I'm beginning to wonder what my life would be like without Ozzie's weekend polls!
Numbers 2 and 9 stand out for me -
The family study was always tough. Even when i was an elder, I couldn't stand it. I'd start drifting mentally and my wife says that I fell asleep once. There was always tension associated with it. My child felt 'outnumbered' and felt like she was being lectured. My wife felt left out and often sat and said nothing, just reading paragraphs in robot-like fashion. We finally just gave it up, and we look back now and marvel as to how we pushed ourselves to do something that we all hated doing, just so that we could say 'yes, we have a family study' and that I could report it on a field service slip and 'study report'.
Many times, my wife and daughter either stayed at the Hall and waited for me or went home on their own while I performed duties. It was worst when I was accounts servant, and then later an elder. I always worried about them traveling home alone at night, but also, I hated to make them wait for me at the 'brief' elders meetings that went on and on.
One time, we stayed to read a letter about Circuit Overseer accomodations that did not even apply to our locale. I sent my family home. After the elder's meeting, I told one elder that we could easily have avoided having the meeting by just circulating the letter. He got angry at me and said, 'can't we even give 10 minutes?'. It took longer that that and that wasn't even my point. My point was why have these meetimgs if they are not needed while our families have to wait or travel without us?
