Bygone Days of Old Bethel...

by freemindfade 26 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  freemindfade

  Something occurred to me last night. People that made their pilgrimage to JW Mecca (bethel) would often be excited about some silly things, I say silly because for those of you who were there or lived near enough to be involved in these things regularly they lost their magic.

  I am talking about on tours one of the most memorable things people talked about or looked forward to... LUNCH.

  I have to admit the first time I went to bethel many years ago, I was pretty excited seemed like a great privilege of sorts. Seems as though those days will be a thing of the past with the great downsize of 2015-2016. Also the wonders of impeccable house keeping "oooooh ahhhhhh". The great laundry operation "wow jehobie is amazing!". I just thought there will be a new generation that will not be in intrigued by these mundane things previous generations used to hang the hat on of "this has to be jehovah's organization look how it operates".

  Its also funny to know that while to outsiders Lunch is so cool, my experience with bethelites is they didn't care for it at all! having to stop work, change, go sit with people they get zero time away from, make conversation with visitors, etc. When you really find out how it is, people there were not happy. Many were miserable in fact.
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  Londo111

  Yes, it is no more than a factory tour. It should inspire one no more or less than that of any other company. But when one has the blinders on the most mundane things take on grand significance.
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  OneEyedJoe

  Yeah, I went once (luckily it was a part of a much more entertaining vacation to NYC) when I was younger. The one thing that stands out the most was how everyone was so impressed with how quickly the guy that packed the magazines into boxes could take a flat box and open it up and fold the bottom in. Granted it was quite fast, but it just didn't seem like the sort of thing that should be exciting people.
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  Sofia Lose

  Lunch at any of the Bethel facilities is nothing more than eating badly cooked and presented food at a cheap dinner. I have recently eaten at Walkill, Patterson, and Brooklyn (quite a few Org heavies in my family), and believe me.... it's pathetic lately.

  SL
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  sir82

  Yes, it is no more than a factory tour.

  Have you been on a Brooklyn Bethel tour lately? A factory tour would be riveting, fascinating, enthralling, exciting compared to that.

  I was in Brooklyn Bethel recently.

  Here is the tour process:

  Walk up a windowless hallway. See a hastily put-together display board tacked onto the wall, showing photos of other branch offices.

  Walk down another windowless hallway. See another display board showing construction projects.

  Walk down another windowless hallway. Here the display board shows translation services or whatnot.

  Walk up another windowless hallway. See another display board.

  That's it. For an hour. Trudge through bland windowless hallways looking at pictures of other places.

  Oh wait - forgot the highlight. We did actually go into one room - the office supply room. Never seen so many neon yellow highlighters all in one place.
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  OneEyedJoe

  Now that I'm thinking about it, lunch was something of a big deal when I toured it, but I remember it mainly because they went on about different techniques the bethelites had for saving food and scrounging leftovers so they didn't have to buy dinner for themselves. I remember thinking how odd it was that this would be required for survival when one was a part of "Jehovah's Organization." Why didn't they just provide dinner, too, I wondered.
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  DesirousOfChange

  The last meal we had during a Bethel visit was "healthy vegetarian".

  No meat? (Read between the lines: BEANS. Maybe it was lentils.)

  From that point on, I fully understood that it was a self-sacrificing way of life.

  Garson! I'll have a Rib Eye with a nice bottle of Cabernet.

  Doc
  
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  Stealth

  Londo111 an hour ago

  "Yes, it is no more than a factory tour. It should inspire one no more or less than that of any other company. But when one has the blinders on the most mundane things take on grand significance."

  My Mother was one of these people. One year we toured the factory and she kept going on about "only in Jah's organization could this be done" as we watched the WT & Awake rags pumping out.
  

  The brother giving the tour finally said, "Sister these same printing presses are used to print pornography at other places".
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  Londo111

  I haven't been since 2000. I went to Brooklyn, the Farm, and Patterson. I remember the model of the Temple they had at Patterson, but other than that, it was somewhat of a letdown.

  Sometimes I do wonder about touring without the blinders, but then why punish myself?
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  freddo

  I remember going to London Bethel on a congregation coach not long after I resigned being an elder. We were only about an hour away and it was a pleasant day in May and the tour left us enough daylight to do something else - maybe see some sights or stop at one of the London museums on the way back or visit the gardens of a stately home (mansion with large landscaped grounds) and have a picnic.

  But no ... we had to think about being up bright and ready for the ministry in the morning so that was voted down by the elders on board.

  The next time my wife wanted to go and I said sure I'll take the car so I dropped her and her friend off and I went to the Imperial War Museum and picked them up five hours later on the way back! Much more interesting.

  Tell me again how fast those presses go? Yawn.