Posts by JeffT

30

Another congregation closed

by hoser in

jw
friends

15 years ago there were 5 congregations now there is only one and it is still struggling.

congregations closing their doors doesn’t mean business is good.

it looks like this last one to fold had no young witnesses, they either left the religion or moved.

My first Kingdom Hall was the one in Pullman, Washington. Pullman is a small college town in the middle of a sea of grain fields. The next nearest Hall is in Moscow, Idaho eight miles away. In the summer of 1982 my wife began making plans to build an FHA (federal program) financed house in Albion, Washington which isn't really a town, it's a cluster of houses six miles from Pullman. The elders told us not to make the move because we'd never want to drive all that distance and we'd miss lots of meetings. It is true that the people living in Pullman look at all those wheat fields and think something five miles away is a long distance commute.

But now I see that they've apparently closed the Hall in Moscow which means they've told the people there they have to drive 8 miles to meetings. I wonder if they even asked anybody in the area what they thought of that idea.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

JeffT

Gotta have quick access to that thing, eh?

Having something between me and the zipper is more important.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

JeffT

I posted the following on the "Books from XJW" thread. I think the same thing applies here, just substitute "Activism" where I wrote books. Anybody who thinks they can make a living off being an XJW is probably deluding themselves. The target market just isn't big enough to support somebody full time. And at some point the information some one has will reach its "sell by" date. I stopped going to the Kingdom Hall in 1988. My personal experiences are now thirty or forty years old. If somebody wants information about the good old days I can supply that. I wouldn't expect to be able to sell it, any more than I can make a living selling stale bread.

Here's what I wrote on the other thread.

World wide there are not enough people that care about JW's for books to have any impact. I don't think I'm a bad writer, I looked back at my Amazon account, my alternate history trilogy has sold almost 4,000 copies in all formats. My mystery/suspense novel based loosely on my time as a JW ("Armageddon's Disciples") has sold three.
As witnesses we were taught that our religion was at the center of all human history. Like every thing else the Watchtower told us, that is wrong. I don't believe the Witnesses have had any impact on the rest of human society. The closest they've come so far is a few supreme court cases in the US, and even most Americans don't know much (if anything) about that.

7

Incredible News from History

by Simon in

you think you know things, then you come across something that makes you do a double-take.

how was it kept so qiet?.

for instance, how many were killed in the jones-town massacre?

JeffT

They sent bombs in balloon via the jet-stream and caused almost no damage whatsoever.

Not entirely true. They killed a housewife and five kids. I think I read somewhere they were church members going on a picnic. Link below has some details about it.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1945-japanese-balloon-bomb-killed-six-americansfive-them-children-oregon-180972259/

I'm a history buff, military history is a focus for me. My family will tell you I'm a fountain of useless trivia.

Edited to add, we also dropped an H-Bomb on Spain.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/h-bomb-lost-in-spain

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

JeffT

When I was working as an accountant I did some work in both restaurants and hotels. Must of my work involved apartment buildings but all three (restaurants, hotels, and apartments) are similar in what it takes to run one. You think you're running the business, but the reality is they run your life.

Evans clearly has no idea what it takes to own a hotel/cafe.

37

Avoiding Temptation As a Young Elder

by TMS in

it was the summer of '72.

i was 24 but had been the presiding overseer or congregation servant of a small congregation in the county seat of an arkansas county for about 3 years.. my regular pioneer wife of nearly four years was big and pregnant, with our attempts at birth control unsuccessful.. one of my wife's several bible studies was with a young woman named brenda whom my wife had encountered in door to door work.. brenda had two young children she could barely handle and was married to a very countryfied arkie named henry who worked as a chicken catcher, one of the most difficult jobs at the local chicken plant.. brenda eventually revealed that she'd been raised as a jw, but was never baptized, having left home to marry henry at age 14. she spoke of her family in texas, mentioning her mother and two older sisters, all jws she said.. one morning, just before the meeting for field service, we noticed a small car in kingdom hall parking lot.

my wife and i were parked to one side of the hall in our aluminum nashua house trailer.. two young women got out of the car and soon joined us for the meeting for service, identifying themselves as brenda's sisters from texas.. the two girls, ages 17 and 20, were distractingly beautiful, with the eldest decked out like a magnificent southern belle including hat and heels, her high-end clothing accentuating her very obvious curves.. with no one else showing up for field service, it ended up just the four of us in the car group with the two texas girls in the back seat.. starting our time at a not-at-home, the 20 year old asked if she could accompany me to "hear my presentation.

JeffT

I had been in contact with a witness friend through my senior year in college. By late summer, 1973, I was well on my way to getting baptized (which happened in November). There was a young sister from another nearby congregation, I think she dropped out of school to pioneer. So she was about 16 or 17, I was 23. She decided I was the one for her and started finding all kinds of reasons to be around me. She told at least two other sisters that I was "the one."

She had a car, I didn't (what was I going to buy one with? I was working in a gas station owned by a brother as nobody wanted to hire a guy with a degree in English). So on a Friday afternoon she stopped by the station and asked me if I wanted to go to a drive in movie that night? Frankly, that kind of aggression scared the shit out of me, and would have done so even if I wasn't in the process of becoming a JW.

I said no, rather emphatically and managed to get her away from the station. I made sure I didn't get anywhere near alone with her. A few months later she moved back to her original congregation and I didn't see her again for about a year. When I did see her she was disfellowshipped, unmarried and was carrying an infant around the circuit assembly.

To this day I'm certain I dodged a bullet when I told her NO.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

JeffT

Putting on my accounting hat.

Assets and Liabilities are not the same thing as Income and Expense. You need an income statement to determine those numbers. The numbers we have indicate a VERY small business. The only thing I can think of that makes sense is that he bought about 20,000 pounds of video equipment and borrowed about 20k to pay for it.

Changing your business name like that looks odd. Usually you want to do business under one name so people see easily that you've been around for a while.

9

No part of the world

by Lost in the fog in

the wt calls itself christian while at the same time insisting that its witnesses don't mix with other christian groups but remain separate.. to be no part of the world.. i was mulling this over recently in my personal bible reading.

in the first century that demarcation would have made sense because apart from your fellow worshippers the rest of mankind were going to be jewish, roman, polytheistic, pagan, or (i guess much like today) didn't really care.. christians had no worries about meeting up with other people who believed in jesus the same as they did even if there were minor differences depending on who had first taught the gospel message to them.

but nowadays there's not just one christian group against the world, there's lots of "christians" out there.

JeffT

As I came out of the Watchtower it was a real revelation to discover that "Christendom" was not nearly as divided as the WTBS would have us believe. The vast majority of Christians regard each other as fellow believers. They accept a number of core beliefs and consider everything else as a matter of personal choice. Even Catholics are regarded as faithful and well-meaning, even if a bit mislead.

I once read that most American Protestants picked the church they attend based on one of two things: 1) it was their parents church or 2) the building is easy to get to and they like the music. Doctrine simply isn't a major source of disagreement.

22

My mom died.

by noni1974 in

jw
friends

it's been years since i posted here.

my jw mother died july 5th.

it was quite honestly not that emotional for me.

JeffT

Hi Noni, I remember you. My condolences on the loss of your mother.

3

Vice Network showing a documentary on CSA

by JeffT in

i was channel surfing to find something to watch while working on a book.

i came in on the middle of an hour and half documentary on the vice network about jw's and child sex abuse.

it looks very well done with several experts and a number of xjw's, including barbara anderson.

JeffT

I was channel surfing to find something to watch while working on a book. I came in on the middle of an hour and half documentary on the Vice Network about JW's and child sex abuse. It looks very well done with several experts and a number of XJW's, including Barbara Anderson. I'm trying to figure out when it might be on again, I'll post a note if I find it. I want to watch the whole thing.