I heard a story about witnessing in a rather remote area. A mother and daughter were approaching one particular 'house' which was really nothing more than a collection of metal sheets leaning against each other. A woman came out from behind the bamboo with a gun and demanded to know what was going on. A few more women with guns emerged. In the hopes of making friends and difusing the situation the dub mother commented on how attractive the large planation of 'bamboo' was, and could she possibly have some cuttings. Fortunately the daughter dub had been at school long enough to realise pretty quickly that the 'bamboo' was not 'bamboo' and there was a damn fine reason all those chicks had guns. It was quite an interesting little community they had going on there, but I think they were listed from that time as a 'do not call'.
Aussie outback Witnessing experience! Have you done isolated territory!
by Witness 007 19 Replies latest jw experiences
-
-
disfellowman
south dakota, guyana, etc..
-
Tyrone van leyen
My brother was in Australia and the first thing he did was hook up with a member of the annointed and witnessed up the coast of Darwin and in Brisbane where my grandmothers brother lives. He did this for his whole vacation. I don't know if that's considered rural or not though, but he took it very seriously. That was in the 80's.
-
wildfell
Ah, brings back memories. Of long, long driveways. Being met by packs of ferocious cattle dogs and too scared to get out of the car. Told to trust in Jehovah, but I wasn't getting out of that car for nuts.
The old brothers had their special pet rocks that they used to signal to other carloads of jw's that they had driven down a driveway. They would leave it by the front gate.
Lots of mud. Wrecked shoes.
Freezing cold in the winter, below 10 degrees, waiting in a car while two jw's from the car group get a good conversation going. Unfortunately, they 'forgot' to leave the keys in the ignition, so had no heating for up to an hour or more. Started to honk the horn in the end, they weren't very happy. But I thought it was even stevens since I wasn't very happy either!
But all in all it was more fun that trudging door to door in all kinds of weather.
-
TG-Jasper
A group from the cong I grew up in did a trip to Border town and a few years later a trip to Coober Pedy (both in South Australia).
The Coober Pedy trip was in my teens, and by then I had some questions and a lot of mental illness stuff going on. I felt so trapped the whole time we were there!
-
JT speaks-out
One of the things I remember about central South Australia is flies...lots and lots and lots of flies! (crawling into our ears and eyes and noses and mouths, swatting them with tracts and magazines to no avail)
I also remember the drive home from one trip to isolated territory, our carload was going south, two buses were going north, then a massive 4-wheel-drive overtook the busses. We had the buses pass about an inch away on one side of us and the fwd pass about an inch away on the other side. One of the women in the car said that she had this picture go through her mind of there being nothing left except someone's shoe sitting in the middle of the road. I think the bloke who was driving just about shat himself, he disappeared into the bush for a while after that and I think the rest of us just sat in the car in shock.
-
Balaamsass2
Would love to visit Australia!
Personally we have only done isolated territory in Northern California's "Emerald Triangle". A land of Lumberjacks, loners, and Marijuana growers...beyond the reach of cell phones.
Many a 4x4 dirt road ends at a cattle gate with a "No Tresspasing" sign, or a more colorful one stating something like " No Tresspassing- My dog is hungry, and I need target practice" on an old piece of wood with bullet holes. We would leave an old magazine in a plastic bag attached to the gate and LEAVE .
-
fulltimestudent
Another Aussie experience:
We'd been doing some unassigned territory (remember that ?), far, far from home. Being conscientious and wanting to make sure that our sacrifice to Yahweh was 'perfect' (remember that phase, too?) and having driven for a few hours, we wanted to make sure we were counting our time correctly, we stopped at a small town and decided to do a few houses, so that we could conscientiously count the time.
So I meet this old guy, who asks if I'm a JW, to which I said , "Yes!." And, he starts up like a well-tuned engine:
"Listen mate", he says, "I've been a bloody dairy farmer all my life, and had to get up every bloody morning at 3.00 am to get the bloody cows in, and milk them before the bloody milk truck came for the bloody pick-up. And, now I'm bloody retired, and I can sleep in every bloody morning if I want to."
"But, you stupid bastards, say we are going to live forever on the bloody earth, and you want me to live in that bloody paradise too, and get up every bloody morning at 3.00 am to milk the bloody cows. Well, you can f*** off, because I don't want to live in the bloody paradise and have to milk bloody cows forever."
With that, he slammed the door shut, leaving me without any riposte.
-
fulltimestudent
One country area I was assigned to as a SP, had a main town of about 3000 and a few scattered villages with only a handfull of inhabitants. (They had once been thriving villages with a few hundred people, but the isolation of country life, and the coming of motor cars, meant that even farmers moved to the bigger towns and drove out to their farms in the morning. So only a few older people were left in these towns, but the territory still had to be covered, lest some poor bugger would be destroyed at Armageddon because I was negligent.
I was too poor to have a car, and only a handful of witnesses in the town, were also carless. I used a bike to get around the town, and I decided to be a good and faithfull witness,(just like Jesus - who never missed a village in his preaching career), and cover my rural villages by bike. So I'd ride out some 20 miles to one village (before Aust. went metric) and be so bloody tired that all I could do was sit around for a few hours and wait for the one train of the day to go back to the town. And, if I left an old magazine with some poor bugger, I'd think I had accomplished something wonderful.
Sometimes, I'd get discouraged and have to try and memorise Hebrews 11:32-40 to remember that I was surrounded by a a great crowd of witnesses who had endured (unneccessarily) all kinds or trials to prove their faithfullness to Yahweh.
I know, I know, I was a really dumb kid. Sh*t what wonderful memories.
-
DATA-DOG
Sounds like a waste of a trip to the Outback.
DD