i am so sick of being bothered by jws(we are inactive);every weekend we can count on someone from the hall stopping by either saturday or sunday.
it makes me mad because i know they are counting time with me.
a sister from the hall just called to see what is wrong, why we haven't been to meetings.
It seems that you have really only two choices:
1. Disappear
2. Disassociate
I chose to disappear which I realize is not always convenient. I got tired of people coming around and asking me if I'd "given up" or "wanted to die at Armaggeddon." I got tired of elders knocking on my door at 7 AM or 9 PM. So I moved away and told no one. That's the end of that.
while i have you on the phone, elder c and i want to come by on a shepherding visit with you and your family.
brother amazing, we just want to visit with you and your family anyway.
the jc with brother k was over.
VM44, were you in the La Jolla Congregation? I was. I left the JW's just a couple of years ahead of Leonard and Marjorie. It's seems funny to me that although we were thinking the same things at the same time, JW paranoia stopped us from talking about it!
well, it's finally over.
last saturday i talked with an elder about how i feel about the wt.
we talked for about 3 hours.
I didn't commit adultery, kill someone or rob a bank.
Those aren't sins, only questioning the divinely inspired word of the WT is a sin.
can you remmember any of the things you got up to or happened to you when you were a child growing up in the "truth"?.
i remmeber once in a meeting throwing up all over an elderly sister.. also i remmeber the time when we were playing out side and there was this kid most of us didn't like, and a wall that had a very rought surface to it.boy and wall meet , blood goes every ware, parents run outside and panic.. the rest of us laught.. how about the rules you had to follow?.
me and my brother were banned from drawing while the meeting was on.. that probably because we used to draw over all the walls.. also i remmember my dad smaking us before we went to the meeting , just incase we did something wrong.. yes it was different being a watchtower kid.
I remember waking up on Saturday morning and lying very still and quietly waiting to hear if my parents were getting up to go out in magazine sales work. If they were, I tried very hard to fake sleep so that maybe they would leave me alone and not force me to go out and sell magazines. The best mornings were when they decided not to go selling and we had pancakes for breakfast and I got to watch cartoons.
changed the lives of everyone in this country, including members of the bethel family, who had to see that [and] were traumatized.. .
now we have been studying the bible for years and been preaching the good news of the kingdom and we have also been aware of developments that god's people have been notified through the pages of the watchtower and the awake!
there are five developments, friends, that we're going to talk about, but i'd like to talk about the first one that we should expect to see.. .
No new light in this talk...
The world is going to end any day now for the last 160 years.
[QUOTE]But he is going to make our Christian neutrality, our allegiance to Jehovah's kingdom, yes, even our innocent Christian way of life appear to be a threat to the public welfare.[/UNQUOTE]
Translation: You may see a bad show on NBC Dateline!
i thought it might be a good idea to find out at what age or after how long we descided to leave the watchtower.. prehaps we my find a patern in it which we could use .. i think what we need to know are ,.
1.age you left the watchtower.
(or age you found out it was wrong).
1. Left at 26
2. Baptized at 15
3. Raised a dub (parents converted when I was 2)
part 10: the last co visit & demise of elder a. .
the phone rings its elder a: brother amazing, the co is visiting, and will be out on shepherding calls.
when we left the room, elder a walked up and asked what our meeting was about.
Our Library doubled as a Second School and a room where parents could take their crying babies and fussy children during the meeting. So, it not only was sound proof to outsiders, but had a large heavy glass window so that anyone in the room could see the platform. It had curtains to draw for certain private meetings.
This made me laugh as I remember that this sort of room was "standard equipment" at the KH.
Amazing, I must tell you that I am enjoying your series so much that for the second straight day I have gone to a nearby public library during lunch to read your post! Thank you for posting in the morning (California time that is!)
part 9: the summer of love jw style .
a moment of reflection: looking back my family and me had come a long way.
there was much more to do, but i could taste sweet victory just ahead, just around the corner.
Amazing,
I really want to thank you for this series. I think it helps so many to know what others have gone through. When I exited in 1980 I thought that I was the only one who thought the way I did about the "truth." Little did I know that an elder and his wife in my own congregation were going through the same thing. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to about it. But we had no "safe" way of communicating. I've always thought that my life as a JW was like living under Stalin. Just like modern communication played a major role in the death of communism, the internet is playing a role in loosening the stranglehold of the WT faith on the lives of so many.
i finally got "the call".
brother so-and-so, wanting to come by and give our family a shepherding call.
neither my husband or i want to be "herded" at this time.. here's my story.
Invent a personal problem, perhaps something medical or psychological which they won't be able to solve by increased meeting attendance and participation in literature sales work. This worked for me. I was "lucky" enough to be going through a divorce and this was my excuse for everything!
how many of you agree with amazing that ray franz "handed you the key" and that "his writings became the gate to ...liberty?".
m
I knew by 1976 that I no longer believed, but it took me until 1980 to unattach myself and disappear. What I appreciate most about reading Ray's books is that they removed all lingering doubt that the JW's weren't "God's Organization."
