i was baptized in 1968. last meeting 2010. i have to say i was never 100% in.
there were times i absolutely believed, but i never really gave it my all.
never liked service, assemblies, meetings.
I was born in. I never liked it or that.
I had to get baptized to use the hall for our wedding which my inlaws wanted and I wanted a church/hall wedding also.
I got Baptized in 72 and between 72 and 75 I took it seriously as they fooled me about armeggedon and the end of the world.
After January 1 1976, I started fading and totally quit in 83.
when i first started going on "other" jw websites my head was spinning so i didn't say anything to my kids about what i had read.
steve hassan's material helped a lot it was when i read that, that i realised i need to free my kids.. i got a lot of advice from jwn too.. my daughter had moved cities and went to the hall we used to visit frequently.
things changed when she became a member instead of just a visitor.
I left in 83. My son was 9.
My wife stayed in another 10 years after I left, time flys in retrospect.
I appologized to my son for exposing him to such garbage.
And told him they said armeggedon was going to come in 75 and it still hasn't
come in 83.
I said we don't need somebody who doesn't know what they are talking about
telling us anything.
My son is 40. He is not a JW, never was.
My wife has been out of the tower for 20 years and celebrates all the holidays.
my best friend of 14 years and maid of honor passed away 2 months ago at age 32 after battling breast cancer for 6 years.
i haven't been the same since for many reasons.. as a jw kid i believed 144,000 chosen went to heaven, the good people would be resurrected including those who didn't have a chance to hear about jehovah, and the rest, which were of other religions and bad people, died and would cease to exist.
again, because i was a kid when i left, i never really understood the jw position on death and why they came to their conclusion.
Good people go to Florida or Arizona (if they aren't already there).
Bad people go to Detroit or Cleveland.
Rub a Dub
Rub a dub. I am already here, Florida.
I left cleveland 31 years ago to get here.
I guess I am kind of like Hugh Heffner.
I cant go someplace better when I die.
#1 rajesh koothrappali.
#2 amy farrah fowler.
rajesh because he's got sheldon's number.. amy because she reminds me so much of me.. when i was in school, i was never part of the "in" crowd.. i was viewed as weird and nerdish.. lol..
#1 rajesh koothrappali.
#2 amy farrah fowler.
rajesh because he's got sheldon's number.. amy because she reminds me so much of me.. when i was in school, i was never part of the "in" crowd.. i was viewed as weird and nerdish.. lol..
I like them all. That is why the show is so good.
If I had to choose, Sheldon is the star.
He is the one who won the most awards.
i took up cycing a couple of months ago just to get fitter and lose a bit of excess weight.. i bought a second-hand hybrid bike (weighs only slightly less than a truck) and fitted road tyres.
four or five times a week i will go for a ride after work for an hour or so.
i am fortunate enough to live in rural north england surrounded by limitless quiet roads.
For the middle 25 years of my work life I rode my bike to work evryday. 7.5 miles round trip.
Some days I would run.
I carried glasses for the bugs. They could be blinding. Sometimes the bugs still got in my eyes with glasses on.
When I rode to work. I would go down side streets through a trailer park and on the sidewalk of the major road.
I don't consider myself a cyclist but I do ride a lot. I ride my bike to 2 soccer games a month to watch the Tampa Bay Rowdies.
I live in Pinellas County Florida and they have converted abandoned train routes, tracks into trails from the north to the south of the
county. The part of Florida I live in is very cyclist friendly.
for me, that happy day was in morro bay, calif. it was the fall, oct 1958 or 9. gorgeous weather.
the sun was shining and the wind was coming off of the ocean.. at that time, morro bay was unassigned territory.. talesin on another thread was talking about a lovely day she had, going with her grandfather, talking with a mr languages.
lol.
I never liked it.
we found some people who were happy to welcome us into their homes, even offering us food and drink.. sometimes, they would flag us down and ask for the magazines, walk miles to the kh meetings, come to our defense if someone got ugly or rude.. now, jw's are either routinely ignored or outright vilified.. no one respects them anymore.. sad.. .
Being a Jw was only fun when I was very young and knew no better. After about 5 or 6 years
of age it started getting old. The constant meetings and putting on a suit and sitting without
wiggling and being bored to death, and the bad music and worse singing.
All the tv shows, I missed and playing with the kids in the neighborhood after dinner,
because I had to go to meetings, I will never get back.
humankind has for centuries sought truth outside of themselves.
the soupmix of teaching ,ideas,philosophies and religious dogma had failed to see that the truth is within and if we seek ,knock and ask we find it within us.
the truth is that we are all light and pure love and that is buried deep within alll the layers upon layers which are being stripped away to reveal the true inner self .
Socrates about 350b.c taught that all real knowledge is already present within the person.
Only critical examination, question and aswer is needed to call it forth.
Socrates also said "The unexamined life is not worth living."
The Greeks killed him made him drink poison for making those truths known.
my friend's daughter, who was baptized at 14, has decided to leave the witnesses.
she's in her early 20's.
she's stopped going to meeting a while ago and moved in with her father who is disfellowshipped.
Wow.
In my opinion, the first mistake was signing for a registered letter.
I never signed for registered mail. I told my wife and son that and all my family.
A registered letter is the first page in a legal proceeding.
Curriosity killed the cat.
When I left, I didn't answer the phone or the door and I didn't even talk to the friends at the grocery store.
What good ever comes from a registered letter?
If you win the lottery you have a ticket.
If someone is trying to contact you with no malice they will send you a regular letter.
I even found out about lost investment moneys and bank funds by regular mail.
It sounds like the JW's are playing hard ball nowadays with the disfelloshipping.
