00:00:01 I served as an elder until the end of 2014.
00:00:07 And that’s when some problems came up, and I ended up being disqualified.
00:00:13 I had already been serving as an elder for nearly two years.
00:00:17 But at the time,
00:00:19 I felt that the best thing to do
00:00:21 would be to stop and give up my privilege of service
00:00:24 so that I could care for myself emotionally.
00:00:29 Before I lost my privileges, my qualifications were reviewed by the elders
00:00:34 on three separate occasions,
00:00:38 and that ended up dampening my desire
00:00:40 to want to serve again in the future.
00:00:43 I began thinking:
00:00:44 ‘A publisher receives the same reward as an elder.
00:00:47 So why should I put myself through that all over again?’
00:00:52 When you resign or are disqualified
00:00:54 from serving as an elder,
00:00:57 you’re not immune
00:00:59 to feeling like you’re a failure,
00:01:01 feeling sad,
00:01:03 and especially feeling that you’ve let Jehovah down.
00:01:08 And it’s a fight to remain active.
00:01:12 One of the biggest things that helped me during that phase was my wife’s support.
00:01:19 She believed in me and helped motivate me.
00:01:22 My wife was already a pioneer,
00:01:24 and she encouraged me to start pioneering too.
00:01:26 So within just a few months,
00:01:28 I had already started serving as a pioneer.
00:01:31 It was in the ministry that I began to cultivate a desire
00:01:35 to serve once again as an elder.
00:01:38 Getting involved in activities with the congregation,
00:01:42 helping out with the cleaning . . .
00:01:46 Being with my wife in the preaching work,
00:01:50 conducting Bible studies . . .
00:01:54 I had a lot of help from the brothers
00:01:56 who cried with me when I needed to cry
00:02:01 and who laughed with me when it was possible to laugh.
00:02:05 A mature elder helped me to see
00:02:07 that I needed to leave the matter in Jehovah’s hands.
00:02:10 That time period when I stopped serving as an elder,
00:02:13 I can say that that may have been when I prayed the most in all my life.
00:02:18 I still wasn’t an elder, but I felt at peace.
00:02:21 I remembered 1 John 3:20,
00:02:24 that “[Jehovah] is greater than our hearts”
00:02:26 and that he knew what I was going through.
00:02:30 And just because I wasn’t serving any longer as an elder,
00:02:34 that didn’t make Jehovah love me any less.
00:02:36 That helped me a lot.
00:02:39 The most difficult thing to overcome
00:02:41 was really the resentment that I felt toward some brothers
00:02:44 who had participated in the whole process.
00:02:48 The scripture at Psalm 119:165
00:02:51 helped me to see that when you’re going through a difficult situation,
00:02:54 that’s the time that you need to show that you love Jehovah.
00:02:59 I could see that during that time of my life,
00:03:02 that’s when I had to show that I really loved Jehovah.
00:03:05 I would pray to Jehovah each and every day,
00:03:09 and I would mention those brothers by name.
00:03:12 That helped me to start softening my heart,
00:03:14 to lessen and eventually to eliminate this resentment.
00:03:20 Trusting in Jehovah
00:03:26 was so worth it,
00:03:28 and I felt like it was a great act of love on his part
00:03:33 to allow me once again to serve as an elder.
00:03:36 And it’s as if he told me,
00:03:38 ‘Marcelo, I trust that you are going to do a good job as an elder.’
00:03:43 We just have to trust in Jehovah.
00:03:45 When I began to show more trust,
00:03:47 that’s when things started happening in a way that I couldn’t have imagined.
00:03:51 In less than two years,
00:03:53 I had already begun serving as an elder again.
00:03:55 And in 2016, we received an invitation to serve at Bethel.
00:04:05 My wife and I have now been serving here at Bethel
00:04:08 for a little more than ten years.
00:04:11 When you accept the discipline,
00:04:13 then you stop thinking about privileges
00:04:16 and start thinking more about the brothers
00:04:19 and about being more involved in the ministry.
00:04:23 I still had the most important privilege:
00:04:27 that of being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
