Field Ministry

Y I Man

Morning all

I was brought up a JW in a small town in north of england and we had a huge territory to cover. Obviously I was the only JW in school so just about everyone knew me. I hated it when we went to areas where I knew people from school lived. There was quite a rough part of our town where most of the idiots lived and dispite our territory being massive we always seemed to work this area. I couldn't stand it. I'd be there in my suite with a dodgy briefcase bag thing knocking on doors with the magazines when all the school kids used to follow us about. Then Monday came and I was back at school where all the kids just laughed at me.

I know I had it pretty easy compared to some. In the west end of Newcastle (which is realy bad) we heard that people used to get stones & bricks thrown at them whilst they were on the ministry.

Did anyone have any dodgy experiences, good, bad or funny when they used to go knocking on doors?

Cheers

Gavin

Crumpet

YI Man if you were busy witnessing at school and had 4 bible studies at school like did when I was 7 then you wouldn't have been embarrassed to bump into classmates on the door to door work!

I went through phases of loving the ministry and hating it. I loved it when I was old enough to go out on my own and would do 9, 10 hour days when I was 11 and 12 placing loads of magazines as I went from door to door with an older pioneer sister (only 16) with our own map. I can;t believe looking back they let us do that - no one really knew where we were - and we were so young!

Dansk

I'd be there in my suite

We weren't allowed to take furniture with us!

Ian

Devilsnok

Like Crumpet said the best form of defense is offence. I too used to informal witness at school. I was in their faces with it and the kids knew i wasn't going to be upset by kids pointing out I was a dub.

I do remember a few times the horror of working a street knowing class mates lived there but i also used to pull a scripture out for situations like that. It was something like "a prophet is useless in his own town" that was my get out of jail free card and I could wait at the end of a garden path and not do that door because of it.

blondie

I grew up in the WTS. I remember that it was easier talking to my friends at school about my beliefs than calling at their homes in the formal ministry. I found though that if did not act superior to them and was curious about their beliefs and merely listened, I had few if any problems at school and was pleasantly surprised that when I met them accidentally in the d2d that they were nice to me. In fact, some at school would ask why I had not visited them. That was probably to my credit because of how I acted at school. But then I grew up during revolutionary times and my not saluting the flag, singing the national anthem, and being against serving in the military was seen as standing up for unpopular beliefs, a lot of which was going on during the Vietnam Conflict.

Blondie

material BOY

when i was a regular pioneer me and this elderly sister who had a great personalty

knocked on this door! next thing this man answerd with a huge erection poking thru his sports pants! he asked me what did i want, so i just started talking about the magazine, i looked at the sister and i saw her looking at his alert member! i burst out laughing and so did the sister!

we were holding each other up in the street coz we were lauging that badly!

i had many great times with this sister! she is no longer with us but she was so young at heart!

greendawn

I began thinking from early on that preaching was not for everyone or not everyone liked to preach in the predominant JW way which was from door to door. I personally didn't like the rigid way the JWs did their preaching work and especially giving in time slips so that they could inspect your time this felt like the act of a commercial rather than a spiritual organisation. Also the psychological pressure they put on their members, not to preach made one a second class member of the community.

Each person should preach as and when they feel like it and never get inspected by humans on this activity. And who cares whether their books and mags will get sold or not?

luna2

knocked on this door! next thing this man answerd with a huge erection poking thru his sports pants! he asked me what did i want, so i just started talking about the magazine, i looked at the sister and i saw her looking at his alert member! i burst out laughing and so did the sister!
we were holding each other up in the street coz we were lauging that badly!

material BOY, I'm laughing just reading that. What a riot!

Crumpet

MD - she sounds like a lovely sister! One of the things that actually made being a JW have some nice memories.

I must have been so naive when I was 16 - i didnt even know about erections and couldnt have identified one at 5 paces.

different story now though!

PeachRose

My experiences were usually horrible - roaches walking up the doors as the brother or sister I was with was yapping away like it was nothing, etc.. An experience that really tramatized me was when I was 7 or 8 years old. My congo had a massive territory, one of the areas in our territory was the projects (crack buildings, etc.) in the beautiful ghetto. Anyway, I was always nervous going into these buildings (especially since older sisters would get mugged in these buildings). Well, one day my aunt (who is a little nutty) and I were doing RV's. Her RV was on the 7th floor of this building. As we stepped in the elevator there was a pool of piss on the floor in the elevator and stunk to high hell! Well, needless to say we got stuck in the elevator! I started to panic, finally my aunt managed to open the elevator and said "see, it's working now, lets go to the 7th floor" and I shouted NO and ran out! My aunt was mad at me for running out and proceeded to yell at me. Needless to say we ended up taking the stairs 7 flights for her RV. After that I hated field service. Ahhhhh....the beauty of field service in NYC.

Field Ministry

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