Some things change and some things don’t but time heals and we all move on. Going back ten years when I first left the Watchtower, went through a divorce and started a relationship with someone who I’d later marry I went through a really strained period with my parents and some of my family. When I married, no one from my family attended our wedding.
Things have healed and some things are no longer discussed, just accepted. My parents, in their 70s now, remain JW’s and although they associate fairly regularly their beliefs contradict official instruction and I have a better relationship now than I have had for many, many years.
All but one of my siblings has left the WTS; we have all done the ‘fade.’ In 2004, Mrs Thirdson, my son and I traveled to attend a family wedding. It was a nephew’s wedding and for the first time in close to 20 years all we siblings met up. My parents didn’t attend. We did see my parents during our two week trip but we lodged on a farm a few miles away.
My parent’s once large Witness family no longer exists, and 11 grandchildren have either left the religion or have never been brought up in a JW family. They have never expressed their feelings to me so I don’t know how mom and dad feel about their 16 descendants that have no hope of surviving their god’s Armageddon. However, in my heart I don’t think they really believe that God is going to kill their beautiful two year old granddaughter any time soon. They may keep their Witness association but their continued contact with their ‘apostate’ children shows they care less about official WTS policy.
I would not say I have a ‘close’ family, though I have more contact now than I have had in a long time. Skype video calls help. I don’t think my parents will ever leave the WTS and the next complete family gathering will likely be a funeral in a Kingdom Hall. It’s not the best outcome, but it’s better than many people’s family experience after leaving the ‘Tower.’ Perhaps this offers some hope to those of you who have experienced similar strained family relations.
Thirdson
JoinedPosts by Thirdson
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Time and a new Granddaughter Heals
by Thirdson insome things change and some things dont but time heals and we all move on.
going back ten years when i first left the watchtower, went through a divorce and started a relationship with someone who id later marry i went through a really strained period with my parents and some of my family.
when i married, no one from my family attended our wedding.
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Thirdson
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Few new Elders?
by Thirdson inhere's something i found interesting after researching the uk charity records from gill's thread "trouble in paradise.
" the trustees apear to be the body of elders.
most congregations that i knew had 5 to 7 names listed, some more than 10. when i checked the 8 congregations i had known growing up i knew most of the elder's names.
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Thirdson
Here's something I found interesting after researching the UK Charity records from Gill's thread "trouble in Paradise." The trustees apear to be the body of elders. Most congregations that I knew had 5 to 7 names listed, some more than 10. When I checked the 8 congregations I had known growing up I knew most of the elder's names. In fact there hasn't been much of a change in 30 years. In one congregation I knew 4 of the 5 elders from 20 years and they must all be in 70s. The only other one was a guy I knew growing up, he's about 5 years younger than me. The other new elders I saw were all men of the 'window washing business' calibre or worse. There were names missing but I know some of these are deceased. Hardly anything has changed at that lexel since the mid-80s, not much progress and hardly anyone promoted. 3rd. PS the one name I know was the father of several kids I went to school with. None of them stayed JWs and I know they were shocked to find out I had quit. Well, back in the 80s the Dad was made a MS. We used to be in hysterics if he had the announcements part of the Service Meeting and had to read a letter from the WTS. He was not a great reader and when he came to words he couldn't read he'd rush through it sounding like the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show. I couldn't sit anywhere near my sister or we'd crack up.
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Trouble in Paradise??
by Gill ini was having a look at the accounts of three local congs as i had heard a bit about the borg beginning to run low on cash as donations are falling.
locally, i was very surprised to see the cash flow problems of these congregations.
i had a look at other areas and saw that there were a minority making a small 'profit', a lot breaking even when it comes to contributions and a fair amount that are losing the plot financially.. congregation 1. accounts for 2005/06 income was short 19,000, yes, their expenditure was that much over their income.. congregation 2. accounts for 2005/06 income was short 11,000.. congregation3.
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Thirdson
Here's another oddity from one Birmingham cong'
Financial Year Start Financial Year End Gross Income Total Expenditure 01 Apr 1999 31 Mar 2000 £8,467 £4,149 01 Apr 2000 31 Mar 2001 £4,052 £3,087 01 Apr 2001 31 Mar 2002 £4,117 £4,394 01 Apr 2002 31 Mar 2003 £3,316 £2,581 01 Apr 2003 31 Mar 2004 £6,265 £17,032 01 Apr 2004 31 Mar 2005 £3,939 £372 01 Apr 2005 31 Mar 2006 £3,497 £4,801 How in FY05 did their total expenditure amount to 372 GBP? That wouldn't cover the electricity bill for the year? They had 10x the income for their expenditure that year. It doesn't seem that they do much in the way of Human Resources for Volunteers/Staff, Buildings and counseling.
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Trouble in Paradise??
by Gill ini was having a look at the accounts of three local congs as i had heard a bit about the borg beginning to run low on cash as donations are falling.
locally, i was very surprised to see the cash flow problems of these congregations.
i had a look at other areas and saw that there were a minority making a small 'profit', a lot breaking even when it comes to contributions and a fair amount that are losing the plot financially.. congregation 1. accounts for 2005/06 income was short 19,000, yes, their expenditure was that much over their income.. congregation 2. accounts for 2005/06 income was short 11,000.. congregation3.
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Thirdson
Financial Year Start Financial Year End Gross Income Total Expenditure 01 Apr 1999 31 Mar 2000 £4,655 £3,477 01 Apr 2000 31 Mar 2001 £7,442 £28,283 01 Apr 2001 31 Mar 2002 £7,800 £6,816 01 Apr 2002 31 Mar 2003 £9,695 £7,800 01 Apr 2003 31 Mar 2004 £6,183 £2,929 01 Apr 2004 31 Mar 2005 £19,462 £22,718 01 Apr 2005 31 Mar 2006 £3,433 £22,456 That doesn't look good. I reveiwed 5 congregations in my old area that I know well. I recognized about 90% of the trustee names. This was typical, how do they make up the shortfall? From their savings accounts?
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Sharing Your new light with your Parents
by pratt1 inevery so often i get to share some of my thooughts about the borg and my new found beliefs with my mom , who is a die hard pioneer for over 20 years.. we actually have had decent conversations about doctrines and interpertations of the scriptures, and she has admitted that at times the borg may have misapplied certain scriptures over the years.. her excuse is that imperfect men sometimes make mistakes and jehovah makes allowances for this.. but what really gets her upset is when i bring up certain aspects of my childhood, that because of her belief in the borg, she made some unwise decisions for not only me be her family.. me getting baptized at 13, her not being fully supportive of higher education, cutting off family members, pushing me into an early marriage when i was clearly not ready, teaching me that all "worldly people', including my father woiuld die at armageddon, these are just a few examples that when we discuss them, she becomes extremely angry and then accuses me of making her out to be a bad mother.. i got me thinking, do you think that many dubs refuse to acknowledge the problems with their religion because it would mean that they made some really bad decsions in their and their families lives.. are they afraid to accept the responsiblity for this because of the guilt they would suffer?.
what are your thoughts?
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Thirdson
I don't discuss religion that much with my parents anymore. However, I have raised the issue of the lack of further education for most of my siblings because of the doctrines of the Watchtower and the supposed nearness of the end. Fortunately, most have done well in life and even my only JW brother is a licensed teacher. I have raised the fact that Firstson declined the opportunity to become a medical doctor on the basis that the end was only weeks or months away. He could retire in just a few years now. My parent can't counter my criticism and I have dropped the subject now. At least my JW parents don't criticize their non-JW grandchildren, (including my son) who are at university now. 3rd
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Working in IT
by Chameleon inhello.
if you work in it, what exactly do you do, and did you go to school for it?
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Thirdson
I trained and worked in Engineering fields for several years after college. I wrote an RPG program when I was 18 (circa 1978) and dabbled in BASIC and C at home. Part of one of my jobs was programming process controllers. 15 years ago I retrained as a programmer and went on to work in software development and ERP implementation for a Software company. This was all AS400/iSeries and RPG IV and ILE stuff. I am now back working for a manufacturing company managing software development in the Supply Chain area. I still code but now work mainly in PL/SQL. 3rd
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Our 20 Employee Company is going ERP
by Nosferatu inman, this is going to suck.
i really don't see why a company of less than 50 employees needs a big fvvving system to handle the way everything flows.
i could fix it all by eliminating one employee who buggers everything up within the company.. i know the wts uses an erp system, but they have more than 20 people working for them.. what are your experiences with erp?.
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Thirdson
ERP Systems are notoriously difficult to implement without huge costs, typically run over budget and time. I have worked in software development and been on implementations that were quite disasterous.
That said, we (I was one of the tech leads) recently implemented a sytem in 11 months that covered all of ERP, CRM and Service Management and totally replaced our previous system. It was done on time and under budget. My company is about 1200 employees and we employed 50 full and part time employees on the implementation. We support the system in 3 manufacturing centers and 7 countries with a team of 10 developers and 4 business analysts. We manufacture and ship international, run paperless warehouses, interface with carriers, do electronic banking. We use electronic trade, automatically prepare customs documents, drop ship anywhere in the world and take orders up to 7:00 PM at night and still guarantee same day shippimg. We could not run the business without extremely sophisticated ERP.
Whatever you do, talk and go visit other companies who have implemented the same software as you are considering. Ask them what went well and what went wrong. Find out what they'd do differently today. Any software vendor will give you a list of reference accounts and most companies will be willing share their experiences.
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Take the Quiz - Which Star Trek Character Are You?
by Alleymom inmy family's been having a lot of fun with this!
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http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/startrek.
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Thirdson
Mr. Scott 85% Geordi LaForge 80% Spock 65% Will Riker 65% Chekov 60% Deanna Troi 60% Beverly Crusher 55% Data 46% James T. Kirk (Captain) 45% Uhura 45% Jean-Luc Picard 45% Worf 45% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 40% Mr. Sulu 30% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 30% I guess it was the thick accent and scotch drinking that swung it for me.
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kn37 - 50 bible studies
by Zico inat the service meeting tonight the service overseer announced that the british bethel had received 50 requests for bible studies since the campaign.
this surprised me, though i suppose it's not really a huge amount, i wouldn't have expected that many.
also, our cong has run out of tracts, and we're only half way through the campaign, with lots of territory still to cover.
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Thirdson
49 were requests from ex-JWs who want a visit so that they can play with the unsuspecting dub. The other one was from some crazy guy.
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Have you ever had an encounter with a UFO?
by free2beme inwhen i was about 16 years old, a group of us friends would go hiking a lot on the weekend.
we would rough it to some degree, just a sleeping back and sleeping under the stars.
one night, while hiking into a lake in northern california, we all were sleeping in a clearing just out of legal distance from a small mountain lake we liked to fish in.
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Thirdson
No, not me, but my brother has...and it happened in England not the USA. A UK "UFO Expert" related an incident on a Discovery channel program that sounded just like my brother's account (he was interviewed by some "expert'). My brother's wife also saw a ghost in the same house he witnessed the UFO from.
Me? I'm just a sceptic.
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