I've asked afew Witnesses at work and around town about no more Bookstudy.........they are all so RELIEVED!  One Elder with four kids said..."It will make things alot easier, with rushing home from work, the society understands our needs."......another brother said: "It's great, now we can go to the Cinema on half price Tuesday's!"  A Sister said: "It's makes it easier if you have a worldly husband...not to be out every second night."   My "anionted" mum said:  "Well, for people with a spritual hunger it's was not a burden..."  I argued with her for awhile but may as well bang my head on the door! 

Just a year ago the C.O told us that the bookstudy was the "most important of all meetings....training us for the Great Tribulation." {Small groups}

From my feed back it sounds like 6 MILLION WITNESSES ARE REJOICING AND RELIEVED!!!!  The Faithful Slave/Master has taken one brick off their backs!

Maybe I am running ahead of the Organization, but I stopped going last year!

In fact, I am running ahead of the Organization now, I stopped going to the other two meetings also!

Is 'Hober angry with me?

Officially, it is not permissible to count time at either of these meetings.. However, I know that many elders did count at least some of those hours - or at the very least, used them to "round up" so their numbers would not attract any attention from the CO or other elders.

I know some elders counted any time they spent witnessing in front of anyone not baptized. If there were unbaptized kids at the book study, that's an hour right there. Public talk? Hey, if I'm teaching the "public," that's service time. Lots of elders don't study with their kids but because their wives read the kids a bedtime story from the literature, he'd claim four hours every month in the form of a family study. They had to do that, because an elder could not admit he didn't study with his family. However, very few did; there just wasn't time.

I knew one elder who always volunteered to give talks at out-of-town congregations. He made it known that if you had such an assignment and something came up at last minute, he'd fill in for you on short notice. Loved to travel? No. Turned out he was counting his travel hours.  He'd "start his time" in some makeshift fashion. Then jump in the car, drive 100 miles to the Podunk Congregation, deliver a talk, drive home, and chalk up 5 or 6 hours! He told me this with a straight face, explaining how hard it was to get in pioneer hours and still be an elder. His view was that Jehovah didn't expect him to work for nothing. At the time, I told myself he was the exception. I came to realize he was not alone in his fuzzy math.

Further proof that the whole "billions of hours a year in the preaching work" myth is dub b.s.