I remembered this just the other day, and thought I’d make a post of it.
Back in 1971, during my first year of pioneering, I was kind of adopted by one of the sisters in the congregation who was keen to get me friendly with her son (a teenage boy just a little younger than myself) with a view to getting him interested in the pioneer service.
Kevin spent part of that summer shadowing me everywhere I went, “learning to be a pioneer”, and many times I was invited to meals at his house.
His family had been in the Truth for ever. His parents, Rose and Albert, were absolute congregation stalwarts.
I gradually began to get a bit irritated with them, since it was clear after a few weeks of looking after Kevin, and accepting some (not all, just the minimum number for politeness’ sake) of his many invitations to his house. that they had come to regard me as their property, their own “sponsored pioneer”.
Rose and Albert began to share confidences with me. Who they didn’t particularly care for in the congregation. Some of the gossip and dirt they knew about some of the brothers. Which ones they thought were hypocrites, or the “spiritually weak” ones. I was very uncomfortable with the whole thing.
Well, eventually, the day dawned when they thought they could entrust me with their Big Secret.
They had quite an old house with a cellar. One evening, after another fry-up round their house, Rose said “We want to show you something.”
Me, and Rose and Kevin (Albert was out) went down to their cellar.
Rose showed me this HUGE storehouse of canned food. I mean HUGE. Literally thousands upon thousands of cans of food, obviously stockpiled over many years (decades?) all stacked in crates, labelled up. I remember seeing soup, baked beans and corned beef – no doubt there were many more, but I was just overwhelmed by the scale of it.
“We do it for the Brothers” said Rose “…when Armageddon comes, there’ll be food shortages in one place after another. The Scriptures tell us. That’s why we have all this”
At this point I was actually a bit frightened. These people were clearly mad. I actually at the time myself completely believed in the whole Armageddon thing, but had an idea that, in any difficulty, Jehovah Would Provide. All this was just crazy, but all I managed to say was some kind of weak joke about not forgetting to keep a can opener handy.
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Well, Kevin never did become a pioneer – after the summer he got a job at an Electrical shop, selling kettles and washing machines.
As for me, as G R A D U A L L Y as I could, I broke off the connection with Rose and Albert, since they were clearly insane.
Anyone else ever come across this phenomenon of “stockpiling against Jehovah’s Day” ? Or were Rose and Albert unique?
Duncan.