Hi everybody, I´m a new member from Spain (page 2)

greendawn

Welcome Benito, you need not be anxious about your English it's not your mother language so you have the right to make mistakes, but you hardly made any.

Perhaps you can tell us what made you leave the Watchtower Society.Here you can always find support from many interesting people.

benito

Thank you for all your warm greetings, I didn´t expect to have answers so quickly. (Hey, I was able to put an emoticon here, my knowledge of Internet is improving!!). And thanks everybody for encouraging me with my English.

Rebel8, I don´t know the numbers currrently, but 4 years ago there were 90,000 witnesses in Spain,more or less. The country has a population of 40 million, you can calculate the percentage if you like. (Oooooh, another emoticon; it´s incredible what I can do with this computer!!!).The numbers must have decreased (of witnesses not of population) like in other parts of Europe.

And the biggest concentration of witnesses in the country was in Barcelona area. In fact, the Spanish headquarters of the Watchtower was in Barcelona for several years, before moving to a place near Madrid. That´s why I think the priest you met was not very aware of all the people around him who were Testigos de Jehová (Jehovah´s witnesses in Spanish).

love2Bworldly

Welcome! I have only been on the forum a couple of months. Your English is better than some people who post! LOL We look forward to hearing why you left the JWs.

mouthy

Your English is better than some

Talking about me again are you LOL

Narkissos

¡Hola Benito!

Welcome from the other side of the Pirineos. I visited the Bethel in Barcelona long ago (my TJ/JW parents then lived just across the border, in French Catalunya).

Pleasuredome

That´s why I think the priest you met was not very aware of all the people around him who were Testigos de Jehová

hi bonito. welcome to the board.

i went to a congregation in mallorca a few years ago. when i saw the sign outside "Testigos de Jehová", i thought it said "testicles of jehova"

rebel8

That´s why I think the priest you met was not very aware of all the people around him who were Testigos de Jehová

That must be it. I calculated it and it's less than 1%. I think he may have moved from Italy, so he might have missed the headquarters' move.

Where are you from? Why did you leave the organization? (By the way, we sometimes call the organization the "borg". Borg are mind control robots in the Star Trek movies. Very fitting name.)

benito

Well, I lef the JWs, not because of the behaviou of other, but because I couldn´t support the doctrine anymore and I couldn´t live a lie any longer. I met "the truth" when I was 17 and I got baptized when I was 19, and I don´t want to boast myself but I tried to behave as a perfect witness. That doesn´t mean that I was arrogant or that I showed contempt for other people; I just wanted to do what I thought God wanted me to do. I remember that I was the preferred ministerial servant to the old ladies in the KH because I always paid attention to them.

I think I was very lucky to be in the congregation I stayed all these years. In my town there are 5 congregations and I realised that other witnesses despised my congregation´s elders because they were not very good at teaching or giving talls. That´s why al the assemblies it wasn´t very common to see the elders participating there. But I remember that they were kind with the people in the KH. You could listen to gossips from other congregations where there were problems among elders, but mine was not very problemati (there were problems, but never as scandalous as the things hapening in the other congregations). That´s why I can´t say that I left because of the people.

I always had doubts about some subjects but eveytime these doubts appeared I put them in the back of my mind. Doubts like the blood issue, the 144,000 (if these people were going to heaven, why not me?), the inmortal soul (if I don´t have an inmortal soul and nothing remains after my death, who will be the man that will be resurrected? A man similar to me, behaving like me, but not me? A clon?), the destruction of all mankind in Armagedon, but the JWs, etc.

There came a moment that I couldn´t stand anymore.I had all my friends there, all my life had been build up around the Watchtower but I had to be honest to myself and to do what I had to do. I don´t remember exactly when was that moment but I know that at first I only wanted to be removed from ministerial servant (I made that decission in September 2000), but I waited to speak to the elders until some arrangements at the congregation were done. I spoke to the elders in January 2001 and asked them that I didn´t want to be a MS but at that moment I had the idea in my mind of fading. I can´t say which date, between Sepembeer and January, was exactly the date that I took the decission of not being a JW anymore.

In May 2001 I stopped attending meetings and, when I received the telephne calls from the elders, I said that I didn´t want to go there anymore. I wasn´t sure if that was just a crisis of faith and I would recover it in some months´time. That´s why I din´t write any letter of disassociation. I wanted to be very sure before doing that, because I knew the consequences of that. During one year I could do what I had always wanted to do: study. For the first time in all these years I could read books or other information without feeling guilty because I should be reading "theocratic literature". I read Franz´s book "Crisis de conciencia" (does it sound familiar?) and I confirmed to myself what I believed: JWs don´´t have the truth.

In August 2002 I did what I thought was the best: writing my disassociation letter. I wanted to turn the page and live my life leaving Jws behind. I had no familiy there, that´s because I didn´t mind being cut from JWs. I had friends there, but it was good to know that they were not real friends, just conditional friends.And that´s my story, with few friends now but with great plans to accomplish.

wannaexit

Benito,

If I could speak Spanish the way you speak English I would be very happy.

Welcome to you. Please let us know a little about yourself and how you got to dissociate yourself from the JW's.

regards

wannaexit (as the name implies i want to exit the Jw's soon)

wannaexit

Hi Benito,

I responded before I read your story. Enjoyed it.

regards

wanna

Hi everybody, I´m a new member from Spain

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