personal finances and conventions

snarf

Did anyone ever experience financial hardships due to the hotel stays and meals from going to assemblies and conventions? When I was a single mom it practically wiped me out, providing shelter and 3 meals a day for my daughter and myself. Thank god for credit cards at the time, I charged basically everything...had to. I remember when I first became single, I was told stories of how the financially secure would give money to help the single ones pay for food and shelter, but I never saw it. Did anyone else have a hard time meeting the financial demands?

zeroday

Well, if you had not wasted your money on entertainment ie Television sets, stereos, computers, videos etc and used that time instead to read the WT publications at every opportunity. If you had not wasted your resources on new clothes as we all know clothes properly mended can last for decades. If you had not wasted your money on new cars as an early model is just as good. Or wasted your money on that mansion you call a house to furnish heat cool and all the expences that go with it you could afford assemblies. Why didn't you follow the stellar examples of the Elder Body how they put the Kingdom first and everything second. Why my PO lived in a mobil home he had owned for 30 years. Wore the same 2 suits for 20 years, drove a 1963 Belair Chevy and grew his own food in his garden. Cleaned toilets at night so he could pioneer. There are so many fine examples you could have followed.

merfi

Ooooooh yes. And that's the OTHER reason I'm not going this year. The first being that I really don't feel like being shunned by 7,000 of my closest "friends" for three hot, crammed-in-stadium-chair, numb-assed, brain-emptying days.

But anyway -- yes, I always had trouble scraping up enough money for the hotel, the food and the gas to get there (three hours away). I'm a single mom of three, so this whole event was more of a nightmare than a "spiritual banquet".

~merfi

juni

I budgeted our monies months before the assemblies. We were raising 4 little kids and there was not a lot of money. Yes, it was a sacrifice. We stayed in a hotel once. All of the rest of the assemblies we were able to be at home - driving back and forth or else were at home in not too much time as the assembly was very near to us or we camped at private camp grounds for cheap. When we would go home in the evening we would eat supper at home and take our food for during the day. Camping the same thing.

It was a lot of hard work for these assemblies. And everyone was so tired out. And HOT!!! It was truly torcherous, but you put the smile on and just did it.

And they used to use the Catholics in Mexico crawling on their knees over gravel to their idols as a pagan practice to show their sincerity. These assemblies were like crawling on gravel for miles and miles.

Juni

loosie

And if you say you can't afford to go they look down on you.

I wish back in the days when I went I knew how to knit. I could have gotten a whole sweater done during one assembly. I would have had something to show for my time.

If I went now just for kicks and took my knitting with me, what would happen? How long before somebody would tell me to stop? I could tell them that I am making this sweater to sell so I can afford the assembly. lmbo