Conventions

by Holden Caufield 19 Replies latest jw experiences

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  Phoebe

  The long 8 days conventions were awful. The Wembly Stadium convention stanlivedeath was at was horrible.

  My poor mum was trying to cope with us kids, because were camping on land the WT had organised for us. No hot water to wash. Cooking on a camping stove. We were in a big field with other tents and the rows had names, I think ours was Salvation Row or something. The chemical toilets they provided couldn't cope and some brothers came along and emptied them into the river!

  It really wasn't so bad when I was a teenager because conventions/assemblies were our ONLY social life. It's where you met other teenagers and swapped addresses and wrote to each other. We'd spend weeks beforehand planning and sewing our conventions outfits. Basically, looking back, it was where everyone went husband/wife shopping.

  Then we discovered volunteering, that was brilliant because you got to escape listening to the talks. We spent hours in the kitchens making sandwiches. One convention I sliced tomatoes for 3 days solid.We never heard a word of the talks!

  When I took my own kids, especially as babies, I realised how awful it had been for my mum. Trying to get small children to sit still, it was impossible and plain stupid. I usually ended up leaving early. Last time we went as a family, before my husband left it, we took the kids home at lunch time. It was an amazing feeling driving away.

  I think conventions/assemblies are absolutely dreadful, As an adult, I didn't know one person who actually looked forward to them. After my husband left the WT, I found it impossible to go to the conventions because I had no one to go with and not one person in my cong would help me. One year, an elder's wife, shouted at me in the hall 'you'll have to answer to Jehovah for not going' she yelled at me in front of everyone.

  I am so glad I'm out of it all. It took over 60 years but wow, I'm finally free of it.
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  stan livedeath

  what our dub parents put us kids through back then would now be considered child abuse in the UK
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  WTWizard

  For me, they basically stripped all the fun out of them and left me the drudgery. Time wasted learning this nonsense is time better spent doing other things. Like listening to real music, watching videos downloaded from YouTube (and yes, many are better than some of those movies that people waste money buying), learning something for real (and, that could be anything, from a science or trade to learning a foreign language--and, to balance the hebrew in your bible, you could find out what "Satan" actually means in Sanskrit), or relaxing.

  And one hint on what "Satan" means in Sanskrit is that it is quite the opposite to what it means in hebrew. In hebrew, it means "adversary", but in Sanskrit it means "truth". That is one thing I learned with the time it could have taken to waste going to those Grand Boasting Sessions to have the opposite sex stripped right out of my experience.
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  dozy

  I enjoyed them , but mainly for the social aspect. I always volunteered , usually in food service ( till the society scrapped it ) so thankfully I didn't usually sit through many long boring sessions.
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  ShirleyW

  Holden that clip of the 1958 Assembly which was held at the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium is the one where my mother got baptized and was in UberDub mode until she died, which of course wasn't in her plans since she thought she would be walking hand in hand into Paradise with my father who died eight years before she did. Well, so much for the happy life in Paradise theory !!
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  RubaDub

  I'm not quite ready to push daisies yet but there were moments during those 8 miserable days that I would've given anything for some escape.

  FatFreek ...

  I can barely remember them but I do recall squeezing under my mother's seat to get out of the sun.

  As time went on, I just had this recurring nightmare that they would give the last part of the day to Freddie Franz. Instead of the sessions ending at 9PM as scheduled (yes, 9PM back then), FF would talk and talk and talk. It was not unusual for him to go to 9:30PM or later. Once, I remember about 9:45.

  I thought it was a "wonderful provision" when they cut them to 7 days and then to 5.

  Rub a Dub
  
  
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  smiddy3

  It must have been when i was winding down from from the religion at a four day Convention because on this Saturday Arvo was an AFL grand final and I snuck off to the local pub to watch it and came back after it finished .

  For some reason in OZ many Conventions clashed with an AFL grand final.

  This is going back 30 or 40 years ago now.

  In those days many attendants had radios stuck to their ears listening to the footy scores during the Convention.

  as they were walking around the grounds during security watch.
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  joe134cd

  To be honest as a young kid I detested the conventions. I remember been forced to sit and getting a smack when I didnt. As o got older I looked forward to them as a chance to socialise ( and I guess look at the opposite sex). To be honest I was never really interested in the content of the assembly, and in the years leading up to me physically leaving I would attend for the intermission and drive off as soon as the program started.
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  ZindagiNaMilegiDobaara

  Wt Wizard

  Please get your facts straight. I can speak sanskrit. You are wrong about Satan in Sanskrit.Check out this link

  https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-meaning-of-the-word-Satan-in-Hindi-and-Sanskrit

  Go Figure.
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  Roddy

  I remember when they had night sessions. Three sessions a day. I liked them. If you had a boring speaker you took a nap. Good traveling. Dramas were good, food was good, all your friends were there, good socializing between sessions, everybody was nice. Good memories.