LEE T:
I never believed the stories in the magazines!
The purpose of those convention testimonials was to get JWs in the audience to think about pioneering. These stories about people who supposedly passed up college education or career opportunities always made me sick and I wasn’t swayed by any of them.
Also, the people on stage were usually young enough to get their life back on track when they find themselves broke in year or so. What you won’t hear about are those who had to get off the pioneer list at some point.
The tragedy is if lifelong pioneers have reached retirement age recently and realize they cannot retire!..But, this didn’t come as a surprise to them - they were just hoping the ‘system would be over’ by this point.