there is a certain elder in my wives hall that has seemed to developed a real interest her.
first he seemed to feel a need to make sure all her blood cards were signed before she gave birth to our child.. he sends her text messages if she misses a meeting saying how much " we missed you last night ".
he finally sent her a text wondering where her oct hours were , knowing she had some pretty serious tears from child birth and could hardly even walk, much less do field service ".
I agree with freddo.
There are things in JW behavoir that are dangerous and things that are in the annoying category.
I think this falls in the annoying category.
So choose your battles.
The only proviso would be if your wife is uneasy or feels pressured. Then she would perceive your speaking out as going to bat for her and that would be an entirely different matter.
How does she feel about it?
it is evident that the w.t has recently re-branded itself, and has become fairly modern in its marketing techniques.
so the organisation is in that respect forward thinking, and the former way of doing things has past.. .
but this rebranding has been done by marketing experts, who maybe realise progress is progress, and that with modernisation many bethelites " even as free volunteers" are possibly no longer required.
As to the question in the original post....
couldnt it be both?
also, my wife has come to her limits of understanding me about the witnesses related grief i have been having.
she has told me many times to stop reading the ex-witness sites because i get depressed and become angry, which sadly is true.
it's not very productive to be sad throughout the entire day and then shout at your wife for the reason she has no first hand experience about, therefore how could she possibly know and help?
Hi GrownMidget and welcome!
You have a very touching story and I really appreciate you taking the time to type it all out and share it.
The one constant I saw in reading your words, is how you keep trying.
That is the quality of a person who is a survivor. I am glad you kept trying up till now and that it has lead you to a better place.
I look forward to more of your posts!
which is longer, a treadmill minute or a microwave minute?.
... or every minute of every thursday meeting when you wanted to get back home in time to see red dwarf and some elder who loved the sound of his own voice had the mic..
Well supposedly Einstein weighed in on this!
An hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench passes like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour.
just wanted to break the ice and write my first post here and also talk about some things that are bothering me.
i don't go to meetings anymore and i have become inactive for years now.
i don't believe the witnesses have the truth more than any other organized religion.
just let me say, i hate the gray bible.
when i read the revision of mal 3:10 and they included tithing, i almost vomited.
recently though, my invalid mother asked me to read to her and the only thing available was the gray bible.
I dont like what they have done with the references in the new Bible either.
For instance in Heb. 10:25 their used to be 4 references in the old red JW Bible.
Now there are (if I remember correctly) two.
One of the ones that got removed was from Matt.18:20 where Jesus said "Where two or more are gathered in my name..."
its pretty obvious that they want to discourage anyone from thinking they can do their own meeting or studying apart from the meetings organized through them.
as with any course which is based on pure wishful thinking(which is the wt corporation based on) has different stages.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wishful_thinking.
some psychologists believe that positive thinking is able to positively influence behavior and so bring about better results.
this is called "pygmalion effect".
The lack of press given to the 100 year anniversary of 1914 was a huge one for me.
I really thought they would put their game face on and go for it.
The fact that they barely mentioned it was a huge eye opener for me.
reading through a lot of the forum posts and wondered what tatt stands for (?).
any more acronyms that are special to this site?
one more...
BOE
Body of Elders.
I wish we could have a terminology thread as a sticky.
I had a heck of a time when I first came here figuring out what was what!
ETA: I see you are a new poster Disracted, just want to say welcome!
(ETA = edited to add)
so i'm minding my own business at mcdonald's, reading bonnie zieman's book.. i was sorely tempted to read it at the adjacent table.. would have liked a co-hort to video the subsequent emergency evacuation.. .
.
by the way, this was one of the nicest november saturdays ever, and they're wasting this precious time fraternizing.
So is that a field service group on morning coffee break?
How funny!
They dont look very excited about their lot in life honestly.
i never was a jw.. my traditional response to jws calling at the door was to raise 'the issues' - standard stuff.
they don't come so often now.. when the arc was going out live, i watched most of the broadcasts.
i was struck by just how poorly the head honchos performed.
Internet exposure has not been good for the JWs.
The monthly Governing Body broadcasts are lame and the leaders come across as phony.
The ARC hearings were just as bad - perhaps worse since the monthly broadcasts are heavily edited and scripted.
The days when the leaders expressed themselves in print only were better for them but the world moved on and they are trying - its just not coming across well for them.
