I attempted suicide in 1996 while a JW, I was also a Min Servant.
Later diagnosed as having "acute clinical depression"
Posts by Gordy
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39Suicide
by Nicolas ini know it's a touchy subject, but anyone here has ever thought of suicide while they were still in the organization?
it seem to me that jehovah's witnesses have a much higher rate of suicide than the rest of the population.
i contemplated suicide myself when i was struggling to get piece of my life back together after being raised as a "perfect little jw" when i was young.
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53
My Dating horror= You can't have coffee at the mall without a chaperon???
by Witness 007 inbeing a pioneer/servant for years, i thought i was very responsible.
when dating a sister whom i later married, i read every publication on courtship the society had.
i then spoke to an elder whom i thought was "resonable" and we agreed as the publications say: "a couple can meet together in a public place, when courting, without a chaperon.
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Gordy
When my wife and I were dating. She was 19, I was 23.
We NEVER had a chaperone.
Even when she came to my house. There was only my father in. We were in room on our own.
No one ever said a word.
One Elder said "If you can't trust a brother and sister together. Who can you trust?"
He was the only Elder that ever made a comment about it.
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28
grateful to my Elders..No talks, no FS time, no privledges....no problem!
by oompa inso one year of lots of questions and showing doubts, and missing quite a few meetings but still going out in service, doing mics, reading, hall projects...then i get the new light from society regarding the letter i sent them (wow, stunned me, blew me away) and i let them know how i felt about it and i quit the ministry after 40 active years.
nobody says anything about this, no counsel, no will you go out with us on saturday.
not a single "were is your time for the month" phone call.
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Gordy
I stopped attending meeting in August 1999.
I waited for a visit from Elders . . . nothing . . .no visit, no phone call.
Following April it was the Memorial, expected call, visit, or even an invitation posted through door . . . nothing.
It was September 2001 before I had a visit from Elders and then it was just part of campaign to get "inactive ones" back. Mainly because numbers had dropped. It was this that made me decide to disassociate seeing they were more interested in numbers than people personally.
There was one incident . . . two Elders called one day, I think mid 2000, door was answered by my non-JW son, Dan. . . the Elders asked to see my oldest son Jon, who also was DA'd in fact he DA'd well before I did. He was not at home at the time, so Dan said I was at home. But they said no, they had only come to see Jon. Dan said they almost panicked when he said I was at home. I thought it was quite odd at the time.
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21
Most Difficult General Knowledge Quiz
by snowbird inhttp://uk.encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/quiz/quiz.aspx?quizid=913.
what's your first-time score?.
sylvia.
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Gordy
8 out of 10
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100
SURVEY: Who Believes In "God"?
by minimus inand by that i mean the supreme being or jehovah or jesus or buddah or whatever you might consider to be "god".
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Gordy
Yes
Became a Christian after leaving JW's.
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Gordy
Remember that the social security system is paid for by those who are working, through taxes.
If it collapsed it would mean that either the administartion side had failed, or that there was not enough taxes being collected to sustain it.
Therefore that would mean that there must be a lot of people out of work to begin with.
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48
Cloth Diapers
by reneeisorym inso .. my husband and i are going to start trying for kids next year.
we had a long discussion last night about disposable diapers vs. cloth diapers.
i know this decision can wait but i just like talking about my expectations early rather than end up with conflict later on.. i want to use cloth diapers and he thinks disposables are the way to go.
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Gordy
We had 7 children between 1975 and 1989.
At first my wife was adamant that she would use only Terry nappies (as we call them here in UK)
But after the second child she changed to disposables.
Mainly because she found them easier to use and the baby tended to have less nappy rash.
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Gordy
Did join but never really got into it.
Besides have enough trouble dealing with you lot on here.
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34
Local Needs tonight
by metaspy inhere is something i thought was a bit weird.. tonights local needs was about depression.
not so much in how we can help those with depression, but about getting over it.. the brother used the scriptures about elijah and the widow to show who was relying on jehovah.. he mentioned how the widow was obviously depressed.
then showed how she should have been like elijah.. as i sat there and listened, i realized his underlying message:.
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Gordy
the brother used the scriptures about Elijah and the widow to show who was relying on Jehovah.
He mentioned how the widow was obviously depressed. Then showed how she should have been like Elijah.Didn't he know that many Christian scholars think that Elijah was a manic-depressive (bipolar). One minute he would be up and next moaning about his life, and why things were happening to him. Asking God to take his life because he was so miserable.
Not exactly best example for getting over depression.
I suffered from "acute clinical depression" the help I got was zero. Apart from the usual attend meetings and do field service. And to get my JW wife to get me out the home because I was a "spiritual danger" to the family.
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22
Arrogance and Asinity I say!
by AK - Jeff inas i drove thru the countryside this morning at 0300 on my way back from work [i was supposed to report and found that i had been scheduled for another vacation day, so back home i went], i drove past the kingdom hall and began to meditate in the utter absurdity of what these poor souls believe about themselves.
they arrogantly are duped to accept that the devil, the ultimate evil in all the universe, has selected them as target.
i drove past tens of thousands of people in that short drive, yet this small cluster of people believes that they alone are worthy of his attack.
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Gordy
What's funny is to talk to some one who has no particular connection to JW's. Dubs think they're the center of the universe, but nobody else thinks about them AT ALL.
If you ask the ordinary man-in-the-street what do JW's believe. They will usually say "No blood, No Birthday/Christmas, and they knock on doors." they are the main ones people know, and maybe a couple of other things.
So after approx 130 years of distributing millions of pieces of literature, decades of going from door to door, assemblies, conventions etc. The above is about the sum total that most persons know about JW beliefs, even in the Western world.
They also say that "Christendom" is scared of them, that the clergy are afraid of them. I've yet to come across a clergyman who gives them any thought. Most ministers are to busy running their own churches to bother about even thinking about JW's.
The only time I hear people at work mention JW's is when they have called on a Saturday or Sunday morning and woken them up. And that doesn't happen all that often these days either.