For those that were raised in the Truth, why did YOUR PARENTS become JW's?

by BonaFide 33 Replies latest jw friends

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  BonaFide

  It's weird putting two and two together after 40 years of have the two things separate.

  My uncle was killed in a car accident in August of 1969. I was a child, but I remember my mother being very sad and crying and staying in her room.

  It was in October of 1969 that the Witnesses first visited my mom. My mom was in the front yard watching us kids when JW's came door-to-door. That sister and my mom are still friends to this day.

  Anyway, my mom started studying. I remember a lady coming to our house, and we had to be quiet. She was baptized in 1970. I was six years old. I became a publisher at 7, and kept going after that.

  I was reading on this forum a few months ago when someone mentioned that often people become Witnesses because of a tragedy in their life, and they are vulnerable. Witnesses show "love" and attention, and the promise of a resurrection. I often applied that to the people in the territory, that we should look out for those grieving, or depressed, and teach them the truth.

  I never realized until recently that that is exactly what happened to my mom.

  Witnesses came to our door at a very vulnerable time in my Mom's life. Otherwise, she may never have accepted it. It occured to me that my uncle's death in a car accident was a tragedy, a terrible accident that had he left the house a few moments later, would never have happened. His car skidded in the rain, and hit an oncoming truck on a rural road. Time and unforseen occurence.

  But didn't something similar happen to us? Because my mom talked to the Witnesses in her yard that day, I never went to college, I have no degree, I am in my forties with no wife and kids, no house, and trying to go back to school now to make a better living. I shouldn't compare my life with a terrible traffic accident, but seems to me a turn of events within a few MINUTES changed my entire life.

  So what about YOUR parents, those of you raised in the "Truth?"

  How did THEY become Witnesses? Was it also that they happened to be home one day? How did the Witnesses find them and convince them?

  BF
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  no more kool aid

  Because their parents were. I have know idea what they were thinking. I don't think the "truth" now, even resembles what they joined.
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  moomanchu

  My wife's mom married an American soldier and came to the US.

  All alone several kids, poor, learning the english language,

  bad experience with the Catholic Church in Germany and then ..........

  Knock knock knock the rest is history.
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  lalaa

  My mom started studing with the JW's when she was 15. She was a runaway living with my dad at the time. Her mom died when she was 6. Her dad was out of the picture and she was the youngest of 5. She was raised by her grandmother and they didn't get along. So she ran away.

  Anyway....She said she started studying when she learned of the ressurection...blah, blah, blah....
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  jamiebowers

  I was 12 when my mom started studying in 1976. She was twice divorced and well on her way to ending her third marriage (with good reason). We lived in a rural area where she grew up, and she had a bad reputation, as there were very few people who were on the verge of a first divorce, let alone a third. Being a jw was the only thing that gave my mom credibility, (in her mind, at least). And it's kept her in ever since.
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  White Dove

  Mine were forced into it by birth. Then I was forced into it by them by birth. I'm a 4th generation and my kids were a 5th.
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  White Dove

  PS: My grandfather was born into it in 1918. His parents came into it when they became adults.
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  asilentone

  My parents was studying with JWs in the early 60's. My parents stopped studying with JWs, then they had a horrible earthquake, 10 minutes(I think) long, they thought Armageddon is here, after the earthquake, they started studying with JWs again, that is how they became JWs.
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  Doubting Bro

  I don't really know my grandmother's story (she passed several years ago) but she pressured my father & mother. She was baptized sometime in the early to mid 60s. She skipped my parent's wedding in 67 because it was held in a church. I am told that in 1970, she held baby me in her arms and started crying. She told my dad that if he didn't become a JW, he was condeming me to death at the big A. Seeing how the end was coming in just a few years, they began studying and were baptized in 72.
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  Doubting Bro

  double post