GrandmaJones

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Posts by GrandmaJones

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  45

  How was dating as Jehovah Witness?

  by Pitchess Co-Gen in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  looking back i'm glad i didn't marry my ex..

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  GrandmaJones

  I think it is much more strict now than it used to be. It's ridiculous to think that kid's can't "hook up" just because they are supervised or in "groups". If you want to have sex, then you'll have it. Parents really can't do anything about it. You need to just cross your fingers and hope they make good decisions.
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  10

  This both excites me and breaks my heart

  by GrandmaJones in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i have two living siblings, an older brother, and a younger sister.

  my brother and his wife have had to move many times due to his job because of promotions, and new opportunities.

  everytime they moved, it would be weeks before they were settled enough to begin attending meetings again.

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  GrandmaJones

  I have two living siblings, an older brother, and a younger sister. My brother and his wife have had to move many times due to his job because of promotions, and new opportunities. Everytime they moved, it would be weeks before they were settled enough to begin attending meetings again. After about six or seven moves, they just didn't get started again. (Seriously, they must have moved twelve or more times,it seemed like every three or four years he was changing jobs.) He is very successful.

  My brother had a heart attack last month. He and his wife live some distance from us, and my sister and I drove together to Memphis to be with them during this crisis. He didn't suffer too much damage, but he needed a triple bypass, and had one two days after the heart attack. Consequently, my sister and I spent several nights together in a local hotel, sharing a room. We knew he would be fine but we wanted to give my sister-in-law support. She was so distraught.

  My sister and I still live in the same town and we are extremely close. We share everything with each other. Because of that, she has been aware of some of my feelings while I was reading all the volumes of the Studies in the Scriptures. She and I have always agreed in the idea of a complete resurrection of everyone who has ever died, and didn't believe that god would destroy billions of people who didn't take the Watchtower. It just never made sense to us, and we paid attention to the fact that the bible didn't say he would destroy the people at Armageddon, it says he will gather the nations together for the great day... We understood this to mean only the system of governments.

  This however, never shook our faith in the organization as being the channel of communication for his people. We just figured that one day they would understand this and "new light" would happen, and that we were "running ahead" of Jehovah and he would make this clear in due time. (I know, I know. Cult thinking) This was not a thing in which the rest of the family shared our opinions, but they didn't really argue the case too strongly, and it was never anything they felt needed to be made a big deal of. They just thought we were wrong, completely wrong.

  This of course, has always made field service a problem us. What do you say to a Bible study when you get to the Armageddon part? We always handled that with some version of "Jehovah in his infinite mercy will handle that issue with pity and understanding when the time comes. We don't need to worry about that as his justice is perfectly balanced with love and mercy."

  In the past few years, we have practiced a form of field service that skirts this issue by not getting ourselves into situations like that. No return visits, no bible studies, only street witnessing, etc. etc....

  We never openly discussed this. We just said we didn't really enjoy field service, or that we had been too busy to go this month, and would go out and street witness for an few hours at the end of the month so as to make some time. Basically we just handed magazines out without discussion, like we were passing out leaflets or something. "Here's some reading material that might be of interest" we would say.

  She and I meet frequently for dinner and a "girls night out". Shopping or movie kind of thing. Finally, during this drive and the subsequent amount of time in the hotel due to my brothers heart problems, we had a real block of time together.

  Although this forum has been a tremendous amount of help to me as an outlet to talk about my realization that this is not god's chosen channel and my heartbreak and extreme anquish in discovering and accepting this fact, it was still something I wished I could share with my sister. I had already come out to my husband (who was perfect okay with this) and to one of my children (who says he is still a believer, but is okay, and assures me that he would never, ever shun me, and would be disfellowshipped himself before he'd do that) and to one of my grandchildren who is not yet baptized, and when I brought this up, told me that he has too many doubts to do it. He doesn't feel the answers to his questions are satisfying.

  Everyone I have spoken with so far, has, however been extremely shocked that I could say and do this. My son was especially shocked, he practically fell out of his chair. I mean, I am no spring chicken, and to suddenly say this now....well, it was very surprising.

  I really wanted to talk frankly with my sister though, and our brother's surgery offered me the time to do it. So, I just came out with it. I just told her gently and simply what my reasons were and how I would never attend meetings again. She was crying and begging me to reconsider, but immediately assured me that I was her sister, and nothing I could ever do would change that. When I woke up in the morning, she had written me a letter, asking me not to leave the organization, but continuing to assure me that it would not change our relationship if I refused. She said she completely understood my reasons, and really, in most respects, agreed with me. (My sister is one of the sweetest women in the world, and I am lucky to have her. I know that her sense of personal integrity is high, her generosity large, and her capacity for love is expansive.)

  We didn't really get a chance to talk for two weeks due to other obligations, but then our brother suffered a blood clot in his leg, and was readmitted to the hospital for observation and care. So we drove to Memphis together again.

  The morning of the second day, we are in a restaurant and she suddenly broke into tears. She just blurted out that she knew that this wasn't the truth, that she had already had some doubts herself and that she had always pushed them down and refused to examine them, but that now that I had expressed it all together, had said it all aloud, that she was now unable to shut the lid again. She's been praying incessantly and crying herself to sleep. It's all she thinks of day and night. She is heartbroken and completely devastated.

  My sister is a widow. She really was in love with her husband until the day he died. They had two daughters, and the oldest one drowned in a boating accident when she was three. She and her husband never got over it. Between her daughter and now her husband, she has spent most of her life holding tightly to the belief of the resurrection that she felt was surely coming soon and that would reunite her with them yet in her lifetime. This new teaching of the generations has really bothered her. She hoped the time left was very short.

  She is so terribly unhappy, and told me that now that she sees that the Wizard of Oz is just a man behind a curtain, and that the veil is lifted from her eyes, she can never again believe. She keeps praying that Jehovah show her that she is wrong, and that the organization is really his channel, but nothing changes. She just can't make herself believe it, and god is not taking action regarding her prayers. I know exactly how she feels, it is what I felt as well, and, I guess in some ways I still do. The fairy tale felt so good, it was so comforting. It's horrendous to discover that you have lived a life in sacrifice to something that doesn't exist.

  I feel so terribly sad for her. She is so heartbroken, and she doesn't know what to do. She thinks she will just fade into inactivity, and since her children live in other parts of the country, they'll probably not even discover it. When they visit, they don't go to meetings, they just spend all their time together. When she visits them, she'll just take her bible and songbook and attend meetings for a week.

  I am not at all sure that I did the right thing in bringing this to the front of her mind. I feel like the source of her great disappointment and unhappiness, and that I destroyed her dream of seeing her husband and daughter again. It's like she is suffering their deaths all over. It's terrible for her.

  So, on one hand, I am glad she knows the truth, and can live the rest of her life as she really pleases, and on the other, and right now, it feels that I have made life ugly for her. When you are as far along in life as we are, so many of the choices you would have if you were even as young as forty or fifty are denied you. There are just so many things you can't change. You know that you have children in their forties who have grown up in the truth, and she and I both have grandchildren who are adults, or who are approaching adulthood. What do you do?
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  6

  How did your family tell you to bug off? no contact, etc...

  by carla in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i am just wondering about what the usual method for jw's to tell you to get the heck out of their life until you shape up and come back to jah routine?.

  one more question- let's say someone decided to go back but were possibly df'd, da'd or even just rumored to be an apostate, now they come back and they sit in the back and generally get treated like crap until the elders say their 'time out' is over.

  can the family talk to them while they are in the dog house so to speak or do they have to wait until the elders give the ok?

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  GrandmaJones

  I think that associating with close family members happens a lot. You don't get disfellowshipped for it. The worst I have heard is that someone got a sheparding call about it, and that family told them that they needed to mind their own business. End of story.

  Recently an elder stepped down after his daughter got DF"d and told the CO and the BOE that she was his baby girl, and would always be his baby girl, and he intended to be there for her. A lot of us thought that was just great, and were impressed that an elder and not just a R& F member did this. He hasn't lost other privileges though, and there have been no "local needs" talks about it.

  Now I also know members of the congregation who DON'T do this, and who have shunned their parents, children, etc. for twenty or thirty years and will never talk to them until they are reinstated. They can't be persuaded, even by example, that they are not taking the right stand, and they are appalled at the elder, who they think should be severely reproved. They consider anyone who does this with a close family member to be extremely "spiritually weak" and really look down on them.

  No one, however, has anything at all to do with DF'd or DA's outside the immediate family that I know of.
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  101

  Todays WT study illustration of Jesus doing away Capitol Hill and Obama - a statement of the WTS?

  by Gorbatchov in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i attended the todays wt study and got notice of the illustration of jesus doing away capitol hill and barack obama.. i think the illustration passed the juridical advisors of the wts, having a blackout!

  of are they trying to reach the anti government people like the tea party idiots with this kind of propaganda illustrations?.

  is this a signal that the wts is anti democrats, anti obama?.

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  GrandmaJones

  I don't read anything into the picture that is indicating that the WT thinks that Obama is a personal enemy of Jesus. I think he is just the most recognizable leader in government in the entire world. Whether you are in Kenya or in England, everyone knows who he is. The illustration is just indicating that government will be swept away along with the military, etc, etc....

  But the artwork is among the worst I have seen in a while and the hand? I don't know how they allowed some cheesy thing like this get past the art department. Ugh.
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  28

  Secret elders meeting in the end of 2010

  by Lore in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  all the elders in my circuit are driving across the state for a big elders meeting.

  and the ministerial servants have to do it on sunday.

  evidentally they were all told to study certain parts of their new book before going.. .

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  GrandmaJones

  I really don't understand how this could be factual at this point. Is anyone on the board an elder or a MS who has attended or knows someone who has already attended? I didn't think they had started the schools, although they will be coming up soon.

  In my congregation, there are a number of young people who are in college or university. I have never heard of this being a disfellowshipping or counseling issue, or even cause of a sheparding call. Certainly not for parents who pay for it. (although I don't know ANY member of the hall who has enough income to be able to pay for college though, all the kids are on grants and student loans I think) Two of my own children attended and graduated with degrees from four year universities, and NOTHING was ever said at all about it. All I have ever heard in talks and literature is strong discouragement, but never anything beyond that, and no personal conversations at all.

  Please don't see these comments as a personal challenge, I don't mean it this way, it's just that I am curious where this information has come from that there are sanctions for your children attending college. Does anyone have anything that would point to me that there were sanctions of any kind? I am completely ready to accept being wrong, but I would like to see this in writing?
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  22

  Mother-in-law sending me dvd...need input

  by TweetieBird in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  my mother-in-law called me today and said that she is sending us a dvd that came out at summer convention about the history of the organization and why it is "being used by jehovah".

  she asked if we would watch it cause she knows that we don't think wts is being used by god.

  i told her that we would watch it and send back to her.

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  GrandmaJones

  I thought it was very interesting that they made such a fuss over Russell. I've never seen them do it to this degree. Now might be the perfect time to point out that Russell taught that EVERYONE, including ADAM AND EVE, the people of Noah's day, Sodom and Gomorrah, and ALL THE PEOPLE WHO EVER LIVED OR DIED will receive another chance of a personal trial of integrity in during the millenial reign. Everyone who ever lived or died will bow to Jehovah on bended knee and recognize his authority. Only the worldly systems of government will pass away, NOT THE PEOPLE. That is what Russell taught.
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  43

  The disfellowshipping of Walter Salter

  by onacruse in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  on a recent thread farkel provided a transcript of a letter written by walter salter in 1937:.

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/149105/2710321/post.ashx#2710321.

  in all my years i have never seen the wts respond as vigorously and openly as it did to this event...not even ray franz got this much attention.. as an opener, here is the initial response printed in the wt (this is also a transcript, but .pdf's of the original can be provided as needed):.

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  GrandmaJones

  btt
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  9

  Rutherford - Who Is He? - Press Comments

  by VM44 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  rutherford gave a lecture in 1915 on the subject "where are the dead".

  here is the text from the flyer advertising the lecture.

  subject: .

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  GrandmaJones

  btt
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  7

  Watchtower Built Places of Refuge during WW2.

  by VM44 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have heard that the watchtower had built several "places of refuge" in the united states during world war 2.. there is very little information about this activity, as if the watchtower does not want people to know what they did.. one place of refuge later became the location of the watchtower farms, and the another became the gilead school.. still another was the house beth shan, located in san diego.. these places of refuge were mentioned during a public talk given around 1947, and recorded in a watchtower issue.

  there was applause from the audience when it was mentioned that these places (along with rutherford's house, beth sarim) were being sold off, or otherwise disposed of.. does anyone have further information about these places?

  it seems like this is a topic no one who was alive at the time wanted to talk about or mention so that future generations would know about it.

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  GrandmaJones

  I wonder just how many places like this they had. (and why the R&F didn't think that Jehovah's protection would be sufficient?)
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  41

  Source of Direct Contribution for Rutherford's House, Beth Sarim

  by VM44 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  this is a question i have had for over 13 years, since i first found out that rutherford had a house, named beth sarim, built for him in san diego.

  where did the money come from for the 100 acres of land the house was situated upon, and for the design and construction of the house?

  in the proclaimer's book, it is said that a "direct contribution" was made for the house.

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  GrandmaJones

  btt