by NoLongerAjw 32 Replies latest jw friends
Kinda new here, but what a walk down memory lane! God I hated going out in service - it was the worst, I agree on the sunday mtg's they were soo boring! And enevitably, my dad (the loyal elder) would always say to us kids, "So whoever is going out in service let's go" and I would be like - "yeah, right i'm going home" and then after the usual threats off we would merrily go! How nice it would have been to just sleep in and watch cartoons!
Thanks for the memories! ;)
Daisy
All of them. They all had their bad points. I HATED the Sunday talk, sooo boring. But I think the Watchtower Study was worse cause at least there was a visiting speaker for the public talk so he was something different to stare at while he drivelled away. But the Watchtower Study was so bad cause it was the most boring material. And we had to study it the night before just to hear it ALL OVER AGAIN the next day! UGH! If I HAD to pick which meeting was the least bothersome it would be the Tuesday night bookstudy cause it was only an hour long. Thursdays were bad, too. Then in our cong they changed the Thursday to Friday and I freaked out cause I didnt want to miss watching "Miami Vice" haha. Thankfully, we got home in time to watch it. We didnt go out in service much (thank goodness) but when we did I freaked out because I am terribly shy and just the mere thought of knocking on a strangers door and trying to engage them in discussion made me become nearly paralyzed with fear.
When I was real small and lived with my non-jw grandma for awhile, she would take me to her church; I absolutely loved it cause all the kids got to go into the basement, have cookies and draw pictures of moses and jesus and the ark, etc. I learned to appreciate the bible more from that than all my years of sitting there at the meetings.
My First Wedding - No kidding
ALL OF THEM!!!
For me, the wt study and service meeting were toleable when I could pull microphone duty.
I made the book studies more tolerable when I started attending a saturday morning bs at a nearby congregation because I couldn't make the Tuesday nite one in my own congregation.
I did the same with Sunday meetings, going to other congregations where my [very few jw] friends attended and being at the meeting with them made it a little better. That lasted only a very short time before my df'ing.
There was one Sunday meeting I went to when I was like 19 or so that was interesting. I was delivering pizzas for a Pizza Hut restaurant at the time and helped close on Saturday nites. Well of course closing time meant helping yourself to the draft beer on tap while you worked (thanks, Kathy!) so when I finally did find my way home at 4am after riding around with some buddies for a while drinking I was still very drunk the next morning and felt the hangover coming on. (speaking as if relating an experience to a convention crowd) Driving to the Kingdom Hall I happened to look down in the floor of the car, Brother Righteous, and Jehovah blessed me with a single unopened can of Milwaukee's Best so I drank His blessing and then chewed some strong Wrigley's Spearming so as not to stumble my brothers and sisters and I really enjoyed that meeting!
mike.
"Well done, Blind Squirrel! You've found an impressive nut!
I hated 'em all!!
My husband wasn't a witness and I had two babies, a year and a half apart...god, it was such a pain in the ass to haul both kids, the diaper bag, and all my books into the meetings...and what was the point anyway??? Like I got anything out of them LOL
I do remember a funny story about the bookstudy...we were studying the creation book and I was sitting next to an elder that I had known my whole life (Ken Titus...guy with a great sense of humor)
Anyway, the brother was reading and I saw the pitfall before he got to it...I had that weird feeling of knowing what was coming before it actually happened. I saw the word 'organism' and yep, sure enough when ole Randy got to it, he said 'orgasm'....there was this deep, excruciating silence until all of a sudden, Ken burst out laughing. He laughed so hard, he cried and of course the rest of us couldn't stop either. Poor Randy...he was bald and the red spread up his face and covered his entire head! Oh god, it was so funny....
Okay, so I guess there were times when the meetings were fun
Dana
"A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I hated all conventions. They make you feel like you are supposed to like it. When in reality everyone is just bored stiff. The weekly meetings sucked too. Especially the double meeting on Thursday.
I did not have a problem with a specific meeting...they all have their enjoyable and painful sides.
What bugged me the most was the amount of time a good JW had to devote. I wondered why God gave us an interest in science, art, music, etc. and then demanded we not have the time to pursue them. I wondered why God wanted me to go to meetings three times a week, just to hear information that I knew by rote. I figured one meeting a week would be enough, it could be like a refresher course.
I first quit going to circuit assemblies. We had quite a distance to drive to them, with small children in tow. We were always late, so we would have to spend the weekend sitting in a hallway (brand new assembly hall and not enough chairs), listening to an inadequate speaker system; you could barely hear the talks. Then, the brothers and sisters that did come into the hallway to stare at us like we were the scum of the earth.
Since I got nothing out of those assemblies, and the assemblies only contained information that I knew, I stopped going to them. The little information that I did not know, new publications or "new truths", I would learn these shortly afterwards at the KH.
Richard, who no longer spends his weekends being bored just to please a fairy tale
I loathed every bloody one of them!!!!
Well, they were all horrendously boring, but the one I dreaded all year was the Memorial. Even though it was a relatively short meeting, and often pre-empted one of the regular ones, I found it insufferable, at least for the last several years that I went. I knew that I needed the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and to have to refuse it as it passed by...it was horrible!!
If Satan wanted to make a mockery of the Communion meal, is there a better way than having the bread and wine passed among a group of "Christians" and have each one personally refuse it?
