Just some highlights from the assembly:
Near the end of the second day, my daughter kept wanting Grace Gough's (Mouthy's) 'business card' that she sent me last Christmas that I currently use as a bookmark in my Bible. It reads, "Support for Ex-Jehovah's Witnesses and Jehovah's Witnesses. Do you need a friend? You are not alone!" Can't let that card loose at the assembly! HA HA HA The commotion was enough to irk my wife though I thought we were quite discreet about it.
Concerned that we were disturbing others, I looked around us and found the old couple who was sitting behind us sleeping. Oh well, guess we're not interrupting their 'spiritual meal.'
They gave a small skit on comparing two types of families. One was the typical 'worldly' family where everyone in the house had their own thing going on that weekend. The oldest daughter wanted to go to the mall, the youngest son wanted to visit a friend's house to play video games, the mom had her own thing, and the poor father had no choice but to go to the bar since all his family was doing other things. I commented under my breath, yep, if I were the father, it would be Star Trek videos and hoagies. FUN FUN, time to myself!
The other 'spiritual' family had field service planned for Saturday morning, along with cleaning up around the Kingdom Hall that afternoon. Perhaps, maybe they can spend some time together at the park that afternoon after family study time and follow it up with meetings on Sunday. "Well family," said the father, "it appears our plate is pretty full this weekend."
I hate these skits, it stirs discontent. I knew I had to go into damage control mode with my wife at lunch afterwards. I explained to her that we both had to give up our pictures of what we think our 'ideal' families should look like. I pointed out that just the day before she was getting mad at me for recommending to her sister that she should not marry a 'worldly' man if she plans to be a witness. I can see how she would be offended at even I believing that witnesses are better off marrying other witnesses and leaving us 'worldlies' alone. But, this skit illustrates why we feel better off being left alone. She understood and began to feel better when I explain that while we are not the ideal 'spiritual' Watchtower family, we are also not the so called 'worldly' family either as we do lots of things together over the weekends.
A couple of other highlights:
If you pray for the troops, support the troops, have any dealings with the military, or even cheer for your nation's teams in the olympics, you have the mark of the beast. (This was the talk that disgusted me Saturday to the point to where I had to leave.)
Yet another skit was presented on how little Johnny wanted to go to college with the recommendation of his guidance counselor while his parents was trying to instill more 'spiritual' goals in his life (more field service, gilead, bethel, etc.).
