first time poster here and i was just wondering if anyone on here is from ancaster or oakville, ontario?.
just sick and tired of the double-standard with the so-called witnesses from these areas.
unless you drive a benz, bmw or audi you are nothing.
It's not recommended to name names of R&F JWs, and moderators will generally edit out names posted when it's noticed. On the other hand COs and DOs, because of their WTS rep status, if the individual poster chooses to identify them by name, we'll generally leave it as is.
Welcome to the forum. I'm not from Ancaster or Oakville, but I do live in Ontario.
facebook has been a valuable tool for finding old friends and catching up on years lost making a living and pursuing our own visions of happiness.
in one of my less inspired moments i decided to look up an old witness friend and roommate from my days in the church.
he had never impressed me as being particularly strong in the faith so i was truly interested to find out what he had been up to for nearly 30 years and if he was still "in".. i located him through his sister's fb page and sent a message to his account stating who i was and that i would be very interested in hearing from him and catching up.
Oh yes, it's happened to me too.
An old buddy who was raised in the JWs (never baptized though) found me a couple of years ago via FB. Eventually he suggested that I get in touch with his sister, who is my age, and who he described as virtually inactive with the JWs. I figured it would be safe given what he told me, so I sent a brief email to her offering some personal details of things in my life, and asked her if she would be interested in catching up.
Her email in reply was pretty terse. Her objective was to find out whether I was "active" or not.
I responded that I wasn't, but that I had no ulterior motive such as getting her to leave the JWs, and just was interested in how she was doing.
Her next email was quite disturbing, accusing me of trying to "down the truth", and that she wanted no further contact with me.
She did however use my email address to find me on FB and then "friend" all of our mutual non-JW friends from school. I didn't care for her using me like that, so I blocked her pathetic JW ass.
when i was studying in the truth book i laid aside quite a few questions, feeling that i was learning something important, and that those "nagging questions" would be answered in due course.
most of those questions have gone unanswered because i was led along, like a stupid pig with a ring in his nose, by other pseudo-questions of, really, non-importance.
i've had problems with conforming, if that is the word, with "correct speak" in the organization, and it has been apparant to most of the people i've known over the years.
In my indoctrination, I allowed unanswered issues to go by as though they didn't count,
That, my friend, is part and parcel of the indoctrination process. Recruiters are taught to waffle about on those kinds of questions, or promise that "we'll get to that in a couple of weeks' time" and re-route you back to the study material.
Studying books by rote the way the WTS does it is a subtle way of ignoring a person's nagging doubts, while still drawing them deeper into the belief system, and getting them to invest more and more time and suspended judgment at the same time.
It isn't your fault - it was all part of the design of the recruitment process.
during sunday's program of the dc..."donations" came up and there was mention of using "debit and credit cards" wow!....
so i started thinking... we have an assembly hall in our town?
10 mins from where we have our conventions.
Vamp
the operative words are "scope out" - I agree that awkward intros at conventions don't usually turn into anything of substance right away - but sometimes it does develop into something more later on.
Mr Scully and I are living proof of that.
during sunday's program of the dc..."donations" came up and there was mention of using "debit and credit cards" wow!....
so i started thinking... we have an assembly hall in our town?
10 mins from where we have our conventions.
It also helps some of the single people scope out other congregations' gene pools for suitable mates.
NRFG
Sometimes married people are the loneliest people out there.
Before Mr Scully and I left the JWs, we had moved several times, and changed congregations several times due to the moves.
There were maybe 3 couples / families with whom we stayed in touch once we made our big move from the eastern coast of Canada to Ontario. And despite the Worldwide Brotherhood™ myth that pervades the WTS, it still takes time and effort to cultivate real friendships.
The people who glommed onto us right away when we showed up at the KH were usually the ones sizing us up as to whether we were Good Association™ or not, and who took it upon themselves to spread the word regarding what intel they'd gathered on us over a casual lunch. I was still too naïve to realize that some JWs were snakes in sheep's clothing.
Even so, when you leave the JWs, those "friendships" evaporate into thin air - a sure sign that the friendships weren't genuine to begin with. Even if you try to maintain the friendship, without criticizing the Organization™, just becoming busy with life, they won't have time for you anymore, even if you thought of them as your best friends.
Just the other day, I was putting my groceries in my car, when a JW woman who was a close "associate" (I can't really call her a friend) walked right past me - our eyes met, so I knew that she knew who I was - but we didn't exchange "hellos" or anything like we once did. If she had been a real friend, she would have acted like those years apart were just that, and been happy to see me. But instead she snubbed me, so I snubbed her right back. And I don't feel bad about it.
Developing friendships is a process. Try to find some interests that you share, and even some that you don't, activities you can do together with a group. I've made some nice friends at nearby cooking classes (Mr Scully doesn't come along, but he likes it when I try the recipes). We were going to the gym together for a few months and met some folks there too - now he goes to the guys' classes and I go to the ladies' classes. We go for walks and say hello to our neighbours, and when we see them going out for walks, they say hello to us too.
There are probably lots of activities and clubs you can try to see if you can meet some other people with similar interests. Give it a try... you've got nothing to lose!
all of us who have any ties to the jws know that they have their own vernacular, their own slang.
sure, there are formal titles that we can't really get away from: pioneer, ministerial servant, elder, ______ overseer, governing body, the (watchtower) society, etc.
but there are plenty of other bits of parlance they use that i can do without.... for example:.
I disagree with this one, Vamp:
Experience: Way different usage than is common in non JW circles. Better to use the word Reenactment...
I'm thinking the better word to use is Fabrication.
dm6
count me in with wasanelderonce - I spent over a quarter of a century listening to JWs religious bull$h!t, so I recognize the false humility of televangelists instantly.
Not interested in the gigilo for jesus. *slams door shut*
i'd love to know what you guys think of this.
brother jackson (from the governing body) had this "neat" analogy at the very end of the convention.
he said; "what if you were watching a football game on tv, and it was the trojans against the fighting irish, and it's been a good game.
Considering that the WTS started the football game in 1874, with goalposts being moved from 1914 to 1925 to 1935 to 1975, it might as well be light-years away with the current overlapping generation teaching.
They can do whatever the f*** they want with the goalposts, while still saying "It's closer than you think! RUN, IDIOT, RUN!!!"
Well at least Jackson was honest about his opinion of the R&F. I'll give him props for that, even if it's totally rude.
