Nathan, sounds like you prayed a lot. You have that prayer down! Funny how we were not supposed to say the lord prayer because we were supposed to make it personal, but all the prayers seemed to sound the same to me.
gladtobefree
JoinedPosts by gladtobefree
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13
Jehovah doesn't help with new car transaction unless you ask....
by desib77 inthe other day when i was visiting with my mother she was looking at the new car she and her husband had just purchased.
she told me that they now realize there payments are higher than they should be.
she said sister so and so is going to get them a better loan at her company.
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How many raised in "the truth" have left??
by L_A_Big_Dawg inthis subject has been gnawing at me for awhile now.. so many of you:.
1) were raised in "the truth?".
2) did you get baptized and at what age?.
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gladtobefree
Raised in it from age 3.
Baptized at age 14.
DFed at age 27.
I did not feel that I should be held to a baptizm at age 14. I did not know what I was doing. How can a child be held to a contract anyway?
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JW Child Abuse on the News
by Gerard inlas vegas weekly http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/2003/01_16/news_upfront2.html.
date: june 23, 2004. .
witnesses to pain.
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gladtobefree
They got something wrong in that article. Dan Fitzwater is no longer at the Nevada Correctional Center. He was released at the end of May! That pervert is back out there and rumor has it that The fallon Nevada congergation was collecting donations to help him get on his feet!
They are welcoming him with open arms and the scary thing is that about 20 JW's testified at his sentencing hearing saying that they did not believe he could be guilty. (yeah all 18 victims in 4 states over 20 years were lying) and some said that they would still trust him with their kids!
And the WTS will continue to shield him......
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Jehovah doesn't help with new car transaction unless you ask....
by desib77 inthe other day when i was visiting with my mother she was looking at the new car she and her husband had just purchased.
she told me that they now realize there payments are higher than they should be.
she said sister so and so is going to get them a better loan at her company.
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gladtobefree
It always erked me when my mom would say "well, Jehovah provides" when it was really me and my husband helping her. When my twin sisters were 16 and needed a cars to get to work with we knew my mom (a newly single women with 5 kids still at home) could not help them. So my husband being the nice guy he is went down and got two used cars for my sisters on our credit and they agreed to make the payments.My mom went on and on about how Jehovah provides! Well, a couple months later we found out that my sisters were now sharing one car and they wanted us to take back the other. They said that it was making noise from the 2nd day that they had it and they just kept driving it until they blew the engine. My husband asked why they did not tell us it was making noise as he could have easally fixed it at that point. Anyway, this vehicle suddenly was a burden to them and my mother, instead of making my sister take responsibilty for not caring for the car told us that she never asked us to put it on our credit anyway, and my husband picked the cars and that it was too much for them to handle. I said "so much for Jehovah providing". I mean she credited him when all was good and blamed us when it turned bad.
She always did that. Even after I was DFed and she needed a place to stay and we rented her my house. None of the JW's would lend her a hand and none of my adult JW brothers would even help. But Jehovah was again providing and this time through an apostate!
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Attn: Formidable Apostates
by Bubbamar ini read the thread yesterday about apostates and started wondering about your families.
i am thinking about writing a letter to my mom and sharing with her some of the things i have learned about the jw's but also realize that this will make me an apostate and will worsen an already distant and painful relationship.
i am hoping that some of you will share your experiences on what impact your outspoken "apostacy" has had on your families - how have they reacted to you.
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gladtobefree
My relationship with my mom was also strained, to say the least. She would not contact me but also would not hang up on me. When I went to Fl for my sisters wedding she actually told me that she felt that she had the right to talk to her own children. I was shocked and happy. After that I wrote her an 11 page letter and I told her that I was not trying to change her veiws but wanted her to understand why I felt the way I did. A lot had to do with the abuse I had endured and how the elders and the WTS responded. One of my sisters was there when she read it and she said that my mother said that I worte a lot of Apostate stuff. When my sister took it and read it (my sister has never been baptized) she pointed out that the only quotes that were there were directly from the WTS and the bible. My mom did not respond. After that I went to Brooklyn for the silent lambs March. My mom found out and was very upset. When I went to FL last she made it clear to me that she was dissapointed and she would not have any relationship with me. She did come to the beach on the last day I was there as we were having a family gathering, but she came just to see my kids. She did not even hug me goodbye. My sister said that after I left my mom broke down sobbing saying she should have hugged me.
I think my mom feels obligated to not speak to me because she has been taught that I am being wicked and she hopes that I will "come back to the truth" if she shuns me. I know this tears her apart but it tears me apart to think that she is so brainwashed to treat me in such a way. She knows of the abuse I suffered and she knows how badly I was treated and she KNOWS that I did nothing to be DFed over. All I did was went to the elders for help and answers. My "mistake" was not settling for "wait on Jehovah" , "have Faith" or "just pray more". But its the best "mistake" I have ever made. I just wish my mom could see that.
I guess you have to feel it out with your mom. If things are already strained you may want to take a lighter approach. Slip things in when she does not realize it. But be careful lest you lose her completely.
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Ever start a BS?
by PopeOfEruke indid anyone here ever start a bible study while out in field service?
from scratch, all by themselves?.
i had a couple of studies but never started one from cold.
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gladtobefree
I started one in the field service when I was 18. The "householder" (remember that word?) was 17 with a small child. We studied for a few weeks and she moved away without a word. :) Guess that was the only way to get rid of me.
I had one other "bible study" with my best friend. She and I had both been brought up as JWs, but she was never baptized and did not want to be a JW. When I was 20 I asked her to study with me. I had been told we could not be friends if she was not a JW because she was bad association. I desperatly wanted to be her friend. She was the nicest, most kind and wonderful person I had ever met. She had been abused by her step-dad who was supposedly of the annointed and I figured that was why she did not want to be a JW. I figured God would surely understand her "emotional handicap". But if I did not study with her I would not be "allowed" to be her friend. So she agreed to study. We only had a couple of studies and she made it clear to me that it was just not her thing. She never tried to make me leave the JW's and she has always been there for me. When she had a child I offered to babysit for her just as an excuse to see her. (plus I love that kid!) I pushed her everytime I could. I tried so hard to convince her to be a JW. I made such an A** out of myself. I must of seemed SO self-righteous. But in the end, when I started to figure out something was wrong with the JW beliefs, I called her. She welcomed me with open arms. She never said I told you so. She listened to me and she helped me through being DFed. I am SO glad she did not listen to me, and ever so glad that she did not hate me for trying.
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Would you marry not for love but for a visa?
by Atilla ina friend of mine was approached by a asian family living here in the u.s. that wants to get a family member, a 18 year girl living in the south east asia region here to america.
they want my friend to get married to this girl for a year or two so she can eventually become an american citizen.
the family living here has offered to pay for all expenses; my friends air ticket over there and back along with any other expenses incurred plus a lump sum payment upon her successful immigration here to the u.s. my friend is maybe considering it but he hasn't even seen a picture of the girl yet and he is somewhat older(about 9 year difference) than the girl.. now if they fall in love or consemate the relationship, that's totally up in the air and i guess open to bargaining and my friend would totally be free to get a divorce once the girl gets to the u.s. i did ask some of my friends what they thought, and everyone pretty much said no.
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gladtobefree
I had a friend who did it but her reasons were a lot different. She was close friends with an Italian family and they had been in the US since their son was 7. Before that they lived in Africa for a while so their son had not been in Italy since he was a baby. When the son turned 18 the INS was going to send the son back to Italy and make him apply from there to come back. In Italy you have to serve a year in their armed forces when you turn 18 (or at least at that time) so he would have been forced into the armed forces of a country he had not lived in since being a baby. The family asked my friend to do it and she did. Not for money, but to help her good friends. After a couple years they divorce and went about their lives. But the weird thing is that they did not seem to have much trouble with the INS. They did not even live together. Maybe they just did not care as much because he had been here for so long already and you could not tell that he was not a native of our country?
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Did you ever defend the Borg?
by dorothy ini remember when i first started studying i was always so quick to defend the borg if anyone said anything negative about them.
i didn't even have a reason to or had any business doing so because i was so new and didn't even really know anything about it.
and i absolutley refused to believe that they could be involved in child molestation, even going as far as refusing to watch the news shows exposing the real truth.
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gladtobefree
Yeah, I Did. They train you as a kid to defend the Borg. It starts with holidays. They taught us to say that we did not miss the holidays because "our parents could give us gifts all year round just because they loved us". Of course, coming from a family with 10 kids that never happened. I think that my dad (who was not a JW) liked the fact that he did not have to borrow money and work all year to pay it back just to give us Christmas. The sad thing is it was not so much the gifts I missed out on, It was extremely hard not to be able to participate in school, and I wish I could have had memories of singing around the Christmas tree, or having birthdays so that I would have my own speacial day.
Then as you get older you have to defend against the blood issue, not believing in going to heaven, why we would not give blood or serve in the military. There was always something you had to defend, so I think anyone who was ever a JW felt they had to defend the Borg at one tme or another, With me, child molestation is what pushed me over the edge. I could not understand the elders defending the Borg on their stand and defending the child molesters over the children. I saw it first hand so I KNEW there was NO defending it!
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Rumors started about you since you left.........
by avishai ini've supposedly been.... gay.
dead.
a satan worshipper.
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gladtobefree
Well, the rumors about me started before I was DFed, but while I was having elders over to "help" me because I could not understand why sexual abusers in the congergations were allowed to get away with it. The first rumor was that I was on the internet talking to apostates. That was untrue, At that time I had NEVER opened an ex-JW site or read about or talked to ANY ex-JWs. (after I was DFed for being an apostate I did decide to check out the internet site and have become very enlightened, Glad I was DFed now.) Then, when the elders heard that they said that that was why I was "questioning" them on abuse matters. I guess they did not think it had anything to do with my father in-law being arrested for sexual abuse and the elders doing nothing. It had nothing to do with one of my baptized brothers abusing me when I was a child and it had nothing to do with my sister-in-law having been repeatedly raped by her uncle who was an elder. He had been removed for a short time and then made an elder again. It also had nothing to do with my BEST friend's "annointed" step father abusing the family physically, sexually and emotionally. I could not get the elders to even look into that when I was 15. I told them I was going to childrens servvices and they told me not to because it would give Jehovah a bad name. I was so STUPID to have listened to them at the time. But now I was done. So I questioned. But of course to them none of these were the reasons. I was just becoming an apostate.
So while I appealed being DFed the rumors abounded that I was an apostate. Then, once I was DFed there were rumors that I must have cheated on my husband. NOT TRUE! I just wonder what they think now, since we both moved away together.
Oh and the rumors that I had talked to Dateline and helped them with the part of the story about my father-in-law. Oh, but that one is true.
At first the rumors hurt a lot. Now they just amuse me.
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The Watchtower's Most Heinious, Vile Crime
by TMS ini described myself recently as no longer angry.. that was a lie.. i am angry at the way jehovah's witnesses treat their most precious.
endowment; their young, developing, stumbling, exasperating, questioning, experimenting, growing,.
offspring.. at the very most urgent time in their young lives; when they need the.
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gladtobefree
Thanks. My dad was far from perfect and the affects of PTSD (from Vietnam) have taken over his life now, but I am very proud of what he did for those young men.