My First Special Pioneer Assignment.- Part 1.
In Australia, western civilization is a thin strip of land, that hugs the coast. All the major cities are on the coast. I grew up on the east coast of Australia where the Great Dividing Range, as it’s called, runs parallel to the coast, and limits the extension of cities like Sydney and Brisbane. The population figures tell the story, as an overall average there are only about 3 people per square km in all of Australia. Two thirds of all people live in the capital cities, and most of the rest live in coastal towns.
Over the dividing range in the dryer lands away from the coast, the sections that Australians call the ‘outback,’ the landscape and human life can be harsh.
And that was the location of the town that was my first special pioneer assignment. I was only 19, and had only been baptized for 3 years.
Most of you have had experience with the gossip hot-line in JW congregations, and my connection to the gossip line soon ran very hot with stories. It seems that life in this outback town had defeated many aspiring Christians.
There was a small congregation ( a handful of people). The main family had sort of been placed in limbo some years before, when the visiting circuit overseer, went back to their house after he gave the Public talk (during the WT study), broke in and took the cong. records. They had not been impressed.
A couple of girls had been assigned there as S/pioneer a few years before. One finished up marrying the town drunk.
I was assigned there to replace a young guy who’d got himself into trouble with a local girl and was subsequently ‘removed’ as a special pioneer. His former partner came up to Sydney to wait for me to begin my assignment. He was the over-confident son of a prominent theocratic family, whose grandparents had been in Strathfield bethel during the time that the Australian Army occupied the premises.
We caught the overnight train to the town. Early morning, at the station, a young railway worker, greeted my new partner, saying, "Where's your mate?, Hey! is he still fxxking the XXXX bitch?"
My new partner passed that off, one eye watching my reactions.
We got a taxi to the place in which he had been staying. On the very edge of the town we pulled up at a wire gate in a wire fence, there was nothing much past that point. A small brick building - not much larger than an outhouse sat behind the wire fence.
I asked, "Where's the place?"... my new partner (MNP from now on) smirked - "That's it."
We opened the gate and walked over. The small building was on the edge of an old quarry. MNP pulled out a key and opened the door. Two single beds and a small
table nearly filled the room. At the other end was an old wood fired stove.
A great stack of Watchtower and Awake bundles religious magazines sat on a table. "They belong to X” (His former partner- the one who’d got into trouble with the girl)."
I needed to pee. “Where’s the toilet?” I asked. MNP waved outwards from the door.. just find a place in the quarry. I did. I came back and asked where I could wash? MNP
waved again, toward a drinking trough for cattle a few hundred metres away. "Up there!"
“And if I have to do more than pee? He reached behind the door and showed me a small trenching tool, smiled and said, " Take this down the quarry and dig a hole (quoting the text saying Israelite soldiers had to do that)."
A week later MNP p*ssed off back to Sydney, saying he’d be back in a couple of days. The days stretched into 2 months. There were more trips back to Sydney and 6 months later he went back for good.
My father came to visit on his way to somewhere. He needed to sh*t, I gave him the trenching tool and a roll of paper, and pointed down the quarry. He did not look impressed with christian living.
When he got back, he looked at me quietly, and said, "You're living a bit rough, son! "
But, then - he'd never been impressed by the extravagant claims of the New World Society of Jehovah's Witnesses !!!