Did you Suffer for Service?

Mysterious

Didnt you love being dragged door to door as a kid in the wind and snow, sub zero temperature wearing a skirt and you were told to SMILe and inform the householder you wanted to be there? (dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn on one of the few days you should have off from school)

And then there is that wonderful service car. Good on gas because the back seat is half the size. Stuffed in between two witnesses generous on the donut breaks.

The good old service car of course has a malfunctioning heater and or airconditioner. Whichever one is needed at the time is broken but the other works of course. Foggy windows, icy driveways. The brother who ate a bean burrito.

Beware of dog signs..no sign where there should have been one.

That lovely staircase with cement steps to the basement where the field service group meets. The one with spiderwebs and black widows while you are wearing sandals and shoes.

Working through lunch hour..going out after the sunday meeting and missing lunch entirely. Being short time and forced to do "approach work" on the street.

Seeing schoolmates and workmates, knowing you will see these same again monday morning. Offering literature you dont relate to to people you do. Defending beliefs you have come to be embarrassed about. Forgetting to read what you are offering. Overzealous pioneers who want to skip coffee. Underzealous pioneers who want to have a long coffee but then insist on "taking the time off" and working longer.

Being seen in public in dress clothes looking like a bible-based-dork.

And of course..doing it in the first place!

Why did we do all this again? Oh right..for the "joy of service". Anyone remember what that meant? I dont

Edit: 400 posts.

fleaman uk

In nearly 30 Years of Ministry including Pioneering for 5 of those,i can honestly say i didnt enjoy 1 single minute!!I hated it,it was so very pointless.Joy?absolutely not...suffer? yes indeedy.

Lady Lee

OMG I can relate to every single piece of that For sure you are another Canuck

No matter how many pairs of mittens or how good your boots you were always freezing. There just is no way to dress in a skirt in sub zero temp to keep warm. We lived in a big city and really cold days were "apartment building" days - which mean you were going from the freezing cold to walking around an overheated apartment dressed as if you were still outside.

And if you did wind up doing house to house no sane person wanted to keep the door open to chat. Heck I didn't want to be there to chat.

Atilla

To be honest, I kinda liked service. Of course their were some moments that sucked but in general I had a good time. I enjoy talking to people, seeing new places-houses, eating out and best of all, hanging out with my friends all day. When I first started pioneering, our small rural KH had 12 pioneers, more than half of the pioneers were my closest friends who were my age. We were in charge, formed the car groups how we liked them, rocked out to music the entire day, ate out 3 times a day, and kept the time rolling baby. It was a lot of fun and I did have like 6 Bible studies at the time.

It was around the second year that we started to get older, friends started to drop out, and the hypocrisy became too much.

Netty

EXACTLY!! I really really relate to this. Not the sub zero stuff, but still I suffered with the exact opposite. By the time we met for service and hit the streets, it was already a good 100 degrees out, and yes the sisters at that time HAD to wear panty hose. Must be the reason why I hate to wear them now.

As a teenager, I always tried to get this girl named Audrey to be my partner, we would walk, very very slow, talk and giggle, if we had a house where no one was home, we would stay there for the longest time, (people would think we were talking to someone) just talking and giggling. giggle giggle giggle, (later learned that Audrey, elders daughter, smoked pot) no wonder all the giggling.

On more than once ocassion, we actually asked the householder for water, be were so thirsty walking the streets in the heat. We always got the water, guess they took pity on us.

And the part about being worried you would see a kid from school, YUK! If I knew it was the house they lived in, I would try to work it so whoever was working with us would get the house.

THE highlight of the day was lunch time,

ahhhhh, the memories...

Nosferatu

And then there is that wonderful service car

LOL! Pioneers usually owned used police cars where the back doors don't work from the inside.

Remember how we were taught not to let the householder see us writing their information down on the house to house records?

dh

Didnt you love being dragged door to door as a kid in the wind and snow, sub zero temperature wearing a skirt and you were told to SMILe and inform the householder you wanted to be there? (dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn on one of the few days you should have off from school)

everything but the skirt, and no i did not enjoy it at all!

i do think it's one of those things that you can only get stronger from though.

black ghost

yeah yeah,

I had poor blood circulation and i used to be stood at the doors in winter with my flary mary flowery skirt wrapped round my ears in the wind and my fingers and lips would be bright blue. - and you know if a black person goes blue thats serious sh*t!

many times my mother was told by horrified persons that she should be ashamed of herself bringing me out and my being made to go door to door was tantamount to child abuse.

yeah yeah i wish the authorities had taken me away.(sigh)

Frannie Banannie

Suffer? Ohhhh, absolutely.....

At the beginning of one week, as I had recently acquired the use of a cane because of some bursitis in my hips, my oldest son called me from school....he broke his toe playing basketball barefoot in the gym....trip to the ER for crutches....

A few days later, my daughter was at the babysitter's house and was horsing around and jumping off furniture, when she misjumped onto a cup and broke her foot.....trip to the ER for crutches.....they were starting to look funny at this single parent with a cane and TWO kids on crutches.....

That Friday, my youngest son was running through the house and tripped over his feet landing belly and thighs on a very hot space heater, BUT....as if that weren't enough, later that day, while I was conducting a bible study, our kids were all outside playing when the bible study's dog got loose and bit my youngest on the eye......trip to the ER.....it was a puncture wound to his eyebrow and a slit just below the rim of his eyelid, which didn't require stitches, but the dog had to be tested...it wasn't the first bite complaint against the dog.....the ER staff was REALLY looking at us funny NOW......

So.....there we were.....one single parent with a limp and a cane.....two teens on crutches....and one small-fry in bandages......the looks we got when we went to the grocery store and out in field service were way beyond the ogling by the ER staff.....

And then there was the time my youngest, being very intent on getting baptised, had asked one of the elders to pick him up for field service on morning.....he was only 12 yrs old.....it was raining and cold and windy that morning.......and about 45 mins. before time for the elder to pick him up, my son went outside to wait, sans jacket, despite my urging......about an hour and a half later, he came back in frozen, wet....shivering....and crying his heart out......

The elder had left his showboat of a car in the KH parking lot, squeezed into a mid-sized vehicle with a buncha pioneers and drove over to tell my son that they didn't have room for him in the car.

Frannie B

Bryan

It was 1966; I was just over two years old. My father, age 27, had kidnapped me in California and was on the lamb in Louisville, KY. He writes to his mother and father on Monday:

"I gave my talk yesterday and everyone enjoyed it I guess. Bryan had that virus Saturday night but is better now. I went in service Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. Hope to build my time up."

So the fact that his two year old son (me) was sick, was not enough to keep him from going "in service" Sunday morning, nor from giving his talk. The need to please, or impress, the others of the congregation, he feels building up his time up is more important than taking care of his family.

He continues in his letter:

"Did dad talk to Ted (his uncle) about Johnny Horn & ask him if the circuit servant said anything about me. Sure would like to know."

My father obviously was preoccupied with what the higher-ups thought of him. I?m curious if the Circuit Servant knew he was hiding me from my mother? I suppose the important thing is that they knew he was working to get his hours up going door to door.

Yes, I suffered in service.

Bryan

Did you Suffer for Service?

Share this