Did anything a householder said ever make an impression on you? (page 5)

Betsy

When I was pioneering, I had a regular magazine route. Well, one older lady - in her 70's - always invited us in and talked for a time and then gave me a dollar. Anyway, she was Methodist and we would always talk about the paradise. Funny thing was, she said that they believed in it too. That really got me thinking...you know how could we be the only ones with the "truth" if the Methodists believed in paradise too? She said she believed in Heaven, but that one day they would return to a paradise. Now that I think back, it made more of an impression on me than I thought at the time.

Betsy

sandy

Something that always stayed in my mind was when I was at a door with my x-best friend.

We were both 14-15 years old and we were telling this man all about the wickedness on the earth and explaining to him how we know we are in the last days. I know we were talking to him for quite awhile. He really let us have it.

I cannot remember much of what he said but he had a logical answer for everything we presented him with.

One thing I do remember him saying was something like this: "World conditions have always been bad you are not telling me anything new."

Then I gave him my comeback answer how things have always been bad but never to such a large extent. Something like that anyways….

Then he said something like: "Well there are more people on the earth than ever before."

Those few words always stayed with me.

Most embarrassing moment at a door : An irate householder screamed at us saying who sent you here and the zealot with me threw his hands in the air and said (Jehovah God sent us) I slithered back to the car.

shotgun that was really funny. I laughed out loud.

asleif_dufansdottir

The most upsetting thing that ever happened to me in field service was when a nice elderly lady who had been a return visit, who had recently had a death in the family, burst into tears at the door and asked me, "Why won't you just leave me alone???"

I was floored. All I could do was tell her how sorry I was and run out the door. Here I thought I had a "good" RV and she had been enjoying our discussions, and I was making her unhappy and putting pressure on her by talking to her about this stuff. I had been trying to put the "positive JW spin" on every objection she had, tried to turn all conversation to how my religion was right...and I'd hurt this nice little old lady...made her cry in front of relative strangers (I have a huge soft spot for little old ladies) The sisters in the car group kept talking about how she had the wrong view and we had the right view, but it didn't convince me. I knew I'd done something bad.

I felt sick. I wanted to go home. I never had that 'innocent joy' in service, where you think you're doing a good thing untarnished by cruelty, ever again. I realized that I was either an annoyance, a bother, an embarrassment (how do I politely get rid of this person) or a source of hurt for almost every person I ran into in service.

I couldn't ignore my conscience anymore, when I stood at a door and kept talking to some poor person who had the misfortune of being home and being too polite to refuse to answer the door or tell us to f*@& off, made them stand there talking to us and squirm, trying to figure how to gracefully extracate themselves from the conversation without us ever coming back and bothering them again.

If I did what my conscience told me and let them off the hook quick and dirty."You interested? No? OK, thank you!" I was being a bad JW and not acting like I really believed I was saving people from Armageddon...if I did what the society taught me I was supposed to, I felt like a louse. I was so glad to realize I could be relieved of that burden!!

Hapgood

On a beautiful sunny warm summer day, at the next house I was assigned to, was a man working in his flower garden. It was a beautiful garden, and you could tell he really enjoyed working in it. So, I started on some spiel about the wonderful promise of living forever on a paradise earth blah blah blah, proud of myself how I used a topic that fit this person. He just listened politely, he let me finish. Then he said "I feel sorry for you." I don't know, but those few words had an impact on me, he could probably sense that my heart wasn't in it, and I didn't know it at the time, but my heart wasn't. So simple really, but those few words made me think.

Hapgood

shamus

I was so proud that I had caused this guy to lose his cool and react so angrily. I thought that I had vindicated God's name somehow. Actually though, looking back on it, all I did was invade his privacy, provoke him into an argument and cause him to lose his cool.

I was in field service once with this older arsehole, and he was so freakin' rude to the householder... it was the end of my "good boy" j'dud status. This lady just wanted us to go, yet he kept badgering her, saying how wrong she was. I had never heard anything so rude before in my life. The lady was so angry at us by the end, I just felt like a worm. It was the single most disturbing thing that I ever saw a j-dud do to another human being. To top it off, he was laughing about it! Talk about sick.

Another time, a lady burst into tears b/c her son just died. I had no answers for her at all; and just left her there. I'll never forget how ashamed I was for doing that... the poor sould just needed a hug, and I got her upset and just left her there.

If only I could travel back in time.... I still wish to this day that I could personally go back and apologize to many of the people who I bothered! It actually makes me rather sick to think about it.

What an excellent topic! Thank you all so much for sharing!

rem

I remember one door where a marine biologist answered and I offered the magazines. He was a really nice guy - and smart too. We got on the subject of science somehow and he kept refuting everything I said. Basically I was explaining how the universe was so wonderfully designed and that pointed to a loving creator. He responded with something about how there is really a lot of death and chaos in nature or something. Deep down I knew he had a point.

I remember later that day trying to think of a comeback to some of the things he said. I thought of an illustration of a combustion engine that contained chaos in the controlled explosions, though nobody would refute that the engine had a designer. It never really convinced me, though, in light of some of the things he said. I never saw him again, but I still remember that door from time to time to this day.

Another time I went to the door of this poor old lady who just lost her husband a couple days before. She was so depressed and she was crying. She made me cry, too, at the door. I placed the Resurrection brochure with her or something. When I went back a week later, the house was empty. So sad. I just remember thinking at the time that that brochure would not have comforted me, but it was the best I knew to do at the time.

One of my last doors was this pretty smart guy. I think he was a non-denominational Christian or something. I remember standing there with my wife and his kids at the door explaining that we are not really as weird as people think we are... we believe in Jesus too, blah blah blah. Well, I knew that he knew that my heart wasn't in it and I didn't really believe what I was saying anymore.

He invited us to pray at the door. This freaked me out... so I stammered and suggested that I pray instead. He accepted and I prayed that we would all find truth. It really made me think, because I wasn't just praying for him to find 'The Truth'... I was praying for God to guide me to the truth too if I didn't have it already. That was a weird experience, but it helped me in my questioning and doubts.

rem

Dogpatch

Hi Marjorie,

Good thread with some interesting responses!

Wishing you the best,

Randy Watters

Net Soup!

http://www.freeminds.org

ISP

Not for me, I was impervious to most stuff then, however logical and well thought out!

ISP

rocketman

One time, when iw as a teen and alone at a door, I read a scripture from 2 Peter 3 from the NWT: "the earth and the works in it will be discovered". The woman started yelling at me "discovered? discovered?!!! READ THE BIBLE!!!! READ THE BIBLE!!!!" Scared the crap out of me.

*still shaking class*

Skeptic

One of my return visits was a detective who investigated the drug trade. I presented an Awake! magazine about how TV shows make kids desenitizes them and makes for more violence in the world.. My return visit disagreed, saying that he thought that the reason for more violence in the world was the expansion of the drug trade. That made total sense to me.

His kids were into sports, and he took them every Saturday to various hockey games, etc.as they were always on sports teams. He told me the benefits of team sports, and I wished that I could take my kids to play on a team instead of the door-to-door work.

I once had a Bible study who was a born-again Christian. We studied the subject of hell indepth. We never convinced each other at all, but I realized that both the JW view and the born-again view were "provable" from the Bible.

When I was becoming an agnostic, I still went out in field service. A householder came to the door and had to rush off because he was wallpapering. I wondered because if no one else called on him before Armageddon, then he would not get everlasting life. Yet, what if I had gotten to talk to him and he responded favorably? Yet now he may never get everlasting life because he was too busy when I called? It made me realize how unreasonable it was to think that how people responded to the door-to-door work would determine if they lived forever or not. After all, most of the public just viewed us as salespeople or religious nuts, nothing more.

Did anything a householder said ever make an impression on you?

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