Ever had the "privilege" of ...

Frequent_Fader_Miles

... attending an International Convention?

Was it a total waste of time and resources, or did you actually gain something from the experience?

I attended the international convention in San Francisco at Candle Stick Park in 1978 I think what a joke seeing hundreds of witnesses down on Market street with their yellow liturature bags...I believe Michael Jackson was at that convention....

BIG D

louieville kentucky 1975

i was 15, and a corrider cruiser

big d

monophonic

dude, i was a kid at that same convention...wasn't that also the year 'my book of bible stories' came out?

my parents have a bunch of photos from it....i'll have to see if they're still around.

assemblies didn't get good until i could sit with my friends, scope out the ladies and leave with phone numbers and reeking of pheromones.

spiritboi

What??? International Convention???

I have never heard of it. Only been to a circuit assembly and a district assembly held in a nearby country.

And a bro paid for my train tkt to attend the DA as I am young and no money.

Internation convention? held at where?

If anyone were to sponsor my air ticket, I go!

JK666

Yeah, if you want to call it a privilege!

1963, Milwaulkee WI. The most memorable part of it was our first nights' accomodations. In those days, the Society went out to people in private homes to put up Witnesses coming in for the convention. One entrepreneurial type set up bunk beds nut to butt and tried getting 60 or so people in his house. It looked like the Church scene out of Soylent Green. It was in the middle of the city's ghetto, and the windows were wide open to the street. We arranged to stay elsewhere the next night. That was a scary experience for a 7 year old kid. That was also the International Convention that had a resolution about the WTS never soiling itself with the UN as other churches have done. They lived up to that one, didn't they?

1969, NY, Yankee Stadium. 8 days, 3 sessions a day, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.! A little slice of hell on earth. I remember that they ran out of food in the food service tents outside of the stadium, so they served cottage cheese with spaghetti sauce on it. It was an experience for a 13 year old kid riding the subway with his mom and sisters at night. I was baptized in the ocean at Orchard Beach, the Bronx on the Saturday of the convention, they did not have enough buses so I didn't get baptized until dusk. At least I missed the afternoon session.

There were others, but those were the most memorable.

JK

Reefton Jack

I attended two "International Conventions":
- 1973, held in Christchurch,NZ.
-Then 1978, in Auckland.

As with all Assemblies, Conventions - call them what you will - I could never see the point of the things.
However, the way everyone used to rave on about how "upbuilding" they were, I thought that there must be something wrong with me - like there must have been a point that I was missing somewhere along the line.

(It took along time for me to wake up to the fact that there WAS a point that I was missing;
- but it wasn't quite the one I imagined it to be!)

Jack.

justhuman

a memmorial talk

Honesty

Uhhh....

Not sure, but I did scope out the pretty chocolate sisters during an assembly at the North Coast Assembly Hall (thatched palm roof and wooden bench seats open to the elements with a nice breeze from the sea) outside of Falmouth, Jamaica.

oompa

One entrepreneurial type set up bunk beds nut to butt and tried getting 60 or so people in his house. It looked like the Church scene out of Soylent Green.

Good GOD JK!!! You should write your own sci-fi book with experiences like those! Both stories are like a nightmare of child abuse.....I must have read that three times....cotage cheese?....dusk/shark feeding time/ocean baptism??????......dang....oompa

You have my permission to feel like a total freak just for still having those memories....