I know I've already posted here, but bear with me....I think you'll all find this not only strange but funny!
Many years ago, we were constantly reading in the mags about witnesses in foreign countries being physically persecuted (spelling???) because they would not get government political ID cards.......well I grew up going door to door in a resort area......hundreds of thousand of residents in the summer that dwindles to a couple thousand in the winter.......ripe for the picking all those vacant homes full of furniture, tv's and sterios!
Sooooo the local police (they covered this 18 mile long 1 mile wide island) came to the congregation and asked us to have our finger prints taken and put on file! Well, at first there was great distress, was "big brother" trying to track us, did this violate our rights? After sitting with the police and actually listening to their reasoning and then clearing it with the GB, the Congo Overseer and committee requested......all of the Pioneers (I was one) and a specific number of publishers go in and have their finger prints taken. We then were the group that most often worked this territory, particularly in the winter (bear in mind this is an island, 6 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean.....winters were a joy, she says tonge in cheek).
Oh, I never told you why the police wanted the prints......it was to rule us out when the houses were broken into....our fingerprints were on file as to having knocked on the doors or opened the outer door to knock on the inner door. As far as I know they're still on file, because I used a copy of them to get my gun permit (that's another story).