Marilyn

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Posts by Marilyn

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  21

  Falling in Love

  by forgetmenot in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  okay, i have a question for all you who think you are in love.

  did you have to work really hard at capturing the person you in love with's attention or did it just happen?

  was it an actual thing you planned or what?

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  Marilyn

  Dear Forgetmenot. You either got it or you don't. Please hear me out. Both my children - a daughter aged 24 and son aged 22 are hopeless at flirting. My daughter sounds just like you and she wasn't raised in the Organsiation. Both my kids are good looking but just haven't got a clue about how to chum up to the opposite sex. Yet I was a flirt and still am - though I've remained faithful to one guy my entire life. I was 15 when I met my husband and he's an angel. He isn't a flirt but a fun loving, warm hearted guy. He knows I'm flirtatious, but sensible with it. Perhaps playful is a better word. I think the ability to flirt is either in your genes or it isn't. I get it from my Irish ancestery.

  I really don't understand why my kids are so awkward around the opposite sex. My daughter blushes and is anxious about meeting guys. But like I say to her - just be yourself. If you are a nice person, with a good heart and kindly ways then nothing else is required. If possible do try to show a little bit of special interest in a guy if you like him. I know this because my son is too afraid to approach girls for fear of rejection. He needs encouragement. If you can try to see it from their point of view then you might not feel so uptight about it.

  best wishes
  Marilyn
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  54

  I just got ripped off for two grand :-(

  by Mindchild in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  sometime yesterday or this morning, i was ripped off for $2,000 in cash.

  the money was in an unlocked attache case inside my private room of a shared home.. i kept about $5,000 in cash in my attache case inside my bedroom.

  yesterday, i spent about $2,000 of that money buying textbooks (this is my occupation), leaving $3,000 in two envelopes, one having $1,000 and the other $2,000.

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  Marilyn

  I prefer to be ripped off more creatively. A few months ago my husband and I bought a second hand car for our son. We have bought many second hand cars over the years and fancy ourselves as having an eye for a bargain. Geez what a couple of dopes we turned out to be. I won't go into how we allowed ourselves to be conned but the long and the short of it is that we paid $12,000AUD for a car that had been sandwiched so badly in a smash that the insurance company declined the right to fix it. This bastard we bought it from makes a living buying these wrecks and getting backyard cowboys to fix em' up for private sale and some how get them thru a road worthiness test. Nissum told us it is maybe worth $7,000 as a trade-in on a new car. So we did $5,000 cold @ least. The icing on the cake of this story is that we GAVE my son's old car - worth about $1,500 to my JW brother who hasn't associated with us for 20 yrs. Whatever happened to what goes round comes round???

  Marilyn :-(((
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  6

  talk about a close call

  by orangefatcat in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this morning i recieved an e-mail from our daughter, she had been up all night with worry.

  apparently yesterday she spotted smoke on a neighbours property and thought they were burning garabage in barrels.

  our daughter lives on a small farm with 56 acres.

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  Marilyn

  Just another dog turd on the pavement of life? But glad to hear the fire was contained before the house and animals went up!

  Marilyn
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  19

  Can you ever help these people?

  by sleepy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can you ever help these people?.

  you show them why the society is wrong on prohecy, theres no authority for the gb, mistakes and changes and how they have damaged lives, and everything else you can think of .. and what do they say.. "does it really matter?

  it is the truth and there no where else to go".

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  Marilyn

  I agree. It's a worry alright.
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  29

  rekless in hospital

  by desertflower in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i thought you all would like to know that rekless had a heart.

  attack.

  he was at work and was taken to hospital by ambulance.. he had 2 stints put it and they are hoping that will do the .

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  Marilyn

  Send some best wishes from Down Under while you are about it!

  Marilyn
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  4

  The Organization's Imaginary Nature

  by metatron in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  as time goes on, the organization becomes more and more.

  imaginary.. the wts continues bragging about themselves being a spiritual.

  paradise - despite evidence of pedophila, witness divorce,.

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  Marilyn

  Metatron, I think they are terribly unhappy for the most part. Maybe the newbies are happy for a while before the boredom sets in, but you are very right about many aspects of Tower life.

  How do they avoid psychosis? One of my brothers drinks a lot. He's an elder but he's cunning. He and his wife intimidate the 'brothers & sisters' with a smarmy act and they are both very quick witted. Besides they do all the other stuff that is required and when they aren't dubbing they anesthetise themselves with booze (a lot of it by all accounts). My sister cries a lot and enjoys ill health for some meeting relief and my older brother? Not sure what he does. I think he's a bit slow. He's still trying to live up to it all. Poor sod.

  Marilyn
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  4

  JWs and Retirement

  by Valis in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  if someone has already posted this thread recently please redirect to original thread.

  metatron's observation about living in a fantasy land made me consider how many jws that still believe are just now scrambling to arrange some kind of retirement fund for themselves, or securing life insurance, or paying up serious debts.

  i was curious to know if my lovely friends have simmilar experiences like mine, where the future was never an issue and that generation of jws will have to work almost their entire lives.

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  Marilyn

  My siblings are products of the pre 1975 attitude to education. My two brothers gave up their educations when the Troof found us in the early 70's.

  My older brother(an elder) is 55 and he's had menial jobs all his life. In recent years he got some part time teaching work coz he had some teaching qualifications prior to the Troof. Can you believe he is now taking the extra subjects required to bring his teaching qualifications up to date. The retirement age for teachers is 65. He has no savings to speak of and he rents his accommodation. Ten years on a teachers salary does not a retirement package make.
  The Australian Government supplies a modest pension for people who have no money.

  My next brother, aged 51 (an elder), went back to university about 10 yrs ago. He became qualified as a teacher. He only works as a casual teacher which doesn't provide much in the way of retirement benefits. He has some how managed to more or less own his own home - so if nothing else he'll have a roof over his head and I guess the government will supply him with a meager pension because it is means tested and he will have no means.

  My sister is married to an elder who cleans windows. He is better at spending money than saving it. His window cleaning business has allowed him to borrow heavily on his house and I cannot invisage a time that they will ever pay off their house let alone save for retirement. They will also be entitled to a Government pension.

  Prior to the Troof we came from the middle socio-economic group. My parents were hard working and good savers. My husband and I are comfortably off because when my husband wanted to give up his university studies in 1971, his non dub mother literally begged him not to leave university.

  I feel the WTS has a great deal to answer on the subject of poverty in the Organisation.
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  42

  Did you have a "religious experience" ?

  by refiners fire in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  by "religious experience" i mean a moment, an incident, where you felt that god was directly addressing you thru a public talk, a watchtower article.

  did god give you a "sign" that convicted you of the truth of "the truth"?.

  my mother told me about one she had.

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  Marilyn

  Why won't you ever find an athiest in a fox hole? Does anyone go down fox holes? I don't get it.

  Adonai, loved reading your thoughts about the Mormons. I write to a Mormon and she is always on about her special experiences. Some of them seem somewhat selfish - but I try not to hurt her feelings about them.

  Marilyn
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  27

  Zebras (Awake! magazine Jan 2001)

  by Duncan in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  well, weve been in our new house now for almost two years, and we finally got our first visit from the witnesses, a couple of days ago.. two very nice middle-aged ladies stood on my doorstep, asking me would i accept their two magazines for free?

  - they were old issues from january well, how could i refuse?.

  its gods will that zebras are striped and thats the beginning and end of it.. for an educational magazine this is just a disgrace.. can you hear the voice of the great teacher in this?

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  Marilyn

  Teirce, When my father was in hospital he was visited by an elder, who noted that dad had a novel on his bedside table. The elder took a moment to tell my father that he shouldn't be reading worldly literature but should restrict himself to WT books. You know? So he could fast track it to demensia!

  Marilyn
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  38

  Do the Witnesses "manipulate" recruits?

  by refiners fire in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  do they "mystically manipulate"people joining them?.

  im inclined to say they dont.. they are almost unique in this.. practically every cult ive joined, i could recite a litany of manipulation techniques applied to me during my joining process.. the dubs study with people, systematically, unemotionally.. noone else does this in my experience.. people who join the dubs join under "intellectual conviction".. do you agree with this view or not??.

  im most curious to hear opinions on this.

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  Marilyn

  A thoroughly enjoyable subject. Waitings comments re meeting attendance was interesting coz in reality the meetings are a dead bore. It must be the ritual or routine that they are trying to establish with you.

  Hillary_step's comment about the study that is "thirsting for knowledge" was good. I think it's a fairly new problem for them to differentiate between someone 'thirsting for knowledge' and someone who has been there done that and KNOWS TOO MUCH.

  I don't think anyone has mentioned this aspect. There is manipulation at the initial stages via this practice: If someone puts forward a well considered objection stating the way they feel about an issue, the witness states their opinion with a bunch of vaguely related scriptures. The person might not be convinced and will continue to stand their ground. The witness will more or less repeat their stand, swopping the words around a bit but it's basically the same answer. The person might continue to hold to their view. But during this process, which often goes on for several weeks or months, the person becomes familiar with the Witness view. They become more comfortable with it and recognise it easily after a while. At some point they seem to adopt it as their own even though initially the explanation was not acceptable to the recruit.

  I heard this from someone making an academic study of how JWs recruit. He was having a study and had observed this procedure.

  marilyn