Even this elder and his wife portrayed the happiest family life ever. LIE! we found out later that JW's are the most miserable people we know.
this is so true. my mum used to drag me to the meetings from age 8-13, and she now admits her main reason was that she wanted us to be like all the other happy families. 4 of the kids there were in my school (3 in my year), and she didnt believe me when i told her they were hostile and unhappy. 2 of them were full-on bullies, but then at the meetings they would stand there in suits and ties with their parents, and it did look idyllic. it was all so false it really drove me potty, and made me so unhappy. looking back on these times, not only am i so glad to be out of it, i really resent my mum for being so stupid as to not realise (she, by the way, turned her back on it all and started having affairs and taking drugs more or less overnight). one of these kids' dads (who was an elder) started an affair online, and left his family to move to australia. one of the other kids (after a lifetime of being isolated from others) went crazy aged 16 and needed years of counselling and medication. in year 6, our teacher told us he was the only person in her 9 years of teaching to ever get 100% on some maths test, i mean he was freakishly clever - now he's a window cleaner. a lovely JW regular called alan hung himself when i was 10. and no one at the meetings would have seen any of this coming because theyre so superficial to each other. i'd have so much more respect for JWs in general if they were honest.