I've been to conventions where the attendants are especially stingy. Last year, I asked for 2 books (myself and my mother, who WAS at the assembly) and I was interrogated!
Talk about a CHEAPSKATE!
i sat at the dc today (yawn!
) trying to keep myself entertained i looked around and was wondering to myself how many that were there today were lurkers, trolls & fred halls.
what were the possibilities that some may have even read some of my comments.
I've been to conventions where the attendants are especially stingy. Last year, I asked for 2 books (myself and my mother, who WAS at the assembly) and I was interrogated!
Talk about a CHEAPSKATE!
i sat at the dc today (yawn!
) trying to keep myself entertained i looked around and was wondering to myself how many that were there today were lurkers, trolls & fred halls.
what were the possibilities that some may have even read some of my comments.
Usually, the Society sends out PLENTY of books to a convention, so many, in fact, that each congregation normally gets a box of books (60 in a box) to take home with them. If there are 80 congregations at a convention, that means that there were nearly 5000 books left over.
It really TICKS ME OFF that they won't let the poor guy have 8 dang books, but they'll have plenty left over at the end. One of the few things about conventions that annoys me more is those guys standing in the halls with those "PLEASE KEEP MOVING" signs when they're so congested that nobody can move!
Maybe the attendant that was handing out books was really doin' the guy a favor by not giving him those books. It's not exactly a good read...
i have nothing to share that already hasn't been posted by other good people who take notes.
i slept as much as possible.
one thing that i can say.... if i hear any of these expressions over the next week, i'll hurl on whoever says them.. gods earthly organization {substitute jehovah for god for any of these}.
News Flash!
For those who care, here's the Sunday program for next year's Kingdom Repetition District Assembly:
9:30 Kingdom Smellodies
9:40 Song and Prayer
9:50 The Text for Those Who Brought their Booklets
10:00 Symposium on a Minor Prophet You've Never Heard Of
11:00 Another Song and Announcement that Nobody Wanted the releases, so the elders can take some home with them for kindling
11:10 Drama featuring fake beards and really bad acting
11:50 Talk that tells you what the drama was REALLY trying to say
12:10 Lunch
1:30 Muzack
1:40 Song
1:50 Public Talk at which no members of the public are present.
2:40 Watchtower Study
3:10 Concluding Talk a.k.a. Applause Sign Lights Up every 30 seconds
4:00 Concluding Song and Prayer
4:30 Concluding Prayer Ends
6:00 You Get out of the parking lot and swear not to come back next year
Yep, it's the same every year, isn't it?
we have a son of legal age,only mentally 5-8 years living with jw relatives.
he studies with the presiding overseer in the knowledge book and goes in service.
he wants to get baptized like his older brother.
In the area I live, it seems that the ONLY people getting baptised are those who are mentally challenged. Those with more thinking ability don't want anything to do with JW's in most cases.
By the way, I always thought being mentally challenged a PREREQUISITE for being a JW!
the bible says the jacob hated leah, the gal he was tricked into marrying after seven years of hard work at minimum wage.
for many years watchtower publications have tried to take the sting out of jacob's disdain for wife #1 by saying that he really didn't hate leah, just "loved her less".. i think he hated her.. its not that hard to understand.
if a man works seven long years, each night going to sleep with visions of a certain bright-eyed girl and then gets stuck with her dull-eyed plain sister, resentment could build.
I think if the Bible meant that Jacob 'loved Leah less', then it would have said so. It says he hated her.
Just another case of not letting the Bible speak for itself, even on something as mundane as the meaning of the world 'hate'.
anyone here got any stories about apostates going on the rampage at any meetings, assemblies, conventions.. i haven't seen any but a young witness told me that his previous cong.
called the police to a meeting cos a df person went apesh*t once.. also, all aussie jw's should know about the riot at a glenelg convention in adelaide in the 1940's where apostates rushed to the sound equipment and some jw stood in there way and kinghit one of them.
(see 1983 yearbook).. from the apostle ak
My favorite method of information dissemination:
Print up several large self-adhesive mailing labels with a brief, thought-provoking message and stick on the back of bathroom stalls and urinals in the convention center.
Imagine: Sister Unaware sits down to take a crap and reads the crucial message: "Did you know that New Light must be approved by only two-thirds of the Governing Body, not by all? You could be disfellowshipped for a 'crime', even though a majority of the GB thinks there's nothing wrong with it."
Or Brother Doubting walks up to the urinal and reads the message stuck to the nearby wall: "When was Jerusalem destroyed? 607 BCE? Check any encyclopedia. It says 586. So what about 1914?"
Just a thought. Feasible? Comical? Maybe both?
here's a question i always wanted answered during the years i was a witness.
what's the best way to stay awake during the watchtower study?
oh, furthermore, what's the best way to stay awake during any witness "snooze-a-thon" brainwashing session?
My favorite way to stay Awake! during the Watchtower Study:
Conveniently raise your hand on comment on a pertinent quote from one of Ray Franz' books. Then, enjoy watching the conductor hem and haw his way out of it.
Or: another old favorite: Take a nice old CB radio and drive alongside the Hall and broadcast the words "Shut up" over and over again. They'll hear it loud and clear!!! Works great on older halls where the sound system wiring isn't shielded too well. They'll think the devil himself is talking!
at the dc this weekend, they released memorial attendance figures for the us.
funny thing.
2001 2, 163, 602 (announced at dc, if i wrote tham down correctly).
Yes, I too have noticed that baptisms (at least in the U.S.) have been down significantly in recent years. The 2000 figure of 30,290 baptisms is the lowest number in many, many years. I have the yearbooks going only as far back as 1985. In that year, there were 34,348 baptisms. Other years, such as 1990, showed over 47,000 baptisms.
In fact, to make a long story short, baptisms in the U.S. have dropped significantly for each of the last three years, from 45 thousand in 1997 down to the current figure.
Reasons? I don't want to rehash the fine possible explanations already given. Who knows?
for me i think it was the sunday meeting.. just wanting to stay home and sleep in.. but i think the watchtower study was the hardest to sit threw... you had to have it studied before hand.. and highlighted.. then sit there and listen to it all over again..
For me, the WT study and the book study are the worst. (I still attend regularly.) In years past, when I used to attend the meetings in another language (Spanish), it was pure torture because all but about 5 couldn't really speak Spanish. So I had to conduct the book study listening to everybody, including grown adults, read their comments out of the book, and not even reading it well, at that.
And what a waste when I would say something that was halfway intelligent, only to get blank stares from EVERYBODY because not a soul could understand what I was saying. AAAARGH!
And what about the conventions.... Hang on, that deserves a post of its own.
"what the hell is a watchtower, what the hell are publishers, where are you getting all this bullshit?".
st paul.
yerusalyim.
<img src=" http://www.standard.net/media_archive/07religion.jpg">;
Damn! Didn't the guy in the suit just say <b?no flash photography</b?! What are you, a bunch of dummies or something?