First, Hello to all! I finally made myself to register on this board. I think I should tell my experiences. So, I was born to a JW family. I dont have any brothers/sisters, so I got my parents full attention on "truth". My dad was and is still an elder of congregation. When I was at school, almost everyone bullied me all the time because I was different. They throw stones and stuff on me and hit & kick when I was at ground. In many cases I had to walk home bleeding. Worst thing was when 1 bad guy threw an AXE to me. Luckily it didn't hit. Then I got older and grew faster than my fellow classmembers. Then I could protect myself and I got into many big fights. Same time I was forced to go to meetings, even I didn't care them. I just wished that I could be a normal boy. Then, my parents encouraged me to start going to field service on my own. So I became non-baptised servant. Then it years passed by and all my friends were JW's. One of my best friends encouraged me all the time to get baptised. In Finland, every male has to go to army at age of 18, so most JW children get baptised before that to get "free pass" from army. They have to renew their free pass every 3 years, and you need a document from JW congregation for that. So, I got baptised at age of 16, though I knew that they didnt have the truth and I had visited apostate websites for several years. I didnt want to wait till I was 17 because then everyone would think that I baptised only for free pass from army. I didn't think that JW's were the "truth" and still I got baptised. Then things started to get different. I was hoping that JW's were the truth and tried very hard to go to field service and so on, I got some stupid errands at my congregation. At the same time my friend who encouraged me got little "away" from truth and he had some problems with elders. That gave me strenght to talk to him and we acknowledged that we have same kinds of thoughts about "truth". At the same time, I met my girlfriend, who is now my wife. She is a former member of pentacostal movement, so we have many good discussions about faith. She has some weird experiences on pentacostal movement and it's fun to share them. I didn't go to meetings anymore, and after 2 weeks nobody talked with me. I got marked. I think they thought that I'm not "very good" JW at all because they ignored me so quickly. I didnt go to conventions at summer and my parents were whining me all the time. They started to ignore me and they started to blackmail and pressure me. Mostly with money because unemployment is big problem in Finland, and I'm unemployed now. That didn't change my mind and I continued to date my non-JW girlfriend. My parents didn't want to meet her at that time, but later they met her and my dad gave her a 45minute talk about "JW = true religion" and I was afraid that she would get scared and leave me. Luckily she just laughed and everything went fine. We got engaged after 8 months of dating and my parents were shocked. We got married and luckily my parents came to our wedding. But none of my JW relatives did come. Some weeks before our wedding that friend of mine, who I mentioned earlier, got disfellowshipped for smoking. Real reason was that he became an apostate, but smoking gave them easy way to kick him. He tape recorded all stuff what elders said and we made JW information website, because there is very few of those in Finnish. (if you are able to read Finnish, address is http://veljesseura.org). Of course I invited my disfellowshipped friend to my wedding and my parents were shocked again. They ran away from our wedding about 30 seconds after my friend arrived. I'm still officially member of congregation even I have said about 5 times that I dont want to be a JW. Now I think I'll wait that they disfellowship me so I get more good material for our website. That's my story.
my experiences (new user =))
by Lehtiveli 27 Replies latest jw experiences
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Merry Magdalene
Welcome LehtiveliThat's some story! Thank you for sharing it. Makes me wish I could read Finnish.
~Merry
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luna2
Welcome to JWD, Lehtiveli! Enjoyed your story. Its amazing how similar some of the experiences are from country to country.
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Lehtiveli
Yea. WT organization is all the same everywhere ;) Funny that only people who live in USA has replied here... my dream is to move to USA for couple years with my wife, I hope I can do that... getting a visa is real hard. I would like to get to know US culture better, in Finland we have really different lifestyle.. I hope my english is good enough ;)
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luna2
Your English is great. I am all admiration. Yeah, weird it's only US people responding as its the middle of the night here (well, past middle for the east coast. I should go back to bed)
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bigmouth
Welcome Lehtiveli from way down under.
I enjoyed your story, I don't think there is anyone else here from Finland. Of course they would probably post on the 'recreation' board and talk about rally driving or skiing! (I'm joking:))
Your English is very good so don't worry about that. I think you'll hear more from others as we go through the time zones, there are lots from the U.K. and Australia.
Cheers, Pete. -
Lehtiveli
Usually Finnish people just read this board, I think we have some finnish people posting also. Most of people are afraid to write english because they fear that nobody understands them.
I've heard that some native-english people said that finnish people have better knowledge of english grammar than they do :D
May be, because we have to learn english grammar something like 6 years in comprehensive school. -
I-follow-the-narrow-path
WHY would people do that to you? :( I mean... how did they even know you were a witness...?
I can not believe you actually lived through stuff like that... I would have broken down crying and confused. I hope you are okay with your wife now... I am glad she didn't get scared by your parents :) -
KW13
Welcome to the board, looking forward to reading your future posts!
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unique1
Excellent post. Your english is fine. Yeah, we study English for 12 years here but, most people that learn it as a second language speak and write more properly than most of us that grew up speaking and writing it.