I look back, we do not regret our decision to pursue full-time service. We have enjoyed visiting more than 30 countries, seeing firsthand how the good news is reaching people of every nation, tribe, and tongue!—Revelation 14:6.