While we wait for the number crunchers to work out their figures, I have a question…does anyone have any information about what lloyd said about he and dijana moving to Croatia? As in the reason and what happened in the days before they moved…? Someone mentioned something to me the other day and it is annoying me as their version of the story varies massively from what I know to be true and just want to straighten it out in my mind….but I can’t find what I’m looking for….any help would be appreciated 👍
It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars
by Newly Enlightened 11530 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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Thisismein1972
does anyone have any information about what lloyd said about he and dijana moving to Croatia?
If memory serves, his excuse was that he had been caught sexting girls and Dijana up sticks back to Croatia where Lloyd decided to pursue her and they lived happily ever after.
I may have some of the details wrong, so I'll pass it on to someone who may know more.
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Las Malvinas son Argentinas
does anyone have any information about what lloyd said about he and dijana moving to Croatia?
It is in his book. I can copy and paste later if you want but from memory he gave these reasons:
The poor health of Dijana’s parents
the lower cost of living in Croatia vs the high cost in the UK
a desire to “get a new start” and reset for both his marriage and his status in the JW religion.
they were in massive debt in the UK and according to him, they would live rent free in a Croatia so they could pay it back
He made no reference of ever returning to the UK to live. The move to Croatia was presented as more of a permanent thing.
As for what happened before they moved, after leaving Bramhall and the elder “Geoffrey”, they moved in with Lloyd’s dad for the summer of 2009. This was when he had the JC in Wilmslow. They saved up money for the trip to Croatia, and even bought a trailer for the trip which ended up falling apart when still in England and they had to leave most of their possessions with his dad.
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KIMSILVIO
Thanks thisisme and LMSA, I’ll look in his book but if you have it handy LMSA later that would be appreciated 👍
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Diogenesister
There are a few openly trans people in congregations and they can easily live by Bible principles I know one who was in Bethel
A religion that condemns the opposite sex even wearing the clothes of the other sex allows trans people in Bethel?😂
Sorry, I'm not buying it.
I'm aware there are plenty of gay people in Bethel, perhaps you mean that? Definitely not trans, though. No way. They've even said in the publications someone would have to "revert" to their birth sex to be baptised, let alone work in Bethel (not that you can ever change sex, they should say gender).
Lloyd got in trouble a while back for calling them "THE transgenders"😂😭He's just jumping on a bandwagon (as usual) he knows absolutely nothing about.
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Chinapomo
Lloyd has no clue what he's getting himself into. I really hope he goes fully woketard mode. Getting my popcorn ready
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DerekMoors
I don't have the time or desire to keep an everyday tally but wasn't he at 417 or something earlier this month? And I think it was 406 just a few days ago. Whatever's going on, it's good to see fewer people giving him money he can spend propping up the human trafficking industry.
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LoveUniHateExams
I really hope he goes fully woketard mode - me too.
The far Left typically eat their own at some point, and it would be great to be watching from the sidelines when this eventually happens to Lloyd.
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy
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Las Malvinas son Argentinas
if you have it handy LMSA later that would be appreciated
It was a Friday morning. I ran downstairs to fetch the mail. When I came back into our bedroom, Dijana had my mobile phone in her hand and was staring at it aghast. The previous day, while she had been at work, I had been involved in cybersex with a girl I had met online. The girl had texted me back since then, and Dijana had just read the message.
My initial response was one of anger. In a flurry of tears and screaming I tried to wrench the phone from Dijana. Then, as reality slowly dawned, I realized she had every right to know that the man she had married and made so many sacrifices for was a messed up person with serious issues. Over my single years I had developed a fixation with chatting online with girls, and this behavior had tragically spilled over into my marriage.
The hours and days that followed were fraught with animosity, tears, and much soul searching. I had spent the last three months trying to correct the conduct of a fellow elder in the congregation, and here I was with my own faults now in sharp focus.
The hypocrisy of it all stemmed from my ability to compartmentalize and excuse my darker side so that it almost did not exist. I genuinely believed that the only thing that mattered was how many people were hurt by my actions. If Dijana did not know what I was doing online, then she could not be hurt. With the Friday morning discovery, the naivety of this thinking became glaringly obvious. There can be no secrets in a marriage. Everything will come out in the wash eventually.
As you would expect, Dijana was devastated. She assumed all of this somehow reflected on her as a wife. If I was engaging in online sexual encounters with other women, then in her mind, I must have no feelings for her whatsoever. I pleaded with her that this was not the case; that I loved her and wanted to be with her, but I was fighting powerful inner urges and needed help.
Initially I tried to talk Dijana into simply forgiving me so that we could move on without involving anyone else. I intuitively knew I had reached a crossroads. I explained to her that two paths lay ahead of us. One path involved soldiering on and trying to fix our marriage without involving others. The other path involved my seeking discipline through the congregation, losing all respect and standing in the organization, and being left with really nothing to be proud of or to fight for. I had a feeling of inevitability that I was on the cusp of a downward spiral from which, due to the mountain of doubts I was already suppressing, I would never recover. The only way out of this tailspin, in my mind, was for us to deal with these problems between us rather than involve the elders.
Dijana made it clear that she wanted the intervention of the elders, no matter the outcome. After all, this was not a one-off incident. Dijana had caught me in a similar situation only a few months after we were married, and previous attempts at sorting out my issues had clearly failed. There seemed no other option than to approach the elders this time. The trouble was, I had just come out of a long and bitter feud with Geoffrey, who I knew would relish the opportunity to exact vengeance. Dijana agreed that Geoffrey was the last person to involve in fixing our problems.
We therefore decided to move back to my home congregation in Wilmslow, where I would promptly stand down as an elder, confess my sins, and accept whatever discipline was to be handed out. Wilmslow would serve as a kind of spiritual maintenance pit-stop on the way to what we both decided was our ultimate objective: a fresh start in Croatia.
We had been discussing this move for some time—but now that fixing our marriage was of utmost priority rather than pursuing any organizational opportunities, there was no longer anything holding us back. Also prominent in our thinking were Dijana’s parents, whose health gave us cause for concern. Furthermore, living in the UK was becoming prohibitively expensive as the country, which by this point was entering the “credit crunch,” slid into recession. We were spending over £170 per month just on property taxes before paying any rent or utility bills, and we had racked up a mountain of debt in overdrafts and credit card bills. In Croatia, we could live rent-free with Dijana’s parents while slowly paying off our debts. We also had the option of finishing a semi-built apartment above their home if we wanted more privacy. We decided to go ahead with this plan, and moved out of the house we were renting. Dad agreed that we could move in with him for a couple of months before we made our final move abroad.
I drove to the home of the coordinator for Wilmslow congregation and delivered a letter through his door. It offered my resignation as an elder and went into quite some detail regarding my sexual misconduct. I had hoped the amount of detail would be sufficient for the elders to deliberate quickly over how to deal with me, but this would not prove to be the case.
In a series of disciplinary meetings before a “judicial committee” comprised of three elders I was asked to go into extremely intimate detail regarding the nature of my online encounters, what precisely these involved, with whom and how often. [96] These hearings were extremely emotional. I recall breaking down in tears on at least one occasion. At the time I did not feel the nature of questioning was overly invasive or inappropriate. I believed I was receiving needed discipline from God’s organization, and I simply had to man up and see it through for the benefit of my marriage. Of course, I now cringe at the thought of sharing such personal matters with men who had no more right to this information than my local postman or storekeeper, but at the time I was convinced it was necessary. [97]
Finally, a decision was reached that I would not be disfellowshipped. Instead, I would be “publicly reproved.” This involved an announcement being read in both Bramhall and Wilmslow Kingdom Halls that I had been reproved for some unspecified sin. Normally such an announcement is deemed necessary only if the indiscretion is widely known, but for some reason (I believe due to my recent dispute with Geoffrey) it was decided that members of both congregations needed to know that I had done something seriously wrong. As well as no longer being an elder, “restrictions” would be imposed. I would be prohibited from offering comments during meeting items or giving talks for some months.
It felt as though my downfall was complete, but I was prepared to go through the disgrace and humiliation if this was the price for correcting my problems and starting a new life with Dijana. After everything that I had put her through, she would be my focus from this point forward.
Before long, it was time for us to relocate. We had decided to tow our belongings in a horse-box trailer that we bought on eBay—but we were unaware when collecting it that it dated to the ’50s, and the wheels (one of which fell off shortly after we bought it) were so outdated it was impossible to replace them. We paid a Wilmslow elder who was also a mechanic to perform a makeshift repair and resolved to drive at 50 mph or slower all the way to Croatia. However, we only made it as far as Birmingham (85 miles) before beholding the terrifying spectacle of one of our trailer wheels rolling past our car as we snaked downhill across several lanes of the M6 freeway. After regaining control and pulling over, we called the tow truck and had it take the horse-box back to Manchester while we carried on in our old Ford Mondeo with less than half our belongings. The car had an overheating engine, so we had to stop every two hours to top off the water during the long drive across Europe. I am still not sure how we completed the journey.
[98] After a stressful two days on the road we were relieved to make it to Croatia on August 30, 2009. Dijana’s parents were delighted to finally have us with them. They had been without their daughter for three years, and I could tell they had missed her. Their house, where we still live, is in a small one-road village 20 minutes’ drive south of Sisak. From living in the suburbs of Manchester, we now found ourselves in a quiet rural community where people grow their own produce and keep livestock. Tractor engines chugging, roosters crowing, geese honking and dogs barking make up a large part of the typical ambience. When we first arrived, it felt like an idyllic place to take some time out and build a new life together without disturbance.
The local Sisak congregation was extremely welcoming. In the time it takes to find your seat at the Kingdom Hall you feel like you have shaken the hands of everyone in the town, such is the warmth and enthusiasm. At the time, the congregation had approximately 100 publishers and only a handful of elders. There was initial excitement when I arrived because, being an MTS graduate, it was assumed I could help ease the burden on the overstretched elder body. But I made it clear as soon as I arrived that this would not be possible, at least for some time. I told them I was under restrictions that had been placed on me back in the UK, concerning which they would shortly be informed. [99] For the time being I would only be allowed to attend meetings and go in the preaching work. Not that this presented a huge problem for me, since I could barely speak Croatian anyway and would have found it daunting to prepare meaningful comments or talks.
It would take nine months for my restrictions to be lifted, but by the end of this period I had undergone an unexpected transformation. The cautionary advice given to me by a close friend back home was to prove extremely astute.
Footnotes 96 - 99
[96] One elder from Bramhall was drafted in to sit on the three-man committee. It would not surprise me if this was at Geoffrey’s insistence. I now look back with some relief that, during my brief time as an elder, I was never called upon to deliberate at one of these tribunals.
[97] When preparing this chapter I came across the letters and emails I sent to Wilmslow and Bramhall elders over this period, which are still on my hard drive and now make for disturbing reading. The tone is self-abasing as I prostrate myself, scrambling to avoid disfellowshipping at a time when rescuing my marriage should have been my only concern. It is obvious that I was a completely different, more servile person than I am now, and acting under powerful forces I was then unable to comprehend.
[98] The car would die completely a month after our arrival.
[99] Usually when a person moves between congregations a “letter of recommendation” needs to follow them from their old congregation to tell the new elders whether they are in “good standing” or not. Quite often, the letter takes some time to arrive—especially if it needs to be translated by the branch office.
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KIMSILVIO
Thanks LMSA. This is a very different rendition of what Dijana told me. Her parents don’t need care, they are (or at least at up until a year ago) fine. My understanding was that dijana went back home and Lloyd followed her and agreed to move there to be with her.
i know it’s a minor detail but it makes me realise that he hasn’t been telling the truth for all these years and continues with the sane pattern of pity party blame everyone else, lie and do whatever you need to do or say to get out of trouble …..