It is almost here. We know that the last week of December is always the one that they want people to make sure to be at the Kingdumb Hell. Why? Because that is the week where, at the Circus Meeting, they announce the venue of the Grand Boasting Session for the summer.
Every year, they have a sealed envelope containing those details in a letter, with explicit instructions to not read it until that Circus Meeting. This year, it will be the week of December 31, probably putting it either January 1 (crappy new year for them) or January 3. On that day, they have instructions that they should attend the circus meeting for sure. Generally, they have to suffer through the oral review to get to this letter reading. They will tell you the dates and locations of the Grand Boasting Session.
Following this, they will have a list of "recommended" hotels. You are not to go off that list, even if the hotel you choose was on the list in the past (maybe the owner checked onto this forum or one of the apostate sites of saw the NBC News report on pedophiles). There is usually a list that will accomodate about 50 or 60% of the whole group. There is instruction that, immediately after getting home, you are to start calling all the motels on the list in order until you get a room. Since everyone will be jamming the lines, they are likely to be busy. And, aside the wasted time getting through, it assures people that there will be a big spike in long distance charges. The usual result is that most people will have placed 20 or 30 calls, and have wasted two hours getting through. A sizable percentage will have wasted all that time and still not gotten a room. Of course, they are still expected to be at the Kingdumb Hell the next morning at 5:30 for street work and 9:00 for territory work.
What they don't tell you is that it is all a waste of time. There will always be another list going up later, and your chances of getting a room on the first time are about the same whether you waste the time and money now or wait until the second or third list go up. I used to get around that by waiting until the third list goes up. Doing that, hardly anyone is tying up the line and I usually get through within a minute of completing dialing the number and get a room within another 5 minutes, with one call and one long-distance charge instead of 20 or 30. That is another way they have to get people to waste their time and money doing something that could be done in 5 minutes and less long distance bills. And yes, they did hound and harass me about having not gotten my room the first night and that I didn't even try.
Not that it is worth any effort. The whole thing will be another wastefest, and the synopsis will be here on this forum. As long as I am able to access it (even as a guest), I will get all the information I need about the session, probably long before my congregation is assigned to it, including the new litter-ature that will essentially be identical to existing litter-ature releases. About all I will miss out on is seeing the plants decorating the stage, getting goaded to get rid of my music and never visit this or any other apostate web site again, not to go to college, to not think on my own, to avoid independent sources for information, and to keep going to all the meetings. Not to mention the 6 year olds getting baptized, the spankings and beatings, and the signs directing people to keep quiet or keep moving to create illusions. To me, it's not worth it.