DC Experiences - reality vs. perception

by sir82 30 Replies latest jw friends

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  sir82

  At a recent DC, an elderly sister was interviewed. She recounted how she endured through many years of her husband's opposition, never giving up, until finally he relented. Eventually, he bacame baptized and joined her in the full-time pioneer work.

  End of experience. Clap clap clap clap clap.

  One is left with the impression that this faithful sister and her husband continue on, down to today, in faithful full-time service.

  The reality:

  My wife and I know this couple personally, but not intimately - we both are originally from the same geographic region, and now live in...another geographic region.

  After the DC, this couple invited us to dinner, so we went along. After some insightful questioning by my wife, here is what we learned had happened:

  He is 76, she is 70. Several years back, when he retired, he had managed to accumulate $40,000 in an IRA, or 401K, or something. They decided to live off of that income, plus Social Security, as long as they could while pioneering.

  The money lasted 5 years. Afterward, it became a necessity for both to return to work. They are not pioneering now, they have not pioneered for many years

  He works as a real estate appraiser, but of course in the current market, his skills are little in demand. Money is tight. She holds 2 jobs, one tutoring, the other working at Target for 20+ hours per week. She can't do more because her legs become very painful.

  The foundation sponsoring the tutoring may lose funding, and she is fearful of losing that job, because she can't work more at Target.

  They are struggling financially. After the meal, she carefully boxed up the remainder of her dinner salad, plus dressing, plus bread.

  They put all there "eggs in one basket", as it were, spending all the meager retirement savings they had, "putting Jehovah first" and hoping that Armageddon would come "soon" and rescue them.

  It didn't, and now they face a future of declining abilities and financial insecurity, with no Armageddon in sight.

  I wonder why they didn't include that part in the experience?
• 

  WTWizard

  Here is another angle on those experiences you hear at the Grand Boasting Session. They edit the experiences so they look all positive. Of course they are not going to mention the hardships and other problems that it is going to create, since that would dilute the whole thing.

  Up to now, that has been the most common kind of experience. They start with someone making sacrifices to serve Jehovah more, and cut out all the end results (sticking with the pioneering itself as the blessing). Never is there a blessing where the people actually are any better off in a general way as a result (though they might throw in an isolated personal improvement to make it look real, always out of context).

  In the near future, they might even pre-fab the "experiences" the way the pre-fab the Kingdumb Maladies now. The person has only to show up and sit in front of a mic that isn't hooked up, and they play a MP3 of the "experience". Those MP3s always come out sounding as they want, as it is ridiculously easy today to alter the voices and intonations on these talks. That way, "mistakes" can be eliminated. And, it is possible to offer even more outrageous "experiences", embellishing a recapture to make it look more like a rescue.

  Plus, they might start putting out a NR38 based on these ridiculous "experiences", particularly the ones about joining "secret" societies and the fornication scares they fabricate with those "secret" societies to keep from losing the membership. And if I ever have to distribute one of those wastes of paper, it will be worse than the worst the demons are capable of.
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  FreudianSlip

  I knew of a guy who was the poster child for the JWs. He was gorgeous, regular pioneered, excellent speaker, on his way to Bethel, gave his experiences as the conventions. In reality, he dated worldly girls and even paid for one of them to get an abortion.
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  Quandry

  One is left with the impression that this faithful sister and her husband continue on, down to today, in faithful full-time service

  They are masters of illusion, aren't they?

  I would have been in the audience feeling guilty because I wasn't doing more, more, more.........

  If that couple had invested that $40,000 for a few years I wonder how things would be for them now when they really need help. No, instead they have no relief in sight, and are in their 70's.
• 

  Mickey mouse

  At our convention they were interviewing people about past conventions that had really affected them. They were recalling how a talk moved them to pioneer....etc etc. One brother started by saying "I remember the convention in 1967..." and I was willing him to repeat the claptrap that D/O had spouted about 1975 which is now on Youtube. Not surprisingly he didn't. I did have a wicked thought though. Everyone was walking around listening to the sessions on radio headphones. How brilliant would it be to overpower the radio frequency and instead play a recording of that talk from '67?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mickey.
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  chickpea

  we had personal friends,
  a couple we got along with
  exceedlingly well.... i knew him
  back in the day when he was
  dope-smoking, bearded and
  lived in overalls.....

  tidied up real nice and became
  a JW.... his ex-wife from the woods
  was studying but never quit smoking.....
  she was the one who delivered a
  "live forever" book into my hands....

  anyway!!!

  he ultimately became an elder
  and struggled to get hired on
  by a railway company....
  climbed the ladder and ultimately
  was an engineer..... pulling down $90K+,
  including benefits

  gave it up because he was "missing meetings"
  and he didnt want to step down as an elder
  (wife was a pioneer,she had 4 kids, grown
  and they had one together)

  trying to shorten a story already too long,
  they have moved at least 3 times that i am aware,
  always in search of a job* that pays the bills....
  while "waiting on jehovah", he has ground
  his family into poverty and penury, and left
  behind a series of debts, incl $5K that we loaned them
  to make house payments so they would not go into foreclosure
  *floor tiling, janitiorial, groundskeeping, unskilled labour
  
  they were a CA interview.... (cue applause)
  no mention of the darker side of "whole-souled service
• 

  Lady Zombie

  That is so sad.
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  Amber Rose

  I too, was the fool in the audience wondering why things didn't work out so great for me. Dumb 20something pioneer living with my parents, lousy job, crappy car, would never be able to move out on my own. How did these people on the platform do it? Easy, they lied on their FS slips, only had pioneered for a short time hundreds of years ago and act as if they never skipped a beat, maybe thier father-in -law owns a utility company and keeps them on payroll for a tax break or maybe none of it ever happened. I believed it all.
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  mrsjones5

  So the thing to keep in mind when attending any convention is any experience is either a gross exaggeration or an out and out lie.

  Which reminds me of something: I was talking to a jw friend when knew my father's parents, really only in passing - I don't think he ever talked to them. Grandma and Grandpa got baptised late; Grandma when I was 19 and Grandpa a few years later. My friend, after saying "You know the world is going to end" , held up my grandparents as fine upstanding jws. I didn't say anything to the contrary cuz it wasn't his business but my grandparents couldn't stand each other (which got worst when they both got sick) and for years had slept in separate rooms and lived virually separate lives in a one bedroom shack.

  Fine example indeed
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  betteroffdead

  do you a link to that talk on youtube?