Chapter 9
“Let’s us move to were the need is greater”
I remember a “kingdom Ministry” heading saying “Only X number
of months left.” Left to what? If you added the months to the date it worked
out to October 1975. I wish I could find
that KM. The society says they never pushed that date but that is simply not
the case.
In the summer of 1967 my mother, sister and I took a trip to
Salina Kansas. My mother’s old stomping grounds before the war. It’s funny my
mother first break away from the farm was moving to Salina and it would turn
out to me mine too. We were there for a month. I didn’t know it at the time but
my mother’s plan was to have me move there and serve where the “need is greater.”
She felt it was time for me to leave the nest.
This was a term that was used a lot back in the nineteen sixties
and seventies. It meant that people who were bored, tired or just super zealous
would connect the society, to find out where there was a need for more “brothers”
and their families. These were places where the ratio of witnesses to normal
people were well below the national average. These places were usually in the Midwest
or Deep South. The society would send you a list of congregations. If you
answered the call, you would quit your job sell your house and move to the
other end of the country to help out a “weak” congregation.
This was used a status symbol too many times. “Brothers and
sisters” would be quick to point out that they sold off everything and moved to
an area that “needed help.” As if say look at me, we are so “spiritual” that we
are willing to give up our comfortable lives and move to Timbuctoo to serve the
Lord. A person couldn’t help but notice that many times these families were not
necessary stronger and didn’t become pillars in their new congregations.
Instead like most people they brought their problems with them. I love the line
in the movie Doctor Zhivago. “Happy men
don’t usually volunteer.”
Some made a life in their new locals, while others headed
back home after a few years. Many never did fit in and felt out of place. Plus many of the locals didn’t like these
strange new comers with their uppity attitudes and their “we are here to help
you hicks out” attitude. Many of the locals didn’t like the idea that they
“needed to be helped out” in the first place. In Kansas most of the pioneers
there were from the Pacific Northwest or California.
Some of these “brothers’ had a little money saved up after
they sold everything off. Others like myself, had to find employment
immediately. They soon found out there was a reason many of these remote and
rural areas didn’t have a lot of Jehovah’s Witnesses in them. There was little
or no work. The attitude was. “No
worries Armageddon was coming soon and we’ll make do, besides Jehovah will
provide for us since we are putting him first in our lives.” So we were willing to sacrifice our time and
comforts for happier times in “the new system.”
Around nineteen ninety five when I was still a Jehovah’s
Witnesses, something strange happened. I was a real estate agent in Portland
Oregon. I met a real estate investor from California. He had made a fortune in the
real estate market in the San Francisco bay area in the nineteen sixties and
seventies. One day we were both in my car looking for his next investment property.
I was very intrigued about his career in real estate. So I had to ask. “So
Steve, what was your most interesting deal in real estate ever?” He got a
slight smile on his face. “Do you mean strange or where I made the most money?”
“I don’t know… Ok how about strangest I
guess.” I said. “Well, in 1973 I bought this guy’s house in San Jose. What was
strange was he wanted to sell his house to me but he didn’t want to move. He
and his wife wanted to rent back his own house from me.” “Really…. why would he
do that.” I asked. “Well” he said. “It turned out he was in some strange
religion that believed the world was going to end in 1975! Can you believe that
shit?” “A….yes…. I guess I can. Was he a Jehovah’s Witness?” I asked. “I think
he was…..why?” I just had to say it. “Because I’m a Jehovah’s Witness too?” He
got silent. “So how did it turn out with you and this guy?” I asked. “Not good.”
He said. “When the end of the world didn’t come in 1975, real estate in the bay
area started to go through the roof. I had to keep raising the rent on him. Finally
he had to move out five years later because he couldn’t afford to live in his
own house anymore. I sold the house four years after that and made over 500K on
the deal. He was a real jerk.” He couldn’t help but rub it in about how stupid
this guy was. I wondered to myself how many other witnesses did something like
that. True story.
This was just one guy out of thousands who like myself bought
into the 1975 program. It’s true to people outside the Jehovah’s Witnesses we
must have looked like total nut jobs.
After the bubble burst in 1975 and god failed to make his presence
known, the mass moving around the country pretty much ended. Somehow moving to Ruston
Louisiana, Salina Kansas or Narragansett Rhode Island didn’t seem like such a
great idea anymore, since no buddy really knew when Armageddon was going to happen
now.
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