Joe134cd
Really nice couple?
Everyone thought Bernie Madoff was wonderful and nice.
LoisLane
Fiji Bethel Scandal
by Mattieu 26 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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joe134cd
I meet them many years ago can some one please clarify if I have got their name correct. I believe his name started with a J and her name started with a E and the surname stated with a C. Please clarify that these were the people involved.
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joe134cd
So no one wants to clarify.
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Glander
I want to but I don't know a damn thing about them.
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fulltimestudent
I know nothing about this present scandal, but there are some great (unofficial) stories that are being forgotten about the Island areas around Australia.
The islands from Fiji to Indonesia were once under the care of the Australian branch, and either pre-WW2 or just after WW2 the WTS owned a sailing boat named the Lightbearer that was used to reach these out of way places. I guess all the old crew are dead long ago, but I had a chance to talk to some. There was a guy in inner Sydney once who'd been on the ship. I think his name was Jim Connoly. He reckoned he'd done his share of the hard yakka, and didn't much care anymore in the 1950's. So it wasn't a nice cruise around tropical paradises in his opinion.
There was also a guy named Carney, (two brothers, cant remember first names) one spent a long time in the Solomon Islands and Papua-New Guinea (I think his brother went to Gilead and finished up in Hong Kong).
And, then there were a couple of Aussie pioneers. One was Lennie Helberg from Darwin (I think he went back there at some point) and his partner's name was Clive Williams. Len was at a Circuit Assembly I was at once, and I asked him where his partner was? Lennie looked down his nose and said, " Clive is a very, very bad man!" and he clammed up! It was a long time, before I heard the full story, and when I did it was like this: Clive started to have it off with handsome young island men ( and. I mean men, not kids) I started to wonder, as Lennie Helberg could be described as impossibly handsome. So did Clive hit on his pioneer partner? Would not have been the first time something like that happened.
My gay XJW friend tells me of two young Australians - sent to Gilead and then assigned together to Cambodia, where they fell in love with each other. Sadly, one died of a tropical infection, and since there were no emergency funds in their little missionary home, the survivor had to cremate his dead lover. Not enough money to buy enough wood for the funeral pyre and the body kept sliding out of the fire and the survivor had to keep pushing his dead lover back into the fire. Yikes !!!! Bet Nathan and Freddie never had to worry about that sort of situation in their comfortable digs, in Brooklyn Bethel.
The surviving guy had a nervous breakdown after that - and so would I!
But back to Clive Williams. He was disfellowshipped, of course, and finished up in Indonesia, teaching English. And Clive had the last laugh, while the rest of struggled on, enduring the lesser life we chose (Hebrews ch. 11) because we thought we were serving the most important people in the universe, Yahweh and son/alter ego Jesus, Clive got a new pupil, a young Colonel by the surname of Suharto. And, they struck up an enduring friendship (not sexual as far as I know). What Clive probably did not know was that Colonel Suharto had been fingered by the American CIA as a possible leader to replace the left leaning Soekarno in a coup that was being planned.
The coup did come to pass, and some 500,000 members of the Indonesian Communist Party were butchered. Suharto moved on to the President' Mansion in Jakarta, and built a house for Clive in the Presidential compound, and Clive was set for the rest of his life - living in a luxury that we all imagined we would only have in the NW. Clive became a trusted confidant for the President's family, organising things for the family when they went on world trips. When he died the Australian Financial Review printed an obit for him.
(Refer Australian Financial Review 09/27/2001 - Clive and the President )
We all die, and go into nothingness, butClive had a better life disfellowshipped, than if he'd stayed (so-called) "faithfull".
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doofdaddy
Geez FTS you brought back some memories. For the life of me I can't remember the guys name but he was a missionary in New Guinea and Indonesia and he was on the Lightbearer. I wish now that I had asked him more about those old days. I remember him telling a story about a cong servant who had secretly kept up his ancestor worship. No one believed his wife until he got "possessed" and was running through the jungle ( with a green light over his head, the missionary saw it!) pulling out banana trees in a frenzy!! Another time he was crossing a river and a local brother said if you touch that rock you will have twins. Two pioneers rubbed the rock for a joke and both had twins... I think the biggest and most faith shaking experience for him was seeing a dead person rise up under the guidance of a Hindu priest and walk in Bali! Looking back, despite him being an elder etc I wonder if he really believed the Watchtower society and that he just hung in due to putting in so many years. He was a gentle soul who never hassled or hammered anyone. Yes he would be long dead I'm sure.
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LoisLane looking for Superman
FullTime , I do not know why I am laughing. Oh shame shame and double shame on me.
If we had a sleep over with 20 people, and we started telling "ghost" stories, I swear, you would win, with the gruesomest, ickiest, most
disgusting stories, that would delight any 10 year old boy.
What a happy ending for Clive Williams.
LoisLane