At our meeting last night there was a talk about having run out of magazines for the last three months. It's expected this will continue to happen. Why?
The "Branch" has not sent the requested number of magazines. Why?
The very young elder (a talk giving oxymoron in the flesh) explained that this situation may be troubling for some. He asked the publishers not to take a lot of magazines at the beginning of the month and adjust to the situation, sharing whenever possible if someone has extras (unplaced magazines). But why are we short brother, why?
Well, he hasn't addressed the reason yet. Wait for it... wait...
No, he's not telling yet. He tells us that the order is about 7 sets per month per publisher, and that we don't have that many on hand each month when the order comes in. But why?
He goes on to tell us that @ 50 cents each, as he reminds us that's the last price we ever saw requested by the WTS, we should be contributing around $3500 just on magazines alone, and that's not happening. Is that the reason why we don't receive enough magazines to fulfill the monthly order? Well, apparently so, but he's NOT yet saying straight out the WTS isn't going to send them as many WT magazines if the Branch doesn't get an expected amount of contributions. Not yet but, wait, is there's more?
No, instead, he lets the thought sink in through a raised eyebrows pregnant pause, as he scans the audience, then looks at the COBE, then another glance through the audience.
So in case anyone in the audience missed the connection he says that since we aren't contributing a set amount per magazine anymore we still need to consider how much each magazine is worth, all the work that goes into preparing the articles and then printing and shipping the magazines and then also consider our personal order, could we be taking too many magazines? Is our conscience aware that we're personally left with extras at the end of the month while some other publishers have run out and wished they had more magazines they could be placing?
Apparently this is a problem that we need to be made aware of since the elders were made aware of this already. By who? We're left wondering.
One funny thing is none of the older elders got this part. Why not the Secretary, or our new much younger COBE? Well, for one thing, our Congregation Secretary and the rest of the BOE well know that the total amount of reported placements for the each of the months we've been running out of magazines has been pretty much steady as previous months in 2015. Meaning that even if we've run out of magazines for the month because we didn't receive the full amount ordered. The number reported as placed is much higher than the received quantify of each shipment. Hmmm?