Hi,
I have been lurking on these forums for about 6 months and thought it was time to join in.
I was a child/teen when I first became introduced to Jehovah's Witnesses through my mum who studied for a while but never fully committed. I had a study and attended some meetings but it all petered out by the time I hit my late teens and we moved to another town.
For the following 10 years I just lived my life how I pleased. Got married etc. But I never stopped believing that the witnesses had the truth. I was always determined that someday soon I would go back and really work hard at learning about God and the Bible.
To cut a long story short, I attended the memorial in March 05, was out on field service a couple of months later and then I got baptised in July of that year at the convention in Norwich. I was really up for it all at first and couldn't wait to learn new things. I am still reeling from the shock of how quickly I became so miserable and no matter how much studying I did I never felt like I was learning anything about the Bible. It seemed to be either overly simplistic and quite patronizing or so fanatical that I felt embarrassed to read it.
I was also so surprised by the amount of back stabbing and competitive spirit in my congregation and I found the nosiness quite sickening. They were obsessed with getting my husband interested from day one and so I found myself every week talking about the reasons why he wasn't interested but they continued to tell me to show him magazines and videos. I wasn't assertive enough to tell them that I thought it very unfair that I felt so pressured to make my husband see that its the truth when I was so new to it still. I was determined to just keep my head down and get on with things but found that it just wasn't possible.
There were lots of things that I experienced that made me start to dread the meetings and the field service and often when I came home afterwards I would just sit there with a knot in my chest. The last meeting I attended was the Thursday before christmas and I knew as I sat there it would be my last. A few weeks later I read Crisis of Conscience and shortly after sent my DA letter.
I look forward to joining in from now on.