I think that this is how it goes: The average JW should be helped by the loval congrefation.. IF the whole congreagation is in critical need then they get help from the surrounding congregations. If the whole area can't possible send relief, then it's up to the branch what measures they should take. And they often do help.
Joker10
JoinedPosts by Joker10
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6
Do Third World JWs Starve Too?
by Undecided inof all the experiences in the wt.
or aw.
have any of you read about any jws starving like the normal population in the undeveloped countries?
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"When All Other Religions Are Destroyed, Then, They'll Come After Us"
by minimus indo you recall this being said, over and over again?
we, as witnesses, will look like we're on the brink of extinction, and all of a sudden, jehovah will protect his people, like his eyeball.
is this crazy or what??
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Joker10
No Hamas. It does not tell us who will attack them. I will try to look for the "Pay Attention to Daniel's Prophecy" book more. I know it talks about this n the last chapters of the book. It also tells us that the King of the North likes weapons and also uses terrorism to scare people.
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"When All Other Religions Are Destroyed, Then, They'll Come After Us"
by minimus indo you recall this being said, over and over again?
we, as witnesses, will look like we're on the brink of extinction, and all of a sudden, jehovah will protect his people, like his eyeball.
is this crazy or what??
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Joker10
I dont think WT has chenged, Hamas. The latest WT books explains all of this and how it will occur.
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97
MY SWAN SONG
by northern girl inabout seven weeks ago i posted here for the first time.
in that post i said i'd like to be reinstated but felt it likely wouldn't happen because the shunning was too much for me.
well, my prayers have been answered and i am reinstated.
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Joker10
Congrats
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16
Cross religion mariage
by 2k ini have a friend who recently married a witness.
he isn't a witness, and this is causing some issues with the family.
i'm curious what is cosidered the appropriate way that the families should deal with the issue.
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Joker10
She must be a very spiritual weak JW to marry outside the faith.
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Los Angeles Ex JW Picnic!
by Brymichmom injust wanted to remind all of you that we have a picnic scheduled for saturday, august 30th from 11:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. we will be barbecuing between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. we hope to see as many of you there as possible.
the location will be at wilderness park in downey (southeast los angeles county) which is on florence avenue and the 605 freeway.
oh, we have a ramada reserved for this occasion!
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Joker10
i live close. How many attend the gatherings?
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Why Do JWs Only Preach In Poor/Middle Class Neighborhoods?
by Latin assassin from Manhattan inas my name suggests, i'm from nyc.
i've lived in every borough of new york and spent time at most of the local congregations until i finally decided that it was all for nothing (my recent posts on this forum explain why).
during this time, i noticed an interesting pattern - the jws only preach in poor to middle class neighborhoods.
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Joker10
I'll soon post a topic about their income and education.
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USA JW statistics: Publishers up, Pioneeers down
by truthseeker init is evident that publishers are growing in the us branch, but pioneers have not kept pace.. consider the km reports from january this year:.
2002/03 service year (pubs include all pioneers).
sep - pubs: 971,346 pioneers: 88,341. oct - pubs: 972,450 pioneers: 91,101. nov - pubs: 973,067 pioneers: 89,083. dec - pubs: 895,241 pioneers: 90,654. jan - pubs: 986,419 pioneers: 89,325. feb - pubs: 983,963 pioneers: 89,251. mar - pubs: 1,003,431 pioneers: 87,878. apr - pubs: 991,499 pioneers: 87,377. may - pubs: 992,412 pioneers: 86,884. jun - pubs: 963,000 pioneers: 84,900. figures for jun are approximates as i only glanced at the sep km and do not have it yet.. but there is a clear indication that despite all the talks to do more and pioneer, and the aug km talk on.
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Joker10
thanks for the stats, TruthSeeker. It appears that the December figure is incorrect. The number of publishers reporting was of 1,004,736
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How the Jacksons are doing.
by Joker10 inla toya:
king: and says that he had many special young male friends -- the "vanity fair" article deals with other things too.
and you were raised as jehovah's witnesses?
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Joker10
La Toya:
No. KING: And says that he had many special young male friends -- the "Vanity Fair" article deals with other things too. And you were raised as Jehovah's witnesses? Do you still have that faith?
L. JACKSON: I believe in a lot of the faith, but I am not a Jehovah Witness today. No. There are certain things I agree with and certain things I don't. KING: OK, what is your faith? Do you believe?
L. JACKSON: I believe in God. I'm very spiritual. I'm a spiritual person. I think being spiritual doesn't mean that you have to go to church every Sunday or throughout the week as long as you have that connection with God. And that's what I have and to me that's the most important thing that we speak.
Michael :
(From CNN News)
CHUNG: Rabbi Boteach, you've known Michael Jackson for a while and you actually worked with him on projects that involved children. What did you find most disturbing about this interview? Because I think the general consensus is that there were many parts of it that were disturbing.
BOTEACH: I only saw a part of it.
And I was nauseated and sickened that a man of Michael's ability and God-given talent should have so -- should have become unglued on international TV. Michael's a profoundly private person. Why he submitted himself to this kind of invasion of his life is beyond me. I always used to say to him, when these requests first came in for this interview about two years ago, that: You'll never be more famous than you are. You're one of the three most recognizable names on the planet. What you need is credibility, as opposed to celebrity. Go to universities. Lecture to major bodies. If you want to be a true activist for children's rights, then you have to be taken seriously.
We gave a lecture at Oxford for that reason. We gave a lecture at Carnegie Hall. Michael Jackson is a man who has a profound spiritual core. He was a Jehovah's Witness. He used to witness, even after "Thriller" came out. He was the No. 1 star in the world. He would knock on doors and he would sell "The Watchtower" magazine.
When he severed himself from that spiritual life, he lost his anchor. And now we see him, sadly, as being totally adrift. And my heart breaks for a man who has a golden heart. He's a philanthropist. He's a profoundly good man. But no one can watch that interview and not see an idol that all of us had so many years, a guy who entertained us, who danced for us, who sang with us, and not be heartbroken that this is what it's coming to.
Janet:
EBONY: I've noticed that you often make references to God. How religious are you?
JANET: God is very important in my life. I didn't grow up in the church. I grew up a Jehovah's Witness, which truly is different. The first time I was in a church was when I actually got married to James (DeBarge) in Michigan (1984), and he took me to a church. And what an experience that was. I had never seen anything like it before. You know, seeing the people getting what you call the Holy Ghost. I had never, ever experienced any of that before. I grew up in a religious home. It's very important to me. If I were to have children, I would raise them with some sort of religious background. I don't necessarily at this point in my life believe in organized religion. It's more of a one-on-one relationship with God, talking to God and feeling Him and knowing that He is there and a part of me, a part of all of us. That is what has truly gotten me through these hard times, aside from my friends and family. It truly has been God and getting on my knees and not being afraid to do so.
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Mrs. Jackson doesn't shun Michael
by Joker10 ineverything you always wanted to know about michael, janet and latoya: mother of jackson family tells all.
(excerpt from katherine jackson's 'my family, the jacksons') (cover story) katherine jackson.
full text: copyright johnson publishing company inc. 1990. everything you always wanted to know about michael, janet and latoya.
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Joker10
Everything you always wanted to know about Michael, Janet and LaToya: mother of Jackson family tells all. (excerpt from Katherine Jackson's 'My Family, The Jacksons') (Cover Story) Katherine Jackson.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT Johnson Publishing Company Inc. 1990
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Michael, Janet and LaToya
LATOYA nude in Playboy?
I was shocked when I heard the rumor. My daughter may have been different from her eight brothers and sisters in some ways - she was the moodiest of my kids, for example - but in terms of her dress and manners, she'd been so conservative that she'd once dropped a friend who had begun wearing low-cut tops and skirts with slits in them. "She looks disgusting, like a hooker," LaToya remarked at the time. "I don't want any part of her."
But the longer I thought about the Playboy rumor, the more I feared that it was true. The LaToya I saw in early 1989 was not the LaToya I thought I knew.
I couldn't help but recall her 1988 engagement at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, when she danced for the first time ever in a sexy, suggestive way. Watching her from the audience, I was surprised and, I admit, a little taken aback.
"Jack told me that I had to change my image if I want to make it in the business," LaToya said when I questioned her about her new show.
"Jack" was Jack Gordon, her smooth-talking manager. Her transformation had begun at the same time that he entered her life in 1987 with an offer for her to host a music video show that he had in the works. At the time LaToya was a confirmed homebody and mama's girl...
She was the kind of little girl who a grandmother would love... When you'd clean her up, LaToya would sit on the couch like a little lady...
Janet by contrast, was a tomboy. By the age of 2 she had the nickname "squirrel" because she loved to climb on the furniture and on the boys' bunkbeds...
Janet had been on the plump side for years. Michael, who can be a merciless teaser, had nicknamed her "Dunk" - for donkey.
I had a hard time getting Janet to wear dresses to kindergarden; she always wanted to wear jeans. To this day, she dresses like a tomboy. She'll show up at the house in army boots, blue jeans with patches in them, an oversized T-shirt and her hair stuffed in a cap.
"Janet," I'll say, "wear some earrings or put on some lipstick. People are going to mistake you for a guy..."
[Jack] Gordon's music video show never materialized, but he remained on the scene, showering LaToya with flowers and gifts.
Gordon begged my husband, Joe, LaToya's manager, to allow him to co-manage her; he claimed that he had ideas for how to revitalize her stalled recording career. He kept pestering Joe until Joe finally asked LaToya, "Is this what you want?" She said it was, so her father agreed to share management responsibilities with Gordon.
The next thing I knew, Gordon had my homebody of a daughter traveling the world. No sooner would they return from business in Japan than she'd announce, "Oh, I have a photo shoot to do in Austria," and she and Gordon would be on the next flight out of Los Angeles. While a part of me was happy that she was getting out into the world at long last and meeting new people, her turnabout was so sudden and dramatic that it left me confused.
It wasn't until later, when I saw Jack Gordon for what he was ... that I understood his strategy in booking LaToya in far-flung corners of the globe. He was attempting to distance my naive, trusting daughter from her family, literally and figuratively, so that he could become the dominating influence in her life.
The public learned just how successful Gordon had been in tearing LaToya away from the family when, in March of 1988, People magazine reported that LaToya had moved to New York City with Gordon and cut her professional ties with Joe. "Jack's a salesman," LaToya was quoted as saying. "He throws a good pitch and he delivers. Anyway he's doing better than my father." Adding a sensational touch was Jack Gordon's own parting "pitch" to Joe: "I love Joe like poison."
Even though LaToya continued to talk to me almost daily on the telephone, our relationship deteriorated also. It seemed like LaToya had been taking lessons in the Big Lie from Gordon.
I had raised my children to always tell the truth, so I was disappointed in her for indignantly denying to me that she had decided to write a competing, "tell-all" book about the Jackson family, even after I heard that Gordon had taken her around from publisher to publisher in New York.
"No, mother, I'm not doing a book; I don't know how these rumors get started," she said again a few weeks later, after I learned that she had signed a book deal for more money that my son Michael had received for his autobiography, Moonwalk
This exchange was repeated several more times after I was informed of "ugly family secrets" that Jack Gordon had circulated, including the Biggest Lie of them all: that LaToya had been molested by Joe when she was 8 years old. When I confronted Gordon about this outrageous charge he claimed that Rebbie, not LaToya, had told him.
"That's not true!" Rebbie gasped when I checked with her. Michael was furious. "Mother," he exclaimed, "how can he lie like that!" The obvious answer: so Jack Gordon could create interest in LaToya's book, and make more money for himself.
LaToya never did admit to me that she was writing a book. I had to read about it in a newspaper in early 1989. "Michael's book is nice but very light," she was quoted as saying. "There will be a lot of things in my book that weren't in his."
LaToya denied to me that she had disrobed for a Playboy photographer as emphatically as she had denied that she was writing a book. I'm sad to say that, once again, I learned the truth from the media. In her interviews promoting her nude spread, LaToya defended her actions: "I have to live my life for LaToya and not for my family."
I was personally so embarrassed that there were moments when I said to myself, "I wish I was on another planet." I felt like cringing when I went out in public, afraid that someone would recognize me and ask me about LaToya.
Shortly after the Playboy issue with her face on the cover hit the newstands, LaToya appeared on "Donahue."
"My parents laid down certain rules, and one of those rules, of course, was you were not to leave home unless you were married," she claimed. She didn't mention the fact that our "rule" was never enforced, and that Michael Marlon, Randy and Janet had moved out before her as single people.
Needless to say, rescuing my daughter from Gordon had been the family's aim ever since she had moved to New York with him. But nothing I nor her brothers and sisters could say could persuade her to return home to us.
Mixed in with my rage at Jack Gordon was a feeling of guilt. "Maybe I sheltered my children too much," I've thought many times since, "and not educated them enough about the sharks out there waiting to take advantage of them...."
Even as the media was covering LaToya's rebellion, it was still feasting on rumors about Michael's private life, reports of Jackson "sibling jealousy" and tales about how Joe and I are alienated from most of our kids.
"What a sorry family these Jacksons have become," I imagine people are saying today. "They couldn't handle their rags-to-riches success." If I depended on the press for all of my information on my family, I'd come to the same conclusion.
But I'm able to see our story with a perspective that is lacking in an Entertainment Tonight sound bite, or an error-filled article in one of the tabloids.
For the record, Michael doesn't own and has never slept in a hyperbaric chamber. He lay down in one once, just to see what it felt like, during a visit to the Michael Jackson Burn Center. A photographer took his picture, and the picture got out.
As for the Elephant Man's bones, I have no idea whether or not [Frank] Dileo [Michael's former manager] made an attempt on Michael's behalf to buy them. If he did so, he did so in jest. And if by some miracle the London medical center that owns the bones agreed to sell them, Michael knows I wouldn't let him in the house with them.
The most tired rumor of all was the rumor that Michael was gay.
All I can say is, Michael is not gay. First of all, the Bible speaks against homosexuality, and he's very religious. Secondly, he intends to settle down and get married one day. We've talked about it. And he will.
I wish he did have that special someone to share his life with right now; his life would be richer. I think that, deep down, he does, too.
When Michael was younger he joked that "when the love bug bites me that's who I'm going to marry." By 1989 he was telling me, "When I marry a woman she's going to have a lot of money herself. That's the only way I'll know for sure that she's not marrying me for my money."
And yet, Michael seems happy. Even though he knows that he will never be able to live a "normal" life, he seems comfortable with his fame. I believe that when he's good and ready to get married, he'll do it, despite the inevitable press uproar.
While I firmly believe that a good marriage promotes happiness, the surest path to inner peace and fulfillment, I believe, is through religion. This is why I also wish that my children will draw closer to Jehovah.
I'm not worried about Rebbie. As she says, "The most important thing in my life is my relationship with the Creator, Jehovah God."
Dee Dee, Tito's wife, has also shown a strong interest in studying.
But Randy and Janet attend Kingdom Hall only occasionally, and Jermaine, Jackie, Tito and LaToya not at all, even though LaToya was baptized a Witness several years ago. Marlon and Carol attend a Catholic church.
Then there is Michael's unique situation: In 1987, he left the Jehovah's Witnesses.
There was strong opposition to his "Thriller" video on the part of some Witnesses. Perhaps the controversy figured into his decision to leave.
But I don't know that for a fact because I didn't talk to him about what he'd done. I couldn't. Witnesses do not discuss spiritual matters with a person who has disassociated himself from the Witnesses, including family members.
But I want to stress that, contrary to published reports, I was not required to "shun" my son. Our relationship is as loving today as it was when he was a Witness. I just can't ask him, "Why, Michael?"
Two more wishes:
I wish for a reunited Jacksons. I wish that Michael and Marlon would consider rejoining the group, if only on a part-time basis. For old-time's sake. For my sake.
And I dream of a reunited Jackson family.
As much as LaToya hurt the family ... I long for her reconciliation with us. The Jackson family is not whole without her.
PHOTO : At a family reunion in 1989, Katherine Jackson (seated center, yellow jacket) and her husband Joseph are surrounded by seven of their nine children, including Janet and Michael who flank their parents, and 11 of their grandchildren. Of the famous Jackson siblings, only Marlon and LaToya did not attend the reunion. LaToya (at right), whose nude spread in Playboy magazine and threats to write a tell-all book have shocked and disappointed her family, is estranged from her parents and siblings.
PHOTO : Jack Gordon (at left with LaToya) did more than take over LaToya's career when he became her manager, Katherine Jackson says. He moved LaToya far from her family "so he could become the dominating influence in her life," Mrs. Jackson says. Yet, she says her relationship with her two superstar children, Janet and Michael (below), is as warm and loving as ever. Still, she gently chides Janet for "dressing like a tomboy," and she wishes that Michael, a former Jehovah's Witness, would return to the faith