The age gap is definitely cause for concern. Definitely mention to the parents, and suggest that the young lady should have a friend with her when the 25-year-old is present. It may be innocent *at this point in time*, but a 16-year-old is still at an impressionable / vulnerable age to be given exclusive attention by a 25-year-old, and someone should speak to the young man about having someone present to ensure that everything is above board and safe for both of them. The 16-year-old's parents can ask the police to do a background check on him too. Who knows, the police may have a chat with him about the law and the kind of trouble he can find himself in if he doesn't back off.
Posts by Scully
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26Age Appropriate Friends
by Riley inwe have a 25 year guy in our hall who is also a pioneer (which means he lives off his parents money), who likes to spend a lot of time with a 16 year old girl in the hall.
it is usually in a group setting but he seems to gravitate toward her.
he even has her auxilary pioneering , which is something i don't think any student trying to make the grades needs.
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38
Canada exploring changes to tax rules that exempt religious organizations
by Scully inhttps://www.christianpost.com/news/evangelicals-oppose-removal-of-tax-status-in-canadian-proposal.html.
the proposed change will revoke charitable status of canadian churches who have an anti-abortion position, and will not give tax exemptions to organizations whose sole claim is to promote religion, which is the basic claim for all jw related entities in canada.
this will be interesting!.
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Scully
https://www.christianpost.com/news/evangelicals-oppose-removal-of-tax-status-in-canadian-proposal.html
The proposed change will revoke charitable status of Canadian churches who have an anti-abortion position, and will not give tax exemptions to organizations whose sole claim is to promote religion, which is the basic claim for all JW related entities in Canada.
This will be interesting!
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17
Rethinking WT Charity Status in Canada.
by Vanderhoven7 inrethinking wt charity status in canada.. .
https://avoidjw.org/news/canada-rethinking-charity-status-project-straight-arrow/ .
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Scully
The CRA has public records of JW congregations and other entities, and having just checked the website, there are over 700 JW entities with revoked charitable status (either voluntary, failure to file, audited, annulled, or "other") out of almost 1900 listed.
22 were "failure to file" a tax return; these span decades from the 1980s until 2022.
The remainder of revocations were deemed "voluntary", spanning 1995 until September 2024. Some reasons for a voluntary revocation would include such things as amalgamation or dissolution of individual charitable entities.
If you look at individual JW "charities", you can see the "qualified donees" (recipients of donations) - the one I looked at had ONLY $426 going to Georgetown (I initially typed "Gorgetown", which seemed apt) and a second recipient (a local Congregation™) received $5321 for the fiscal year September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2023.
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Pidgin English
by markweatherill inhttps://www.jw.org/hwc.
i just discovered this translation into 'hawai'i pidgin' and for some reason found it very amusing.
they even dubbed the caleb and sophia cartoons into this dialect.. not because i look down on pidgin speakers in any way, more about the way translations like this are revealing and telling in unintended ways..
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39
I've done it: Christmas Lights Outside
by StephaneLaliberte inlets see if that causes a problem.
i've been inactive for a very long time now (like 10+ years), so, i don't expect to hear anything from it, but my parents are worried i'll get df.
lets see what happens.
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Scully
Rattigan wrote:
Romans 6:16 Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living."
If you read a little further in Romans 14:5 - 12 Paul says: "5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. 6 Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord 's. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. 10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11 for it is written, "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God". 12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God."
In other words, it's none of your damn business. Stop judging people who have made up their minds to do things differently from you. God doesn't seem to give a rat's ass, as long as we're convinced in our own minds.
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39
I've done it: Christmas Lights Outside
by StephaneLaliberte inlets see if that causes a problem.
i've been inactive for a very long time now (like 10+ years), so, i don't expect to hear anything from it, but my parents are worried i'll get df.
lets see what happens.
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Scully
Hey Stephane
Glad you took the leap, and hope nobody bothers you about it. Honestly, they did us a favour when they announced that my (now) ex was No Longer One Of Jehovah's Witnesses™ because it freed us from the fear of being shunned. I honestly don't care if a JW shuns me, in fact I welcome it. My JW relatives have been fine, once they realized we were not going to try to change their minds about the JWs, and besides my parent sometimes needs help or just wants to keep in touch. JW stuff is a no-fly zone, I won't discuss anything related to it, *unless* they initiate the discussion. I keep it short and to the point, and then change the subject. They are beginning to realize that it becomes difficult to split hairs, so to speak, by including never-baptized non-believing siblings and excluding Inactive™ ones. Especially when they get 'forgotten' by their so-called Brothers™ and Sisters™.
Enjoy your Christmas lights. Enjoy the season. Putting up or having extra lights during the darkest part of the year is normal. It crosses all cultures, and perhaps has always been a way to ward off depression that tends to increase as the days have more darkness than light.
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20
I need to vent sorry!
by KerryKing ini couldn't get back to sleep last night, something my father said a few weeks ago popped into my head.. we were talking about obtaining citizenship, he doesn't need it, but was contemplating what benefits it could get him now he's a pensioner.. background : i've been disfellowhipped for 15 years, i was born in, he is an elder, very much pimi, he was also born in.. i said to him how citizenship would be difficult for him as it would require him to swear allegiance to the state?.
oh he said, thats just a crowd of people together in a big room for the swearing in event, it would be easy to just mumble or say nothing, nobody would know.. this has quietly been eating away in my mind, why did it bother me?.
last night it hit me, when i was in my first year of school, age 5, i came out of school one day with a balloon with two little pencils attached, a gift from a classmate who's birthday it was, every child got one.
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Scully
What the WTS is doing is "straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel". They are fixated on miniscule details that should be personal decisions and ignore the more important principles. Citizenship affords someone a legal status that landed immigrants do not enjoy in the country of residence. Just being able to travel outside the country of residence was something that my grandparents couldn't do because they didn't get citizenship in the country they emigrated to. We knew plenty of JWs who had come from various parts of the world in the post WW2 era who became citizens, and then all of a sudden they're the ones trying to tell one of my parents that they couldn't get citizenship? Hogwash. If it's good enough for them (and allows them to vacation in the Caribbean, while they expect my family to suffer through winters in Canada) it should be okay for us too.
If there's one thing I can't abide, it's hypocrisy. Just mind your own d@mn business. Nobody is breaking any laws here.
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Discouraging JWs From Calling
by NotFormer ini was reading an anti cult reddit post where a woman (ex mormon) was trying her hardest to discourage the mormons from visiting her and trying to convert her back.
a few others chimed in about their various methods (coming to the door naked, pretending to be practicing black magic, etc.
) which they claimed would have the mormons and jws running away as fast as possible.. somehow, i doubt it.
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Scully
@NotFormer
Yeah, remember that this was in the early 70's, there weren't the kind of reporting mechanisms that there are now. And, I imagine that what he did in his own home was his business, and the school/school board couldn't do much about his behaviour toward uninvited and unwelcome people at his front door. Kids had way too much 'respect for elders' even when it was not warranted. Everyone wanted to believe that other parents were good people, and pretty much everyone had close encounters with wooden spoons when they didn't behave at home.
Teachers got away with all kinds of abusive crap toward students. My grade 7 teacher hated me because my family was JW, and whenever we had an assembly and the national anthem was played, I was usually allowed to stay outside the auditorium until it was finished, but on one occasion, the assembly started with an announcement and I was in the auditorium. Before I knew it the anthem was being played and I had been told to remain seated if everyone else was standing and singing. This particular teacher came behind me and grabbed me by the hair and forced me to my feet, and held me standing until it was over, but in the meantime some of my classmates saw what was happening and (in solidarity?) some of them sat down, knowing that she couldn't yank them to their feet by their hair like she was doing to me.
All that did to me was reinforce the Persecution Complex™ that the WTS had predicted would happen to Jesus' True Followers™
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18
Discouraging JWs From Calling
by NotFormer ini was reading an anti cult reddit post where a woman (ex mormon) was trying her hardest to discourage the mormons from visiting her and trying to convert her back.
a few others chimed in about their various methods (coming to the door naked, pretending to be practicing black magic, etc.
) which they claimed would have the mormons and jws running away as fast as possible.. somehow, i doubt it.
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Scully
My first presentation in Field Service™. I was around 10 years old, my partner was the daughter of the couple who Studied With™ my parents. A man came to the door, and yelled at me that if I ever showed up at his door again, he would get his gun and shoot me. I was terrified.
About 5 or 6 years later, I was in high school, first day of 9th grade. I went to the assigned classroom and after everyone was sitting at their desks, the teacher strolled in. It was the very same guy. Thankfully he didn't recognize me (or so I thought), but I was on my best behaviour in that class, barely spoke because I didn't want him to recognize my voice.
At the end of the school year, he approached me and asked me to babysit his kids, and I politely declined, saying that I lived too far away. He said something about thinking I lived in his neighbourhood, and that's when I realized that he remembered me, and I'd just confirmed to him that he was correct. I was even more terrified of him after that, but because I'd planned on taking the next level of the class he taught, I couldn't say anything. I just plugged away and got good grades in that class so he couldn't criticize my work.
He died a couple of years ago and it was announced on my high school's FB page, and a long forgotten burden came to mind, and then was gone. I'd outlived the bastard.
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Historian and former JW Jim Penton dies
by slimboyfat ini don’t know a lot about james penton but i think he deserves a better thread than the one currently on offer.
james penton, who died recently, grew up in a jw family in canada and served as an elder.
unusually for a jw, he studied liberal arts at university and became a history professor.
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Scully
I had the pleasure of welcoming him as a guest in my home for several days in the late 1990s. He was so knowledgeable about JW history and the shenanigans of Rutherford and others at HQ. I think he was a tad disappointed that I realized that I was atheist, but he never criticized me for not being "Christian".
He leaves behind a great legacy of shared knowledge of JWs, the Organization™ and its history.