I went to the grocery store today - no that's not your fault.
It's 103 degrees today, not bad. There were three people sitting in the shade in front of the grocery store. There was a middle aged woman, an older man in a wheelchair, and a thin man whose frozen smile screams "elder." They were all very nicely dressed, sitting comfortably at a card table, with brochure holders and tracts, having a nice conversation.
I smiled to see what would happen. They looked me over and went back to their conversation. On the way out of the grocery store, I did the same, smiled encouragingly, and they looked me up and down and went back to their conversation.
I put my groceries in my car, and the shades of Mr. Flipper and all the other freedom fighters on this forum rose up and rebuked me. My position to JWs is, if you leave me alone I'll leave you alone. But I told myself, you chicken, you HAVE to go say something.
So I walked back to them, and before they could give me a repeat treatment, I said, "you know what I remember?" Of course they don't know me from Adam. The woman smiled and said "what?" I said, "in 1973 at the summer convention, in the main talk, the speaker said that the preaching work was almost over." The woman laughed in a "yeah right" sort of way and the elder darted a glance at her. I said to him, "the speaker said that pretty soon we'd be going door to door telling people that salvation was no longer possible." I kept my voice conversational and pointed to him and said, "you know, it's 2007." And I walked away with butterflies in my stomach and rushed home to tell you all about it.