by dozy 21 Replies latest jw friends
Dozy,,is there a link to a copy of that KM (June 2011)?
I took coffee breaks as a pioneer and a Bethelite. I figured if my secular jobs provided that with pay, that Jehovah would be at least that nice. The fun pioneers took coffee breaks, the pioneers that weren't somewhat fun, I didn't work with too much.
During the very brief time I pioneered, this was a huge problem for me and I tried without success to get a straight answer on it. We were a very rural congregation and DH and I lived an hour away, over dirt roads, from the hall.
Many times I would pick up another sister who lived even farther, to go in service. So I would spend an hour and a half or more *in the car on the way to the service meeting*, and then the same on the way home! It became obvious to me that counting time "from the first door to the last" did not REMOTELY express the time and effort it was taking me. In fact, I don't think it would have been physically possible for me to get 90 hours a month in that manner! The advice the elders gave? "start your time before you leave home"...SERIOUSLY? How am I supposed to do that? Make a phone call to someone at 6:30-7:00 in the morning? Stop at the farm down the road on my way out and back so I can 'count the whole time'?
It just seemed totally silly that I could 'count the time' by following such a 'strain the gnat' kind of method...and not if I didn't. And of course this was one of those subjects (because of the geographic situation of our hall) that you couldn't really ask people's opinion about or 'what do you do' because following 'the letter of the law' was so obviously unrealistic but no one wanted to be caught saying that, or admitting what they actually DID, in case they got told they couldn't do it any more.
This subject was one of the wierdest aspects of being an active JW...considering how every other part of our lives was micromanaged by Society directives, they sure were vague on this one...for obvious reasons!
That is a strange thing to expect from unpaid volunteer labor. I am a member of a club that has activities and events with everything being volunteer. We count on that. One year we had a clun president that tried to treat volunteers like paid staff, bossing them around. It did not work well and drove volunteers away. He was not put back in place after that.
I quite agree with you asleif_dufansdottir.
As if it should make a differance if you drive an hour to/from the service and 'speak' to someone at the beginning/end of the journey.
As Gayle said with regard to T Breaks and paid employment. I'm sure Jehovah is more understanding that any 'worldly' employer. A sales rep would be 'working' even when they are driving 2, 3 hours or more to an appointment. They don't have to speak to someone before they start the journey.
WHen I was pioneering, I quickly realized that if I was to ever get my "time in," I had to record it in blocks. For instance, service meeting was at 9AM, end at 2PM. Sure we had a half hour lunch break, and several 15 minute to half hour breaks throughout, and plenty of sitting in the car while others were on calls, probably only about 5 minutes of actual knocking on doors... but MY TIME was spent "in the ministry" from 9 to 2. Bam. Five hours.
Basically, you treat it like a white collar job and you are on salary, not a blue collar job where you have to clock in for the man. The former is a trusting situation, the latter an oppressive one. The ones who treated it as an oppressive factory job cleaning chickens were just crazy over-zealous maniacs.
For most of our final year in the org, my wife, who feared an elder's visit if we failed to report, would fill out the form and ask me what I'd done for the month. I'd tell her, "Zero." She'd round it up to the nearest two hours.
I wonder if the annual report of hours spent witnessing (1,604,764,248 for 2010 if you want to be precise) was presented as a pie graph, how much of the pie would be actual time spent talking to people.
I learned from "mature" regular pioneers to make a phone call to a not a home or rv (to set up time) as I left the house and did the same when I returned. That way you could count all that travel time.
SD7... Right on! I counted my time from the moment I made the knot on my neck tie at home until I took it off in my car on the drive back home...
reading this NOW it sounds so funny! I was always strict with only counting "service" time. Man looking back I wish.... I wish a lot of things!
Back in the 70s when the time requirements were 100 hours, I knew a young woman who worked downtown half a day and would then pioneer in the afternoon. Of course, the poor thing was always desperate to start her time. One day, at a curb, she rolled her window down and shouted to a man, "Hey-did you ever read the WT magazine?" When he said no, she yelled, "Well read it sometime-it's really good,"then drove off.
On Saturday mornings the entire carload of pioneers would drive by a nearby study's house that they knew was not at home, and "collectively look" in the direction of the house as they drove by!
