Amazing Awake Experience, Former druggie looks up JWs in the phone book and starts studying (page 3)

diamondiiz

I still feel drawn to heavy metal and rap

Those really don't mix, maybe not typical but usually you like one and not the other. It's sounds like another Andre story but it's female Ashley this time.

therevealer

It still is a fact that the witlesses have ruined more lives than they have "saved"

Gayle

I just checked on page 30 there,,a dot to dot fill-in picture,,is this the beginning of the Awake becoming a coloring book for the kids? Or have they done this before?

LostGeneration

Gayle, they have had the last two pages dedicated to children for a good year if not longer.

The pictures on pages 2 and 5 are pretty funny, trying to dress cult members up to look like musicians.

I truly think they manufacture these experiences. They may be cobbled together from several different people's stories, the dates changed, the places changed. I once had a friend who was given a part in one of the convention parts and they totally "tweeked" her "experiences". I didn't know who she was talking about as it didn't much resemble her life except that she was a single mother.

Witnesses have a lot of gall yapping about how truthful they are.

moshe

The name, Ashley did not hit the top 5 baby names until 1983 and dropped off after 2001- counting back 24 years (from 2011) puts us in the year 1987 for her birth- her name fits common usage of the time- young people download all their music to Ipods- I guess she trashed her CDs and kept her Ipod? Heavy Metal and Rap seems like an unlikely combination of music, too.

Many Kingdom Halls have gone to unlisted phone numbers. Too many apostate calls-

Personally, I think this experience was fabricated by the same WT fiction writer who has given us Andre's many different life experiences.

Chariklo

Just an aside thought. You all think Ashley is a girl. Not sure if you're all in the US, but here in the UK I think Ashley is most often a boy. They spell it Ashleigh for a girl round here.

Not that it matters.

QuitWastingTIME

What always gets me is the *some names have been changed... WHY? Why do they still do that? If the person who was "interviewed" agreed to do the story, and if his or her name (oh, that's another thing, it's always him/he/his in the WT and Awakes, never the now correct him or her when referring to a generalization) is John, Ashley, Derek, or anything else that's common, who the heck cares?

Definitely would agree that a teenager isn't listening to both heavy metal and rap. 99% accuracy I can assure you (LOL).

I'm gonna try to be as completely honest and impartial as I can be about this, and I hope I don't sound like a bigot, conservative, whatever. I wish you could just trust me on that. But here goes: in my short amount of time being here on this literally God forsaken planet, I have noticed that music really does divide and unite people. While I'm not going to say that "rap" or hip hop or "heavy" metal (I was listening to some punk the other day and a friend said, "I didn't know you listened to heavy metal!" bwah ha ha!) or ANY type of music directly contributes to substance abuse delinquency, I will say that music can definitely be a powerful tool to reinforce internal desires, insecurities, or certain behaviours.... ahem, behaviors. Somebody here mentioned Tupac, so I'll take him. Sure, his message was definitely relatable to a whole bunch of people, and the guy had some talent, but I don't think he did anything substantial to help "his people" or what he was trying to fight against. Most of the time he was just complaining about how unfair the world was. In the end, he did leave something behind: a generation (or two or three) of thug wannabes (thug wannabes... seriously, kids who want to be criminals) walking around with their asses hanging in the wind and their balls tightly squeezed in the newly discovered opposable thumb weilding hand. Oh, and bad attitudes towards authority.

Hey, I think authority stinks when placed in the wrong hands, and it should definitely always be questioned. But just seems to me that some music just incites people to say "F#$K everybody else. I need this so I'm taking it," or "What the f#%k you lookin at? Yeah I'm smoking cigarettes 4 feet from your kid and yeah I'm gonna throw this garbage right here on the grass. I spit on order and cleanliness."

meh... i don't even know why i posted. maybe that was cathartic. i'm outta here.

sizemik

Rap and heavy metal are slowly killing me too . . . figure I've got 20 years . . . 30 at best.

Where's that damn phonebook . . .

jean-luc picard

I think that lots of other religions quote similar experiences.

Its human. And as Mao said:

religion is the opium of the people.

So shes just given up one drug for another.

Amazing Awake Experience, Former druggie looks up JWs in the phone book and starts studying