Hello everybody,
Thank you for this board – I was enjoying many of the posts here for some time. Being from Russia, I also enjoy this melting pot atmosphere of the fearless Norse, nonchalant Aussies and unostentatious Americans and I really do like your Britishers’ jolly good sense of humour.
And then comes slang: I was enjoying deciphering all the btw FYI imo imho acronyms. Today that I think I understood what lol means I decided to sign in. I still don’t know what the Borg means though – is it the Botchtower org?
I am 21 and am a college student in Russia. I disassociated myself about a month ago from a congregation here where I served as a MS and also as an acting Service Overseer (in Russia there is a great need of elders, in our cong there were only 2 elders and 2 MSs, so basically all the male Witnesses here have much responsibility).
Also, the situation with JWs in Russia is much different than in the US (I’ve visited Iowa, Michigan and NYC), here we have very few long-term Witnesses, and the majority are under the strong impression that it indeed is THE only divine organisation. Partly it is because there are not many alternatives and the WT largely wins by default and through its active proselytism. Even though disillusionment surely plays its role here too, but the number of fresh and active newcomers is large enough to cover up. When I was considering my disengagement I thought that I could perhaps stay a JW longer if there were not so many ‘interested ones’. I found teaching them what I no longer believed myself torturous – and I often returned home physically unwell after a bookstudy of the Daniel book. People are very credulous to all the WT claims here and the image of efficiently (tons of free literature) and harmoniously working organisation (bethels and printing presses all over the world) is but dazzling. Half-truths and lies of the opposers, as well as court cases only add to the feeling of unity and uniqueness of the ‘divine channel’. Practically noone is familiar with the old literature.
Will someone with good html knowledge please email me at [email protected]? (of course, others feel free to write too) A month ago I knew nothing about html but now I’m thinking of expanding my Internet activity, but I might need some help with that at times. Now I have several pages with quite big tables, and those may load somewhat slowly, and until the whole page is loaded it cannot be displayed. So far I did not succeed there. There is a web-site with Russian translation of Ray Franz’ COC at www.jws.by.ru. The book has been online (as gif files of the actual printed pages) for a while before, but now it is there in HTML format.
Since Internet is considerably expensive for me and I usually do not have much free time I am unfortunately not very likely to participate in discussions often – but I am reading many of your posts and enjoying the open, tolerant and generally supportive climate in efforts to help each other. Thank you all, thank you Simon.