Posts by shopaholic

12

How To Get Fired as Congregation Secretary!

by metatron in

jw
friends

very simple, really.

say that witnesses are responsible adults and as such, need to turn in their field service reports on time without a lot of reminders.. don't check up on them by phone asking 'where's your time this month?'.

i know that doing things like this can get you canned as secretary.

shopaholic

This is true. I was basically forced into admitting "15 minutes" of field service time one month. I guess the Secretary couldn't bear the thought of me being irregular.

I remember my the elders stopping by and basically trying to get my mom to submit at least one hour during several months when she was traveling back and forth a lot to help her dying father. They would ask "What about the family study?" and she would tell them that she had the oldest child conduct it. Then they would ask if she talked to anyone while she was traveling and she tell them no and that she used that time to catch up on sleep. Then they would ask if she talked about anything spiritual with her kids or UBM or clients at work or anyone because 3 months had gone by and she had not turned in any time.

That's when she got upset. My mom was so dog tired from working, a house full of kids and a husband to care for and her last living parent that lived across the country was dying. She snapped and told them that she didn't have any time and asked what more did they want...for her to lie. Then Br. S told her not to worry, they would just submit 1 hour for each month because they were sure she had time but was to probably too distressed to remember.

Same thing with me as a pioneer. I was traveling a lot for work and they saw me in service when I was town but did not turn in my time for two months and then I gave it to the secretary mid month while I remembered. He told me I wasn't missing any time. Evidently someone had simply duplicated my time from the last reported month for the next two. But that also meant that someone had banked 30+ phantom hours for me. Like an idiot I actually made up the phantom hours.

22

Kingdom Hall Interiors

by TheMan in

jw
friends

so i drove by my old kingdom hall the other day and noticed that it had a for sale sign in front of it.

this came as no surprise to me, as i knew that they recently won approval to build a new kingdom hall in a neighboring town.

(caused a bit of a stir in town - but that's a different story).

shopaholic

The inside of this kingdom hall is SOOOOOOO ugly. I've seen some halls that actually have very nice interiors. It really depends on the color scheme picked by the committee. The choice is limited but some are definitely nicer than others.

One hall had an interior decorator from one their congos choose their color scheme, fixtures, artwork and they actually listened to some of her recommendations and it shows because it was the best looking KH interior I have EVER seen. It was chic, contemporary and elegant but with just the right touch of JW drab. Even the mother's room looked like something from a hit decorating show. At the time I thought she should to work with the society on decorating the rest of the KHs.

15

Blondie's Comments You Will Not Hear at the 12-7-08 WT Study (EXAMINE)

by blondie in

jw
friends

jehovahs beaming eyes examine all.

ot 8--achan.

ot 9 - solomon.

shopaholic

Thanks Blondie,

I don't know how you do it each week. I don't think I could stomach it but I'm glad that you can.

17. Today, Jehovah does not miraculously reveal gross sin and deceitful conduct as he sometimes did in the past. Still, he sees all and in his own time and way brings hidden things into the open.

The "wait on Jehovah" line always irritated me. They use this not only for the revealing of sins but as answer to everything. While he's so busy examining our hearts, did he not see the bombings in India or how about the kids in the children wards at hospitals around the world that are fighting painful and terminal illnesses. So the same enery used to instruct the congregation would serve better used if only 1 human issue was 50% erradicated.

4

Santa Angels - helping the needy

by lisavegas420 in

on my previous topic i told about going to the job and human resourses program.

i only knew about this place, becasue my daughter called and told me her and her fiance were going, he was laid off last month.

as a veteran, he's eligible for programs and other benefits other than the average may be eligible for.

shopaholic

The woman said, "Oh we had a JW family last year. They don't celebrate Christmas, so they asked that we leave all their presents unwrapped, or wrapped in non Chrismas paper"

Totally friggin believable. Lets not even mention the number of witnesses that accept christmas gifts every year from co-workers and non-JW family but never give any gifts in return not even on non-pagan holidays.

3

Why did you tell us?

by DazedAndConfused in

i found this interesting.

this was part of someone's profile on another site.

i will change it a bit to fit the jw thinking.

shopaholic

Dazed,

I remember having this conversation with a group while doing street-witnessing years ago (wow...I can't believe I used to be out at 5am walking from busstop to busstop...sorry just had a flashback). Anyway, they looked at me like I was crazy for several seconds which felt like forever but I could tell that it struck a few of them.

On the same lines, I told the group that sometimes the whole JW thing didn't make sense because if no longer exist when you die then you wouldn't know that you didn't make it to the new world plus the bible says that maybe we will be saved. They said to think about how my JW friends and family would feel. I was like well everyone would forget I even existed after a few hundred years anyway.

This happened when I was around 21/22 then I started feeling guilty about my doubts and jumped deep into pioneering. Darn this cult.

11

Giving talks and self dellusion

by Tyrone van leyen in

jw
friends

hey folks, you know another way of looking at a kingdom hall beleive it or not, is a public speaking club.

in my opinion, and i'm a born in, i was enrolled early in the minisrty school.

was it the same for you other born ins?.

shopaholic

My first talk was when I was 8 years old and it was on sex. I was told a did a good job to cover an adult topic.

I think a number of JWs get a kick out of a giving a talk because most do not have any other venue to do this. This kind of off topic, but I used to loved it when folks would bring their non-JW relatives and they would shout out like they do in church. Then the elders would be scurrying trying to figure out how to hush them.

19

Why did there have to be a TEST???

by nomoreguilt in

so, god created adam and eve.

hmmm he also created satan.

hmmmm he placed the pair in the garden, and said that they must not eat of a certain tree.

shopaholic

the snake goes up the tree and she watched as the snake eats some of the fruit...and THEN he starts talking as if the fruit gave him that ability

Then wouldn't Satan have died some time ago or just the snake?

19

Why did there have to be a TEST???

by nomoreguilt in

so, god created adam and eve.

hmmm he also created satan.

hmmmm he placed the pair in the garden, and said that they must not eat of a certain tree.

shopaholic

I always thought the test to be a setup.

Farkel, read that other thread. You know I never thought about the fact that Adam and Eve didn't know the difference between good and bad so how did they know that eating it was an act of disobedience. Granted they were told they would die but no one ever told them that it was disobedience was a bad thing. And since they were supposedly the first humans they probably could not conceptualize human death.

34

JWs say its impossible for "worldly people" to be happy

by shopaholic in

jw
friends

i've had 3 different jws tell me this over the past few weeks.

basically their thinking is non-jws are not happy and when they appear to be its not real, its not a true happiness.

according to them, non-jws use drugs, alcohol and wild sex to make themselves happy.

shopaholic

Thanks for the responses.

Finally-Free: You're right, they should not point fingers at anyone. They have enough faults of their own.

Jeremy C: What you write about living in a closed society is so true. When a JW takes the time to get know a non-JW and they turn out to be on the upstanding they simply say that its a shame their not a JW and won't make it into the new world. Once you step outside of the confines of the JW village you can see how disturbed the religion really is.

Trying: Your post makes total sense. Sorry about the agony you're going through now. Hopefully, your daughter will RUN from this guy. Its horrible to have an undecided df'd or inactive JW playing with your emotions. If she plans to have children and want them to have a normal life again she should RUN and find her a nice "wordly man".

127

The End of Circuit Overseers

by scotsman in

is indeed apparently nigh as another poster predicted along with the end of the weekly bs.

not sure when this should take place but i'm reliably informed by a family member that one of the uk's overseers was talking about it fairly recently.

reduced to weekend visits by an outside but local elder instead.. i have no further info..

shopaholic

No new news however I have heard from folks that are very close to COs that COs will get a small allowance\salary raise effective Jan 2009.