hey guys.
first of all, i want to thank everyone for being so welcoming and helpful on this forum.... i was thinking about my last 3 years as a jw when i was attending the portuguese congregation and learning that language to bring in more converts.
interestingly, we were told not to attend meetings in our native language in order to immerse ourselves in the new language.
@Never a JW, yeah, I had to travel from Atlanta to South Florida for my Portuguese assemblies, a 10 hour drive. But it was fun in a sense, because it became a mini vacation. A lot of the JWs in that congregation were young as well, so we all tried to have as much fun as we were allowed to lol.
Shoot, I wonder if we'd get more people to leave if we tell them to join a foreign language congregation than telling them they're in a bar $#!t cray cray cult 😂
hey guys.
first of all, i want to thank everyone for being so welcoming and helpful on this forum.... i was thinking about my last 3 years as a jw when i was attending the portuguese congregation and learning that language to bring in more converts.
interestingly, we were told not to attend meetings in our native language in order to immerse ourselves in the new language.
Hey guys.
First of all, I want to thank everyone for being so welcoming and helpful on this forum...
I was thinking about my last 3 years as a JW when I was attending the Portuguese congregation and learning that language to bring in more converts. Interestingly, we were told NOT to attend meetings in our native language in order to immerse ourselves in the new language. We were only to attend Portuguese meetings, assemblies, memorials and conventions.
I later realized that this allowed me to be deprogrammed from the JW indoctrination. Since I never truly became fluent in the foreign language I was learning, I couldn't fully grasp the information on the platform. This, in addition to the fact I was secretly living a "double life" by dating my non-JW husband, made me feel less inclined to attend every single meeting.
So to those who have attended foreign language meetings or have been part of that field, what have been your experiences? And did you find that they aided or prevented you from being "de-brainwashed"?
i realize this is odd, but a "how you woke up" thread and the personal stories that are told which i know we all enjoy, made me think of this.
in helping my wife and a couple others get the ball rolling, i realized the thing that resonated with me, didn't even move the needle with them.
i wanted to rail on and on about blood, because that was my conduit to waking up, but for my wife it was about shunning.
The "apawstate" tract my well-meaning stepmom (non-JW Dad's wife) slipped in my hand as I left to go back home. I threw it away as soon as I realized it wasn't a pro-JW tract. My mom was pretty pissed about it too lol... I wished I had read through the darned thing... I wouldn't have wasted so many years slaving for a BS corporation...
i think the bragging rights of parents would rule.
i've seen cos marry girls no older than there own children when their spouse has died..
Shoot, they'll offer their daughters to ANY older man with some type of status in the org. I know personally of a sister who was 2 years older than me (18 at the time) whose parents welcomed the proposition of marriage from an elder in his 30s. She was bad mouthed in her congregation because she turned him down and married a "convert".
Ironically, the same elder in question turned his attention to me, who was only 16 at the time. He was extremely flirtatious and sometimes inappropriate. Instead of my parents being creeped out about this, they thought it was cute and teased me about what our children would look like.
following is a summary of events leading up to my decision to disassociate from jehovah's witnesses and the unforeseen results of that decision.. a young man named joel engardio produced a documentary about jehovah's witnesses called "knocking" which aired nationally on pbs.
i purchased the dvd from joel before it was even released and we exchanged emails.
joel had been raised by his jw mother and had been active in jw activities during his adolescence, but he was never baptized as a jw.
Thanks for telling your story. Those elders sound like control freaks to me. Your discussion about the lack of freedom from a fade vs disassociation reassures me that I made the right decision to DA.
On a fun and random note, it's interesting you mentioned the Knocking documentary. Part of it was filmed in my home congregation and territory (they even used the street my parents lived on for some of the preaching scenes). My family and I were featured walking down our street in the closing credits of that film. I take pride in knowing they unknowingly filmed an "apawstate" in their movie ;)
anything that's true
When I was in my preteens, my family showed up to the KH for a meeting one evening to find that the tiny windows we had on the doors were shattered. Turns out a sister who had mental health issues and marital problems had done the deed. From what I understood, the elders talked to her and she agreed to take her medication, which she was not doing before.
A couple of weeks later, the same sister showed up to the KH, proceeded to disrobe herself, and started pulling the flowers out of the flower bed of the adjoining CO home. Needless to say, the CO was terrified. Police were called, and she was arrested. She was then Df'ed for not keeping her promise to stay on her meds.
Not too long after that we came to the meeting to find one handle missing on each of the doubles doors to the KH. Apparently the sister, angered by her disfellowshipping, threatened to burn down the hall while people were in it.
In hindsight, I feel bad for the sister though. She needed immediate and intense mental health care, and no one stepped up to help her get that (although at least the elders told her to take her meds, which was surprising).
for me, i think it was just the right time as i was starting to wake up on other fronts as well (anyone who had went through these will know what i mean).
but it started when i was looking for what info goes on a publisher card, which led to me reading one person's story (ex bethelite) which was pretty crazy to an all-in jw but who trusts those apostates...?.
then i started watching videos on cults, as if my subconscious was trying to tell my concord mind something... when i saw a particular one about a young man in lds getting ready to start their 2 year preaching campaign, including a school, social activities etc, i realized that i couldn't tell the difference between the folks of this mormon cult and the jws (save for some religious differences) .
@Wake me up before you Jo Ho First off awesome screen name lol. But yeah, google Johanes Greber (sp?) and NWT. (I know a lot of folks on this forum aren't religious or are into the Bible, and I respect that.)
One of the major scriptures that shows his "influence" is John 1:1 where it says in the NWT "The word is a god". Virtually all other Bible translations don't have the article a in that verse and capitalize the noun God, which would pretty much support the concept of the Trinity belief.
There are actually scans of letters from the WT Society to the Greber foundation asking for additional copies of his "Bible translation". I'll see if I can find the links and edit my post accordingly.
for me, i think it was just the right time as i was starting to wake up on other fronts as well (anyone who had went through these will know what i mean).
but it started when i was looking for what info goes on a publisher card, which led to me reading one person's story (ex bethelite) which was pretty crazy to an all-in jw but who trusts those apostates...?.
then i started watching videos on cults, as if my subconscious was trying to tell my concord mind something... when i saw a particular one about a young man in lds getting ready to start their 2 year preaching campaign, including a school, social activities etc, i realized that i couldn't tell the difference between the folks of this mormon cult and the jws (save for some religious differences) .
I was a die hard staunch born in JW, regular pioneer, in the foreign language field, you name it. I was still believing when I actually started fading. The reason for my fade was the guilt I felt for living a "double life" by secretly dating my now husband who was not a JW.
Even when I literally ran away from home with the clothes on my back (yes, I was pushing 30 and still living with the parents) to elope with my husband, I still believed the BS and continued to be racked with guilt.
I was immediately bombarded with emails full of guilt trips by my family and elders (I had changed my phone number). The elders, unsatisfied with me not returning their correspondence, looked up the number to my new job and proceeded to call my job several times a week. I finally contacted them back by email and told them I would prefer to meet the local elders in the area I had moved, so that I could have an objective viewpoint on my situation. They proceeded to tell me that I needed to follow "God's arrangement" and meet with them. I felt like a criminal fighting extradition lol...
For some reason, that was the straw that broke the camels back. I began to see the hypocrisy and lack of love. I then decided to research the religion I had spent my whole life in. All I did was google "Jehovah's Witnesses". I was able to weed out the logical arguments from the illogical ones. A major discovery was finding out that the translation of the Bible I had based my beliefs on, the NWT, was influenced by a spiritist. (That got to me personally, since I still identify as Christian.) I also discovered Crisis of Conscience, and reading that book pretty much sealed the deal for me. Literally less than 2 months transpired between my initial research and sending my DA letter. It was only then that the elders stopped harassing me.
im giving up guys.
i've reached the end of my patience and now i finally refuse to waste any more time on part-time witnesses.
i've text all of my active jw family members and told them to delete my number from their phone and never contact me again.
Hmm sounds like my DFd sibling who chided me for choosing to live my life, and still continues to do so. I don't blame you at all for that. At least you let them know how you feel.
had the misfortune of stopping by the "regional" convention yesterday.
i promised my daughter i would come to sunday afternoon so she wouldnt have to ride home with her mother.... holy crap it was weird!
im sure all of this has been covered on the forum but to actually see it.... just wow.
Wow! I've been out for less than 4 years, and this is what it's turned into? That's really insane!
