Memorial Bragging Rights: We Had a "Bethel Speaker"...Ooooooo..

Open mind

So was your congo affluent & connected enough to have a "Bethel Speaker"?

At least one congo in our area had one.

om

Room 215

... more often then not, a massive letdown...

usualusername

I think some Bethel speakers clean toilets for a living.

Wasnt Gangas who worked on the NWT a brekafast chef or something like that?

I gotta imagine that virtually every qualified speaker at Bethel (and his wife) goes out to give the Memorial talk somewhere. I mean, they can get a congregation to pay for their travel and their meals and a bunch of people in the congo. can give them a green handshake.

Free trip, pocket money. Great deal for a starving couple and they credit the people who overwork them and underpay them for sending them out.

rebel8

I saw a dub online claim people from Bethel "are a little closer to Jehovah's light". That is just a totally made up doctrine, isn't it? Not an official teaching that there are levels of closeness to light?

In any case:

JediMaster

Bethel speakers were always the worst as far as I can remember.

OnTheWayOut

My very last Memorial (2008): We were on vacation in the Caribbean.

A branch speaker from Puerto Rico came to give the Spanish talk and was talked into giving the English talk first.

Maybe his Spanish talk later was awesome, but he was terrible with the English. He spoke English well enough, but just read the outline and the scriptures and only a seasoned JW would have any idea what his points were. Everybody else must have been lost and half-asleep.

But it was an honor to have a speaker from "the branch." Absolutely nobody in earshot of me said anything about how "wonderful" that talk was. I am sure they lied to the speaker and told him that, but off to the side they were not discussing the talk at all for fear that lightning would strike them for saying it sucked.

Stealth

Bethel speakers are like idols to JWs. Always made me sick how they would all line up to get a chance to shake their hand after a talk that I found incredibly boring. They are like rock stars to the average JW. Oh but I couldn't put up a poster of any sports figures in my room growing up because it was idol worship.

They just want ALL the worship for themselves. Hyprocrites!

Lynnie

Oh yes, my cousin's son-in-law and wife flew into Seattle just so Jonathan could give the talk. Of course Dad paid for the airfare I'm sure! Brother!

AndersonsInfo

My husband, Joe, was a Bethel speaker. He also gave special memorial talks. We were exhausted by Friday from the work at Bethel and after he worked a half a day on Saturday, we had to travel up to 200 miles and sometimes more to his assigned talk. Sometimes we had to catch a plane. It was never glamorous. We were just two tired souls that hardly ever had a day off from being JWs and Bethelites. And we never dreamed that people thought we were hypocrites! We, just like the average JW, just didn't know any better.

I remember one time when we were in Delaware I was so sick that I thought I wasn't going to make it through the weekend. Another time I got food poisoning. Sometimes we stayed in dirty homes and slept in dirty beds and sometimes the JWs in the home were obviously a bit mentally ill. I'll never forget the time we had to walk down dark and dirty stairs two floors below to get to a bathroom at night. I'll never forget the single older man we stayed with who had a white cat in the apartment. We slept on a pull-out sofa and the black blanket that was over the top sheet was covered with white cat hairs. For privacy, the JW hung a blanket between us in the living room and the kitchen. In the morning he woke us by moving aside the blanket, peering down at us on the sofa bed and asked what we wanted for breakfast.

There were times, though, that the homes that we were assigned to stay at were great and the JWs lovely people. Often times, we spent every waking minute during the weekend hearing problems, etc. Call us stupid if you want to, but we genuinely thought that we were doing Jehovah's will.

I don't remember being "worshipped," and we didn't know any Bethelites worth their salt that thought that. For the most part, most JWs expressed gratitude for us coming. Sometimes the congregation would give us gas money; many times not. If not, Bethel would reimburse us for gas used. I remember one place where seven congregations met together at a large hall and Joe gave the Memorial talk. Many of the elders took a collection among themselves and put $100. in an envelope to give to us to show their appreciation for us coming. We loved their sincerity and kindness, especially since we knew that this was a poor urban area.

Our story was the same as most other Bethel speakers. Sometimes, we'd compare stories and laugh at the most outlandish things that happened to us during those "special" weekends. Dan Sydlik told me that the speaking trips that he and his wife made were very hard on his wife, Marina. After a talk when they stood down front in large auditoriums greeting people as they came by, Marina would develop a severe headache from the stress of it all. As celebrities attest to, being in the spotlight is not a cup of tea. It's hard work. For some, like the Sydliks, it eventually became torture, yet they continued on thinking they were helping the flock and pressed on.

The belief-system of JWs is, to my way of thinking now that I know better, a fantasy faith, one we were all caught up in, even those at the top. There's plenty of negatives we can talk about in the WT organization. But it's just like all the other religions - they are made up of mostly very sincere people with all the usual assets and deficits. The only people that were assured of special treatment were of course those who had the highest positions at Bethel, but in conversation with them, we heard their horror stories too. They had been doing this type thing for many years and before they were well-known, they put up with many indignities during their visits.

Contrary to the opinions of many XJWs, being in Bethel wasn't a piece of cake, especially for the women. Just think a bit about women in their 40s and 50s at Bethel working full-time and many going through menopause. Then on certain weekends they had to pack a suitcase and travel hours to unknown places and people and smile the whole time there. Usually, the couple arrived back late Sunday night and at 7 A.M. Monday morning, had to be sitting at the breakfast table nicely dressed and wife nicely madeup, smiling and making small talk with nine other groggy people sitting at the same table where one's husband was "table-head" and both trying to set the "right example," especially for the young people at the table.

I'm not scolding anyone for their negative viewpoint of Bethelites, but I thought maybe you would like to hear the other side of the story. Perhaps some will argue that if we didn't like it, we should have left. Well, as hard as it was, there were wonderful times too. And, most of all, we stayed because we thought that we were in "Mecca" and took it for granted that the gift of everlasting life was worth any obstacle to obtain.

FYI, Gangas scrubbed Bethel kitchen floors when he was chosen as a director of the Watch Tower. He was not particularly intelligent, but he was exceedingly humble and viewed as one who would never get too big for his britches because he was a director.

Barbara

Memorial Bragging Rights: We Had a "Bethel Speaker"...Ooooooo..

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