Posts by Flowerpetal

I had the pleasure years ago to meet Walter Belobaba (belbab here on JWD). To hear firsthand of the difficulties encountered by missionaries in foreign assignments saddened me deeply, and only confirmed my distrust of the WTBTS.
I did a quick search here, but I don't think he has relayed the story on this forum. It would be eye-opening to the "lurkers" to hear his first person story

I'd love to hear his story! Maybe my childhood friend, who was appointed a regular pioneer the minute she graduated high school (1965) made the right decision when she was eventually invited to Gilead to learn how to be a missionary. She turned it down because she did't want to leave her mom alone. She is still a regular pioneer and will probably be one till the day she dies. She never married, and her letters sound like something out of the yearbook. And I always had the feeling she was doing all of this because her mother expected it of her--and for the org.

33

HOW "TRUE" ARE JW HOURS ?

by josephus in

jw
friends

as a jw i admit to "massaging" my hours nearly every month to keep up with the expected amount.. my brother never put in hir report for nearly 2 years.

i was amazed when i asked the secretary he told me "i allways put a few hours in if people forget" !!!

so my brother was a regular publisher despite not going out on service.. he was one man.

Flowerpetal

The reporting of hours was brought in by Joe Ratherflawed to "check up" on the brothers. That's the claim, not in any "opposers" writings, but in the Society's own publication! It's in the old "Jehovah's Witnesses in the Divine Purpose" book. (You may remember the one. It was written as a dialogue between Lois and her friend.)

Hmm---interesting--I think I still have that book. I will have to look that up. I always thought it was the judge starting this from an attorney's POV--you know like they have billable hours when they spend time on a client's case. I figured he just transferred that idea to reporting time (billable hours) spent going from door to door.

33

HOW "TRUE" ARE JW HOURS ?

by josephus in

jw
friends

as a jw i admit to "massaging" my hours nearly every month to keep up with the expected amount.. my brother never put in hir report for nearly 2 years.

i was amazed when i asked the secretary he told me "i allways put a few hours in if people forget" !!!

so my brother was a regular publisher despite not going out on service.. he was one man.

Flowerpetal

I never lied about my hours, but for the past 5 or 6 years, I have not met the national average, and nobody's been hounding me to put more time in. Maybe I have fallen thru the cracks??? We didn't study regularly with our children either (24 and 18). They are both of the sort that if, for example, we studied the WT for the Sunday meeting, they would be bored out of their tree during the congregation WT study, because they would have gone over the material already with us and were ready to move on to something different. It was like that no matter what we studied. And maybe once in a while we would fill out a study report slip on them, however not in the most recent years. I always felt like in reporting a BS with them, I was reducing them to a report for the society--and they weren't my children anymore. So if any elder ever asks why we didn't turn in a BS report, I will tell them that very thing. Except now my daughter has her own apt. and my son I'm sure in the elders' view, is of eligible age to be baptized, although he knows he's not ready and won't be for a long while.

29

some unimportant random thoughts & reflections

by DanTheMan in

jw
friends

to be honest, i feel like i barely qualify as an ex-dub.

wasn't raised in it, no relatives in it, and aside from my first one or two years of being involved with it, i didn't believe much of it.

but at the point where i first started having doubts creep in, instead of investigating those doubts, i turned off my brain.

Flowerpetal

Smack:

sheesh Dan YOu is a jedi.
One day I'll get there too

Me too....I'd love to be a Jedi!!!

47

Do You Automatically Believe Everything A Poster Says About Him/Herself?

by minimus in

jw
friends

sometimes, when i read what a poster says, especially a new poster, i don't always assume that they are legitimate.

do you ever feel this way?

does it cross your mind that a person is falsely representing himself/herself ??

Flowerpetal

When I was reading some of Hamas' past posts, I stumbled across this thread and it seemed a lot of people jumped on him and accused him of being a troll: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/49782/1.ashx

8

tell me why

by leslane in

jw
friends

okay, as most of you have been associated with the so-called "truth" at some point in your life, tell me if you have ever heard the phrase where "jehovah only draws people to him"(or something to that effect ).

i have an issue with this statement, among many other things, but i would just like to know other people's opinion on it.. okay, so we are suppose to dedicate our lives to him, yet we can only do that whole-heartedly if we are 'drawn' .

so what, if we aren't drawn we are just left for dead?

Flowerpetal

Amazing:

Since leaving the JWs, I still have been struggling with the "personal relationship with God" issue, because average Christians sometimes say that Christ draws us to him ... but what concerns me is how God seems to deal with some, while others who have love for and faith in God get left out of the picture.
God often seems deaf when it comes to answering prayers ... and the phrase that God simply said "no" does not meet with sound logic, since I really don't know what God has said ... silence is just that ... silence, neither yes, nor no ... nor being drawn to God.

I've been feeling this way too and I guess it's been a long process in the making. I have always wondered what took or takes God so long to answer prayers?? I would many times entertain the thought that maybe he's not there....Maybe he's in another part of the universe at the moment.

And why would it seem the things you'd be praying for other people (not necessarily witnesses or even people with some sort of faith) would seem to be blessed with the things you might be praying for that you need really bad?

18

Ozzie's Weekend Poll #64

by ozziepost in

jw
friends

how's the weekend going?

mrs ozzie and i have been very busy with friends.

had a drive in the countryside today and stopped at an english-style pub, replete with large beer garden where we had a great meal-- more like a feast, really; you know how generous the pub meals can be!

Flowerpetal

I don't know...I guess I never had a lot of the blinders on. When they started talking about 1975, there was a part of me that didn't believe it. And then when local elders would incorporate this subject in their talks, and saying it will be real soon, the signs are there, blah, blah, blah.....what kept echoing in my mind was Jesus' words that no one would know--not even the son of man. So I would listen to these men, and ask myself, what do they know that I don't know? The answer always came back----NOTHING!! Maybe that was the beginning of me waking up because there were always little stirrings of doubt throughout my JW life that I would wonder about but never asked because I figured it would clear up in time. l I'm still in but have decided to do a slow fade.

So I never swallowed everything hook, line and sinker. It is my nature not to do that whatever endeavor I was in, although I believed God was using the org. of imperfect men. I still didn't pitch headlong into things I wasn't sure about.

I never tried to get buddy-buddy with the PO no matter what congregation I was going to.

None of the other points apply to me either. So I guess my answer would have to be #11 Other, and that would be existing slightly under the radar.

22

Are you really who you think you are?

by Mindchild in

jw
friends

i recently enjoyed reading another post on an ex-jw board about how our past experiences as witnesses have shaped our lives and made us who we are.

there is obvious truth to the effect that our past experiences do effect how we see our selves now, but i think many people who leave the borg are still enslaved to the idea that they are the same person they were then.

i disagree and think things are a little more complex than that.

Flowerpetal

OK, now I see where you're coming from. One of the things that made me start thinking differently about how God views us, was when I read articles about people who had been in comas for many years due to an injury or illness and woke up completely different, with different personalities. Some who believed in God before and woke up not believing in God, or some who didn't want to be married anymore because their spouse was a stranger to them and they didn't like them, etc. All kinds of reasons.