couple zealous preaching of God’s purposes with progressive conforming of their lives to Bible principles, they thereby progress “from glory to glory,” and they increase their glorifying of God.

Do you look forward to the time when God will restore mankind to human perfection where they do not “fall short of the glory of God”? (Rom. 3:23) If so, do everything you can now to reflect God’s glory by fine conduct that conforms to Bible principles.

‘Like Slips of Olive Trees All Around My Table’

As told by Porfirio Caicedo, of Colombia

ACCORDING to the criterion expressed in the Bible’s one hundred and twenty-eighth Psalm 128, verses three and four, I am a very blessed man. There it says: “Your wife will be like a fruit-bearing vine in the innermost parts of your house. Your sons will be like slips of olive trees all around your table. Look! That is how the able-bodied man will be blessed who fears Jehovah.”

You see, I am the father of eighteen children. My dear wife Belén (Bethlehem), my “fruit-bearing vine,” has borne me twelve sons and six daughters.

My own life began sixty-four years ago in the town of Líbano, Tolima, Colombia. I was the youngest of twelve children. Because my father died when I was just a baby, at the age of twelve I was obliged to go to work in a foundry in order to help support my mother and youngest sister. Then when I was twenty-six I married Belén, and soon thereafter we moved to Bogotá, the capital.

By correspondence I improved my qualifications as a carpenter, specializing in wooden pattern molds for metal casting. So that I could have better oversight of my growing children, I opened my own little shop at home. However, until I became known in my profession, I had to look to another source for income. So, when there were no molds to make, I made guitars, mandolins and violins.

Learning has always fascinated me. That is one reason why, for as long as I can remember, I have been allergic to the world’s religions. Their ritualistic hocus-pocus never satisfied my yen for learning.

In contrast, I discovered something of real value in two books that I obtained from one of Jehovah’s Witnesses when he called at my shop one day in 1950. I wanted to learn; the Witnesses had something to teach me​—clearly, simply, without any mysticism. By my study of the Bible with him I began to lay a foundation for properly bringing up my children.

‘HAPPY IS THE MAN THAT HAS FILLED HIS QUIVER WITH THEM’

It is a joy to raise children. In spite of the work involved, the struggle, the anxieties, it is a joy. I am in complete accord