My children and I just returned from a trip to Germany where we visited my deceased husbands parents, his brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, and assorted cousins, all of who are Jehovahs Witnesses.
Before we left, the children and I agreed that since their grandparents were old people and not in good health, it would be an act of loving consideration not to cause them any further distress by announcing that we were no longer active in the congregation.
So we went prepared to attend meetings, to go out in field service and to pretend that we were still die hard Jehovahs Witnesses. We packed the proper Kingdom Hall attire, suits, ties, ankle length dresses, as well as our Bibles and songbooks.
I suppose to some this may seem the cowards way out, that I should have just announced our new status and let the chips fall where they may. I thought about it, I truly did, but his parents are aged, not well and it seemed pointless to cause them further distress.
Everything went well but the grandparents cried when they saw that I had cut my hair. I tried to explain to them why I did it, but I think it got lost in the translation. They are witnesses and the only way they know of helping people is to witness to them. However, on the whole it was a very enjoyable trip and it was good to see all the relatives.
I must say that we all did a fine acting job. We sang kingdom songs, answered at the book study and watchtower study and looked up all the scriptures. We did, however, draw the line at field service. On the weekends we always had important things to do and so could not meet for the door to door work. We feigned a deep regret and disappointment in not being able to engage in the preaching work and the relatives commiserated with us.
The one sticky point came when my 19-year-old son was called on to pray at the book study. However, cool kid that he is, he asked to please be excused from prayer because he was not sure that he could do justice to the prayer in German, as he had not prayed in that language for a while. I thought that the study conductor was going to protest but then mercifully his uncle jumped up and offered to do the prayer. Whew!!
Of course, we had to endure the obligatory tour of the German Bethel offices in Wiesbaden. It proved to be rather interesting because the brother assigned to show us around apparently had some things on his mind that he wanted to share with us. He was mainly addressing my brother-in-law, but he said that many of the German brothers were leaving the organization because of apostasy and that the society blamed this in large part to their being on the Internet. He said that while the rate of disassociation was in Germany was at an all time high, there was also a general lack of enthusiasm among the brothers and many of the brothers seemed to be just going through the motions. He said that in some of the smaller congregations off the beaten path, women were required to take the lead because there was a shortage of men.
I guess the brother was in a gossiping mood because he also informed us that the New York office had told them not to be overly concerned about making shepherding calls on apostates because the society was not anxious for them to come back in the organization. He said that there were experiences of apostates who were disfellowshipped and then pretended to repent just to get back in the organization and influence the brothers. So once someone has been identified and disfellowshipped as an apostate they felt that it was best all around for them to stay out of the organization.
An interesting incident occurred. We went to a gathering at the house of one of the brothers and I could hardly believe my eyes when some of the younger brothers, as a joke, dressed up like women, with makeup, high heels the whole works. I told them that if they had done this in the United States they would have been disfellowshipped on the spot. They found that amusing.
I can only suppose that different countries, different congregations, have different standards.
Its good to be home and its good to see so many new people posting.
Greetings Newbies!