Posts by JakeM2012

18

Relief Work and $$$

by allyouneedislove in

was just talking to a jw who just got back from oklahoma doing relief work for jws who had their homes damaged.

i didn't know this, but he said that the process goes like this.

the homeowner usually has a payout from the insurance company in hand.

I always thought this was interesting that brothers would show up with their families, pay their own ways (transportation), sometimes provide their own shelter and food, out of the goodness of their hearts. But WTBTS was there with an open hand to harvest the money. I wonder how long they would continue the work if no one donated anything to help them. Perhaps suppliers in these disaster areas need to be given a heads up of different true charitable organizations.

When Houston flooded a few years ago, I know they went through many "committees" on the RBC's that helped in the restoration. It ended up taking years. I just asked one on the committee when he was visiting my area, "why don't you just help put blue tarps on the houses and then make sure the brothers are not conned by some traveling construction company. Let the world fix it, it would have been done a year sooner. No answer, I got up and got him another beer.

62

Rumor: April 3, 2015 start of Great Tribulation?

by Londo111 in

on another forum, somebody mentioned that there is a growing belief with those high up in watchtower hierarchy that the great tribulation will begin april 3, 2015. evidently, one has to check the skycharts for that date and compare with 33 ceand also compare with the history of jws for past 40, 80, 120 years.

dont ask me to verify the rumor...these things come and go.

im sure lots of people in hq believe all sorts of things.. .

JakeM2012

EdenOne - "I'm still hoping for a reform that will wash away the old oligarchy and their praetorian guard ... one that will bring an acknowlegement of past mistakes, corrects whacky doctrines, softens the stance on shunning, and humbly apologizes and begs for forgiveness before God and Christ. It's a lot to ask, I know ... perhaps too much to ask, by now."

While we are dreaming, why don't we have them make a humble announcement at the bethel morning worship that they have been caught up in a religious Ponzi scheme and that they admit they have no communication channel with God, are not lead by Holy Spirit, that everything that an apostate has said is true, and they have been making everything up since the beginning. Then, everyone is dismissed to go home.

81

Friend gets "scriptural divorce" over wifes transgressions before they got married...

by sosoconfused in

so i have a friend in a congregation in new jersey who recently called me to tell me that he got a divorce.

nothing surprising there at first but it is the fact of when it happened.

his wife began pioneering april 1, and after about three weeks she came to him and told him that about 4 years she had engaged in loose conduct (fondling the penis and the guy kissing her breasts) during a time that she was inactive.

JakeM2012

"How much you wanna bet that one of those blathering idiot Elders™ fantasizes about your friend's wife and would love to have her hands on his dick?"

That's what I was thinking, some elder wants the wife!

81

Friend gets "scriptural divorce" over wifes transgressions before they got married...

by sosoconfused in

so i have a friend in a congregation in new jersey who recently called me to tell me that he got a divorce.

nothing surprising there at first but it is the fact of when it happened.

his wife began pioneering april 1, and after about three weeks she came to him and told him that about 4 years she had engaged in loose conduct (fondling the penis and the guy kissing her breasts) during a time that she was inactive.

JakeM2012

"I do know however that if a brother who is married goes to a strip club and pays for a lap dance it is considered adultery. This was told to us by our instructor at the week long elders school."

Soso, what about the question of if there was "penetration"? The elders always like to ask this in their committee meetings. It sounds like they are bluffing to keep the elders inline, that's just too much fun.

88

Former Long Time Elder: Why I am still in

by James Jackson in

jw
friends

a customer on my route with whom i have had some lively debates was his number 1 complaint is that "the witnesses have so many rules".

last month i agreed with on this issue.

he asked why the change, i told him that i have been doing some soul searching.

JakeM2012

Heaven, your response blows me away at how confident and put together you were at an early age. If I could live life again, when my father told me that I would have to move out and be ostrasized by the family, I would have left, no questions asked. I was too cult-ized to think freely.

I have to agree with lisa's thoughts, this has been a topic of conversation between my wife and I as she is not an active witness anymore, she feels we should go somewhere. But I have seen so many young like Slimboyfat said, they have just learned to lead double lives (witness lingo), or behave around some in different ways. My mother-in-law started lecturing my daughter and it was like turning on a lightswitch that she couldn't talk or dress freely with gran.

Lisa, your description of identity diffusion and identity foreclosure describes several in my active witness family exactly.

27

MTS & Gilead: Can we talk about how much of a FAILURE these 2 schools were/are?

by Black Man in

jw
friends

i know quite a few from both of these schools who basically crashed and burned once they got into their assignments.

graduates of these schools would be thrown into foreign territorities or remote areas without a good visible means of support and would get emotionally, mentally, financially burned out.

post your experiences or of those you know that went to these pitiful excuses for educational institutions..

JakeM2012

I knew one MTS (Ministerial Training School) delegate that signed up and was called for the 6-7 week school(?) He lived in a small town with a small congregation, there were few jobs, most very low paying, but he had a postal job delivering mail making $25 an hour and this was years ago. He had to quit the job with the Postal Service to get the time off to attend the school. So after attending MTS the WTBTS "assigned" him back to his same congregation, but he also had the baggage of signing an oath that he would not marry for a number of years. He returned to his congregation and assumed all his previous roles in the congregation. He did not have a good job for a long time, (years) and his parents who were missionary returns serving where the need was great were fit to be tied about the fiasco created by WT.

19

Mic issues

by msconcerned in

jw
friends

so on friday all day, the mic guy did a bang up job.....until david splane got to the podium.

it looked like he discussed how the mic should be set up for him, then finally when the mic guy was walking away david says " well im glad we got that settled".

then today same thing, he got the mic guy to readjust the mic for him again.

JakeM2012

This is interesting, is the Mic boy the new whipping post of the GB? Another poster mentioned that Gerrit Loesch (GB) in Evansville, Indiana had fussed about the adjustment on his microphone. So now we will probably see other elders (heavies) think this is cute and humiliate the microphone guy. Go figure.

Quote:

"So, unexpectedly, the final talk was announced today and to my surprise and evil glee, they announced Gerrit Loesch as the speaker! First off, at the beginning of his talk, he interrupted himself in the middle of his sentence to scold the microphone brother to lower my mike it's right in my face."

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/255318/1/Gerrit-Loesch-was-at-our-DC-today

37

Circuit visit (top secret) video presentation

by slimboyfat in

i'm just back from the meeting where it was a video presentation given by the circuit overseer.

apparently it's not on general release, only being viewed during co visits at the moment.

top secret.

JakeM2012

Thanks slimboyfat for the review

31

Did Anyone Apply To Go To Bethel, And Not Be Accepted?

by LoisLane looking for Superman in

the brother i loved, married someone else.

at the ripe old age of 20, i thought my life was over.

if i was catholic, i probably would have joined a nunnery.

JakeM2012

I know a family that came in the truth in the mid 1980's and their son applied to bethel when 18 years old in the 1990's. The young man and the family were crushed that he was not accepted.

127

Anyone else an Ex Bethel "volunteer"

by BackseatDevil in

i was wondering if there were any other ex-bethelites on here.

i personally regularly went for temporary work at brooklyn then was assigned to the farm for a year and a half.

it was... one of the most bizaare experiences of my life.. so i wrote it all down (finally, after some 15 years) so i won't bore anyone on here with the details of the story - because bethel doesn't show up until chapter 15... and for you straight folks, it gets a bit gay in two places... but nothing gross.

JakeM2012

Yes, unfortunately, served nearly five years overseas on various branch locations, always living in temporary barracks.