Well guys, I finally got back from the DC or whatever it's called nowadays. It wasn't really as bad as I expected but still, it was pretty bad. The first interesting thing happened on the road. On Thursday we left for the DC. It was a four and a half hour drive. An old JW(quite a nutter) family friend came with us. He told us to stop in a small town to visit a friend. Only before parking at his house he told us his friend and his wife one are of "the ones behind" (rough translation of the term used by JW's in Romania to describe a different faction of JW's that are the result of a schism that took place decades ago).
"The ones behind" is a group deemed as highly dangerous apostates by JW's here in Romania. Of course we aren't allowed to talk to them or have any other interaction. As tornapart asked in the previous post, I'll detail something about them. They're considered old rite JW's. For some exact reasons unknown to me, during the communist era, many decades ago(around 1975 I suspect), one of the leaders of the underground bethel operating in this country went rogue and took a significant part of the JW membership with them. They refuse any new literature from the WT and just recycle old doctrines from the old rags to create their own literature. After the fall of communism, sometime in the 90's there was a huge special convention where their leader(now very old) was officially welcomed back to the borg. He went on the stage and held a talk during which he cried repenting for the mistake he made with the schism and urging everyone that followed him to return as JW's.
Many followed him and now, 20 years later, they are only a few thousand. Pretty low compared with the 40 000 JW's in this country. They're much more traditional and refuse to dance and their women wear something on their head when in service, meetings, etc. Generally, they act like JW's, go in field service, meetings, conventions. Only, there's a huge level of mutual hostility and we aren't evem allowed to speak about them. That's why I know so little. Prior to last week I never met one and nobody would talk to me about them. They're like Voldemort from Harry Potter, even mentioning them is not allowed. They are the ones we must not even speak of.
So we park next to the house. The woman apostate comes to us and invites inside. My mother refuses to even leave the car. She insists saying it would be an insult not to. Eventually my parents cave in and go inside along with the other JW. My father was pretty chill but my mother was acting almost like she was afraid. They sat us down at a table and offered us food and drinks. While eating my mother kept whispering to me, "we're so getting disfellowshipped for this". I told her to chill and stop acting weird, they're just people like us. Then we started talking with the apostate lady and found out that both her and her husband were dying from cancer. Her father, who was living with them being very old and disabled, was one of "the ones behind" also.
This made my mother kinda feel bad for them and started being friendlier. The two of them talked and she eventually learned that the apostate lady was actually secretly studying with a group of JW's, with "the ones behind" knowing. Combining this with the fact that she was never a JW but born in the rival branch organization and my mother didn't even consider her an apostate anymore. We left with my parents in a good mood after becoming friends with this "apostate" family. Of course, none of us said a word about it since.
