I'm sure the society wouldn't give anyone a thin dime if they weren't forced to, and could instead guilt them into moving there and supporting themselves. However, some countries will not allow people such as missionaries to come in and work unless they can prove they're getting an outside income. The government of an already poor country does not want westerners coming in to preach to them and taking up scarce jobs that could go to their own people.
asleif_dufansdottir
JoinedPosts by asleif_dufansdottir
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6
Is it true that JW Missionaries...
by dh in.
is it true that jw missionaries sign a legally binding contract with the wtbt society to say that they cannot work for pay, even casually, or own a business for the duration of their contact to the society.. i have a jw friend who's a missionary out in the middle of nowhere who told me so a while ago, wondered if anyone else knew anything?
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Holidays are a hard time for some...
by Billygoat ini really try hard every year to keep christmas in perspective.
the tree is lovely, the smells of good food are yummy, presents are great to give and receive, but i really try to remember that it is a time of celebration and family.
it is a time for me to celebrate the birth of my friend jesus christ.
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asleif_dufansdottir
(sigh) I know...
I do love the Christmas season, the lights and the music, but I really miss being a kid at grandma's house, helping her make the food...knowing that metric buttloads of presents were in the offing (well, they seemed like metric buttloads when I was little...even though we didn't have lots of money). I dreamt I was at grandma's house this morning...
I wish I could get back the Christmases of those years I wasted as a JW and didn't go to her house!!!
She's been gone for several years, and it's been a few decades since I was a kid...
This summer we moved 1500 miles away from both our families to go to grad school.
I take small comfort in the fact that I'm feeding people, which was always grandma's big thing at the holidays. I have several friends who are international students and not able to go home over semester break. Of course, almost none of them are Christians, so not being home for Christmas is not such a big deal, but not being home at all kinda is. They're coming over Christmas day and I'm fixing some of the food that grandma and I used to make.
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21
Wrapping Gifts
by Nosferatu infirst of all, i want to wish merry christmas to all those i haven't wished yet.
that means all of you!
there isn't a person i don't like on here.
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asleif_dufansdottir
ahhh, the advantages of growing up in the world...
I'm not Martha Stewart, or anything, but I do OK.
My grandma, on the other hand...grandma always used lots of scotch tape (I could make a joke about using lots of scotch, but she never drank a bit of liquor in her life)...occasionally we'd have to borrow grandpa's pocket knife to get the damn gifts open! My uncle wraps just like her!
Don't worry about how the wrapping looks, Nos. The fact that you did it yourself is the important thing. Most women would rather have something that looks like it was wrapped by a deranged chimp than have you have someone else do it. (not that you wrap like a deranged chimp or anything...)
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33
What's in a Name?
by Thunder Rider inok, this has probably been done before and i missed it, but i want to know what your member names mean.
is there a special story behind your online handle?
mine is pretty self evident.
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asleif_dufansdottir
I used to be pretty active in the Society for Creative Anachronism http://www.sca.org/ (lots of folks who like swords there, Thunder)
SCA members pick a "personna," a person who could have lived between the 6th and the 16th centuries, find an authentic name (but not the name of a person who actually existed that is known to history), research the time period and stuff...
Asleif (Ahz-layf) Dufansdottir is an authentic Norse name from the 9th century. I liked the first name and the surname is based on the Norse translation of my real dad's name.
I use it a lot on the web.
When I'm being really naughty, my SCA friends call me Ozzie Ozzbjornsdottir... (which is, of course, not an authentic name)
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Non Jw and Jw can the relationship last?
by Dayshdeess ini have recentley fallen for a very nice female.
she's in her early twenties and i am 31, age we dont have a problem with and to be honest and soppy we truly love each other, her family have disowned her because of what she believes, my family have their doubts but again thats not a problem, i value my familys opinions who have already voiced their doubts, but i would like to make this work, albeit for her beliefs.. i feel she has been shown this way, firstly by her best friend who was born into it and has recentley been disfellowshipped for falling for a non jw, and also by things which have happened to her in her short life.
i knew after the first month that she was a jw, but she kept telling not to worry, as it wouldnt affect our future.
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asleif_dufansdottir
This is something that could take the one you love away from you. (the blood issue)
Not only that, it could get you killed, if you happen to be unconscious and your JW spouse will not authorize the use of blood. As the "opposing spouse" I carried a little wallet card, similar to their blood card, that clearly stated that i was NOT a JW and that if blood was necessary to save my life I gave permission for it!
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love bombing meh
by Mysterious ini keep hearing how everyone posts and says that no one in the congregation noticed or cared about them..i have the opposite problem.
i can't get sick of miss anything and they are all swarming around me "making sure i'm okay" telling me "how much they missed me" and some of them quite sincere about it.
i just wish they would all leave me the hell alone.
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asleif_dufansdottir
Midwest,
You're definitely their next target.
You see, your wife can't study with you, which means you're ripe for conversion, being married to her and all, and some lucky brother is going to get a 'ready-made' Bible study to count his hours on.
Not only that, but your wife being a JW will mean that you will feel more pressure to actually become a JW and stay one than a 'study' who has no family who are JWs. And of course they have heard over and over about men who came into the truth through the "good example" of their JW wives. It's practically a foregone conclusion, since you've already been to a few meetings and you're not an "opposer"...
So you have a very good chance of being that all important "study who came into the truth" that JWs salivate at the possibility of getting...it's definitely a feather in a JW cap to have studied with someone who actually went and became a JW.
All they have to do is compete for your friendship, and when you "finally decide to start studying" as they know you will, the guy you like best will have you as a study. In the world of JW field service, it doesn't get any better than that.
Think I'm kidding or exaggerating? I'm not
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27
Non Jw and Jw can the relationship last?
by Dayshdeess ini have recentley fallen for a very nice female.
she's in her early twenties and i am 31, age we dont have a problem with and to be honest and soppy we truly love each other, her family have disowned her because of what she believes, my family have their doubts but again thats not a problem, i value my familys opinions who have already voiced their doubts, but i would like to make this work, albeit for her beliefs.. i feel she has been shown this way, firstly by her best friend who was born into it and has recentley been disfellowshipped for falling for a non jw, and also by things which have happened to her in her short life.
i knew after the first month that she was a jw, but she kept telling not to worry, as it wouldnt affect our future.
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asleif_dufansdottir
but is it really as bad and strict as Im reading it.
YES
Actually, it's worse.
It's worse than reading it because just by reading about it you can't imagine how awful it is to see the person you love turning into a completely different person and turning against you just because you don't follow the same religion.
I had been married about 5 or 6 years when my husband became interested in the JWs. The next about 5 years were absolute hell, even when I gave up fighting and joined myself. We've been out about 10 years now.
I've said this before, but I'll repeat it:
I love my husband but if he walked up to me today and said he was going back, I'd leave him right now. No discussion. There is no way I'd put myself through that again. Not even on the chance he'd eventually leave the JWs again.
That's how bad it is.
Do NOT marry this woman under these circumstances...
Edited to add:
What on earth are you thinking of marrying someone you've only known 5 months for anyway?? Good lord, that's hardly enough time to decide on a life partner! (having this opinion, by the way, makes me a total hypocrit...by the time we'd known each other 5 months we'd been married a few weeks...but I'm older and wiser now and I don't recommend that...scares me to even think I did it )
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If I had my way, Saddam would still be in power
by lastcall inare we beginning to see that the argument of wether or not we should have gone to war is starting to get a little circular.. there are points to be made on both sides.
in my mind it comes down to wether or not you think that the us should be the policeman for the rest of the world.. i personally still don't think we needed to go to war, even though we did capture saddam, i know, i know, hard to believe.. just think, if i had my way, saddam would still be in power!!!!
is a wmd incarnate.
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asleif_dufansdottir
Also, foreign policy is not a simple matter of getting rid of naughty foreign leaders and then all will end happily ever after.
I had the opportunity, as an undergrad, to take a 'History of US Foreign Policy' class from a retired US Ambassador, who had, at one time, been ambassador to Afghanistan (the class was right before 9/11...boy did he get busy). I'll never forget the lecture where he talked about the fact that Jimmy Carter's taking the Shah to task over human rights issues was a key component of the toppling of the Shah's government and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeni. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
An anthropology prof mentioned that, years ago, anthropologists who had studied the social organization of 'warlord societies' like Afghanistan and other similar places, tried to tell the State department that if they got rid of one bad guy, another (probably a relative or a member of a rival faction) would just rise to take his place and nothing would really change. She said they never were able to convince them...they couldn't shake "Western" notions of government...
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If I had my way, Saddam would still be in power
by lastcall inare we beginning to see that the argument of wether or not we should have gone to war is starting to get a little circular.. there are points to be made on both sides.
in my mind it comes down to wether or not you think that the us should be the policeman for the rest of the world.. i personally still don't think we needed to go to war, even though we did capture saddam, i know, i know, hard to believe.. just think, if i had my way, saddam would still be in power!!!!
is a wmd incarnate.
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asleif_dufansdottir
Don't worry, Lastcall...I'm sure right at this very moment the U.S. government is supporting some other tyrannical, sadist, psycho dictator, just like we originally supported him...and it will turn around and bite us in the ass too.
BushCo (formerly known as the U.S. government) doesn't give a rat's ass how evil, psychotic or sadistic any other nation's leader or dictator is, as long as he doesn't damage U.S. corporate interests or happen to get in between a U.S. corporation and the potential for profit (in which case he's roadkill).
How many hundreds of thousands of people have been and continue to be raped, tortured and murdered without the US saying or caring jack sh*t about it?? Pretending that our foreign policy has any shred of humanitarian reasons for doing what it does, is a crock. Any benefit to the average citizen of either the U.S. or the other countries in question is purely coincidental.
HOWEVER, let me state unequivocally that, while I am contemptuous of the morals and motivations of the leaders of this country, I have no doubt that the average military person really is idealistic and has good motives.
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What do jws say about cave art?
by badboy in.
i presume they say it was done after the global flood because mud and such-like would have obliterated(sp?
) them
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asleif_dufansdottir
I'm very fortunate that my department manages a rock art center. I'm really looking forward to taking classes from the Prof who runs it - he's really cool and his presentation on it earlier in the semester was great.
There's a link with info on petroglyphs and pictographs here
http://www.asu.edu/clas/anthropology/dvrac/aboutus/introduction.html
On another note, just because the art was done in caves (speaking of the European cases) does not mean that's where the people lived. Rock art is generally thought to have ritual significance (hint: every time an archaeologist can't completely explain why somebody did something you hear the phrase "ritual significance"...but in this case I don't disagree). In some cases, the art was done so far back in inaccessible locations in caves that modern spelunkers with modern cave technology are challenged to reach it! This wasn't 'living room' art...