Here's the treatment we recv'd from the BOE and cong after a car accident I had in 1989:
I couldn't work and my money had run out, we were on AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) and soon to be evicted from our apartment. My Jdub sister who?d invited me out there and lived in the same apartment complex had essentially turned her back on us....another Jdub sister who also lived there and for whom I had gotten a very well-paying job, had refused to loan me the use of one of her two cars (she lived alone) to drive us to the store and to Dr. appointments. My ankles were still bad because we had to WALK everywhere we needed to go and they had no opportunity to heal properly....and my head was still swollen from the double concussion.
I had asked for and recv?d the funds from AFDC to move to another less expensive apartment, and had called the BOE for assistance to move, since I had absolutely NO ONE around who would help me. I simply needed some strong backs and a pickup to move our belongings.
When the day came that we were supposed to be moving out (re: being evicted), I had yet to hear from the BOE. I kept watch to see if they would show up to help us. Neither had anyone else from the KH shown up at ANY time since the car accident to see if we were even still alive. Finally, late that afternoon, there was a knock on my door. It was two elders from the KH.....they told me they?d been sent by the P.O. (past-master overbearer) to let me know that there was NO WAY they were going to provide me with the funds to move and that since I had gotten MYSELF into that mess, I could just very well get myself out of it................I had wondered why they had suits on and why there were only two of them when they had arrived at my door......now I knew......so, just color me BALLISTIC!.......let?s just say they were ashamed, red-faced and awfully embarrassed when they left my apartment and leave it at that.
Here's what they did about my 12-yr-old son's bid for baptism:
my 12 yr old son was wanting very much to be baptized and had been working very hard, going out in field service all the time and studying real hard. The elders from Ash Street KH wouldn?t accept his efforts. They couldn?t convincingly say why in the face of my showing them from the scriptures that their requirements for baptism were unscriptural, but at one point the real "Circus Serpent" was visiting our KH and happened to expound on parents wanting to get their children baptized and called it "nepotism" (and I?m thinking to myself, ?gee, does that make Jehovah a nepotist, too??)....this was from the podium at a meeting in the KH....in front of the whole congregation....that and what one of the elders (Bengal was his name) did to my son one morning were the catalysts that moved me to change to the congregation that had moved into the KH on Iris Lane...the new Assembly Hall was there, too.
What had Bengal done? One morning, my son, who?d elicited a promise from Bengal to pick him up for field service, went out to the apartment complex parking lot in the cold, cold rain with nothing but his suit jacket on and waited for an hour and forty-five minutes to be picked up. When he came back in crying his little heart out, I was shocked ?cause I thought he was already out in field service. Oh, Bengal had shown up all right.....he?d left his "showboat" of a car in the KH parking lot and ridden over squeezed into a small to mid-sized car with a buncha pioneers and told my son they didn?t have room for him.... "Sorry!" After that, my son would never feel the same about wanting to get baptized or being a witness again. It broke his heart.....and mine, too.
Here's more dirt on my son's attempts to get baptised in yet another cong. and a dF'ing talk:
An older sister in the congregation "buddied up" to us and began paying us regular visits at home and taking us out in field service and to the meetings. I vaguely wondered ?why??, but dismissed my concerns as unimportant. She would "pop in" for visits at our home. (What was she trying to find...and why?) I was still trying to help my son get baptised, even though his heart was no longer in it. One night at a meeting, I noticed that both the P.O.?s wife and this older sister went to the restroom during the meeting, one right after the other. And while perusing the scriptures as I sat there in the KH, one of the scriptures that referred to someone deceptive, telling lies nearly leaped off the page at me. I don?t recall the exact words, but I jumped up from my seat, knowing it had something to do with their going to the bathroom almost at the same time, and I went to the bathroom, too. When I entered the door, there were the two of ?em, the older sister?s lips smackdab up against the P.O.?s wife?s ear, whispering....she had such a wicked gleam in her eyes....and they both jumped back from each other when I entered and each one gave me a big phoney smile....and quickly departed.
The next time that the older sister took us out in field service, I confronted her about the incident in the bathroom and she admitted that the P.O. had her befriend us in order to spy on us.....I never could find out exactly why....and I wasn?t doing anything but working and studying and going out in field service and attending meetings. At the next meeting we attended, the P.O. also turned my son down for baptism....again. And during that period of time, he also gave a disfellowshipping talk that would have singed your ear hairs.....He stood up there at the podium and graphically described in a very denigrating manner....all the sights, sounds and smells of the acts of fornication that a young pioneer sister had engaged in to get herself disfellowshipped.....as she sat there in the middle of the KH and loudly sobbed her heart out....and the brother who participated in her public humiliation only got reprooved. My son and I were SO totally disgusted at the P.O.(wanting to hurl) to the point that we would have gotten up in the middle of the P.O.?s discourse and exited the KH if our butts hadn?t been plastered to our seats by deeply-ingrained WTS teachings that prevented us from making a scene. Later, I regretted that I hadn?t given the "full Monty" (mooned) to the P.O. as we left in the middle of his df?ing talk.
So now....there's a few stories to ponder over.
Frannie
