How do you feel about the people who converted you

by sleepy 7 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  sleepy

  How do you feel about the people who helped convert you into a Jehovahs witness?
  Are you angery toward them or do you view it as more your fault?
  Did they pester you and persist in calling , was it politeness that made you speak to them?

  What did you do with people you "brought" into the truth after you left , did you apologise to them?

  I was brough up as a witness so I cant really know how people feel who came into the truth as adults.
  But I was thinking of the damage that just one person calling on another and that person listening bringing their own family into the truth, and then many generations following, has done.
• 

  TR

  Good question. I genuinely liked the JW's that converted me, they were very nice people but were as zombified as I became as a JW. I don't know if they're still 'in' or not, but I never held them responsible for converting me. It was their job, as they were under cult influence.

  This is where personal responsibility comes in. It's up to the person to do the research. I didn't do any when I was suckered by the WTS. What a dumb-ass I was. A hard lesson learned.

  There were many people that I studied with on and off, but none that I know of got baptized.

  TR

  "YK is his name, false prophecy is his game"
• 

  LB

  I hold no grudges against those that studied with me and my wife. They are nice people and did their best to be honest about the society, from their viewpoint of course.

  Now I think of them as sadly misinformed, but they seem to be happy and that is what counts. I'm happy too and that counts.

  Now the guy that got me started, before I studied, well he's an idiot. But that's another story.

  Must make me an idiot too

  
  Never Squat With Yer Spurs On
• 

  sleepy

  Another reason for asking is that i remmember when I used to pioneer working with poeple who would just keep on calling on people who ( to me )were not interested.
  You could see they were just being polite.
  Often people would start studies after constantly being asked , the study would last just a few weeks and then the person would go missing ( probably hiding behind the door).

  I must amit to calling on peole just to count RV's and mag placements , but I was no were near as bad as some.
• 

  teenyuck

  I gusess I need therapy.

  I was 4 when my mother started studying and 5 when she got baptized. I am angry at her for joining the JW's and getting all of her sisters involved.

  It created a group of disfunctional (they were anyway, now more so) people looking for reasons to shun someone else. It seemed to give their self-esteem a rise. They could point out how bad someone was and be smug and happy that armageddon was coming in 1975 and they would be in paradise.

  I remain angry at my mother because she will not listen to reason.

  My childhood was robbed. No more birthdays, Xmas, Girl Scouts, etc. Every friend suddenly was a "bad association." That spelled social death. There were no witness kids at our grade school in Chicago. My sister and I had no friends.

  The woman who came to our door, Vivian Sabo, was very nice. That does not make it any better, however.

  I am still mad.
• 

  Gozz

  The guy that studied with me was very sweet,a nd committed. He did his best, as I considered things for five years. Five years and I still made the wrong decision. I don't hold him, or the rest of the Dubs responsible, as TR said, they were doing their job. They're just as misinformed. And when the scales started falling, I went to my JW mentor, now an elder, to discuss what was coming to light about the question of blood; he was sad, but wouldn't discuss it, said something to the effect that it's a sin to be questioning whatever the GB says, there was pain in his eyes... I was the first of his fruits he would say. We still keep in touch, he's sent me mails today... when he knows, it's going to blow him away, the produce of his toil swept away...
• 

  Mum

  They were very nice. I idealized them a lot, as I was only 9 years old when I first met them. Looking back now, I feel sad for them. They were well off and had a good life, but their relationship with their children and neighbors could have been much better if they had not been JW's.

  Seize the day, and put the least possible trust in tomorrow. - Horace

  I have learned to live each day as it comes and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. - Dorothy Dix
• 

  GentlyFeral

  My conversion was a group effort. My first teacher was a hyperactive, elderly German immigrant who died embittered and disillusioned, but not disassociated, about ten years ago. During my early jaydub years I was fond of him but found him exhausting. I don't miss him.

  After I began associating in the town I then lived in, I studied with a dull, placid couple who were in their fifties, I think. We had nothing in common.

  My third teacher was an ex-lesbian who became a dear friend. She was fairly intelligent but had no imagination at all. As a jaydub, she was strictly "by the book".

  Oh, but I'm forgetting the first person who EVER witnessed to me: I married him. We're still together. When I wrote my DA letter, he asked me to print one up for him, and we mailed them in the same envelope.

  GentlyFeral

  "There were cockroaches of course,
  but very clean cockroaches."
  -- Julia Vinograd