H2O remains an option (page 2)

AnnOMaly

Just posted this on H20:

Realistically, JWD members will disperse and coagulate into smaller groups. JWD cannot be repeated. It will be the stuff of internet legend and of wistful nostalgia like the vintage H20 is. Only time will tell if a new 'JW/ex-JW' site will grow to similar stature as JWD and H20 did.

I remember 'Friend' from Witnet days (just before it went belly-up and I was a bright-eyed, loyal dubbie, brand new to the internet). Amongst all the fur flying on one thread I remember (and still have on hard drive), he impressed me the most with his calm reasonableness. I often wondered who he was and was sorry to hear he died some years ago.

Marvin Shilmer

Ann,

Friend was a longtime JW and Bethelite (at various branches over the years), and well regarded by those who knew him inside and outside the organization. For those whom he asked to help in his illicit (i.e., un-Bethel) educational escapades, he insisted his identity remain anonymous even posthumously. The man had his limitations for sure. But I have never known a soul who tried as hard as he did. If nothing else, the man was genuine to the bone. He loved people, all of them.

Marvin Shilmer

OnTheWayOut

Wow, I guess legendary posters like HS and Min. have an alert when someone
jokes or posts about them. That's some quick responding.

I am not as far over the WTS as you are, HS. I still have the wife well-grounded in
the anti-truth. But I won't like any new site as much. It won't be "home." I hope
that allows me to move on away from being an ex-JW.

I was in high school as a youth. I don't think of myself as an ex-High School student.
I was in the Navy many years ago. I don't think of myself as an ex-Sailor.
I was a janitor and window washer when I first became a dub. (Who wasn't?) I don't
really think of myself as an ex-Janitor, ex-Window Washer.

Why do I want to linger on as an ex-Jehovah's Witness? Instead, yes I was in high school
back in the day, I was in the Navy, and I cleaned offices and windows at one time. YES, I
used to be a JW, but I am much better now. That was a different time.

OBVES, I await your announcement of where you are going. What does the old Bible
calculator say?

slimboyfat

Marvin, have you got any of Friend's posts on file or know where I can read them?

hillary_step

Minimus,

Of course, you got away with a lotta stuff on your friend's site and the rules were changed for you.

Eat yer heart out.

The reality is that what fell in my favor is that I only responded to insults rather than initializing them. That having been said, I was edited on occasion and had a thread or two locked, but few people know about this as I did not go around this Board or others bleating as if the KGB had sent me to a Gulag.

HS

Marvin Shilmer

Slimboy,

You should be able to retrieve his posts at JWD by going to his membership page found in this site's Membership Directory.

Marvin Shilmer

SixofNine

I'm sorry to hear that Friend passed away. I doubt I'd still be a JW if I hadn't read his treatise on the blood issue, but it's doubtful that anything else would have gotten me out so quickly and affirmatively. And by "quickly", I mean that I literally read it one day, and by the next day, I'd told someone close to me that "while I'll probably always believe 95% of what you believe, I'll never consider myself a Jehovah's Witness again". Of course, in that 24 hour period, I found and read everything I could on the blood issue, including the words of Ray Franz and the AJWRB website.

Six months later I didn't even believe 5% of the JW doctrines or beliefs.

minimus

Sheep here, Hill.

Um, if my recollection is correct, ah, I don't think what you said is quite true. the "only" part.

Anyway, I'm still not thru with you or Dave who I talked to this afternoon. I would hope that you would at least appear in cyberspace, somewhere.

OTWO, yes we're kewl.

hillary_step

Minimus,

Um, if my recollection is correct, ah, I don't think what you said is quite true. the "only" part.

It is true fat face.

HS

Sunspot

I don't have a hard and fast recollection of when it was that I actually began to connect the dots and see through the farce that IS the WTS. I signed onto H20 in July of 1998, as a dub, and frankly I was appalled at the comments by some of those horrid apostate posters () and did my very best to stand up for and mightily defend the WTS teachings.Within months I saw that there WAS no defense that made sense, and by Oct 1999, in good conscience, I had written my DA letter to our PO and to the WTS head offices.

H20 left the internet and it was some time later that I had heard there were archives of the old posts, where I thought it would be interesting to look back at and actually SEE my progression and realization in the posts I wrote as thirty years of scales fell from my eyes. Unfortunately it seemed that a significantly large chunk of postings from that time period (July 1998-Oct 1999) were missing for one reason or another..

If anyone knows where I might find these I would be most grateful. H20 and a few key posters played such an important part in my life and helped me to be where I am today, and of course, after H20 died, the transition over to here on JWD was vital to this too.

hugs,

Annie

H2O remains an option

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