by LDH 63 Replies latest jw friends
Somewhere in all that I met a young pioneer stud who, after two years and countless episodes of throwing up the food he bought me, married me and took me away from all that. And we are still living happily ever after, especially since we're no longer pioneers.
Ah-Ha! It happened in Pioneer school too!
So glad you found happiness.
Jean
Very surreal experience. My wife and I attended once we renewed our pioneering after our son was grown. We were older than most of the participants and actually had about thirty years of pioneering experience between us. We were not all that excited because of all the buildup, status and JW elitism associated with the experience.
Nonetheless, we prepared well and gave it a go. We found the discussions stifling. Sentence outlines were read out of the text. Scriptures were read. Very little "putting of a meaning" into anything.
Nonetheless, we located a good "delta blues" station on the radio and that made the one hour commute memorable.
One year later I got my payback. I was asked to fill in for the departing circuit overseer as an "instructor". I was paired with an experienced C.O. who did a nice job with the text but in practical advice was a loony bin. He encouraged the mostly late teens to late twenties group to become entrepeneurs. He said it would be difficult to pioneer on an hourly wage. Find or make a product you can market. OK.
tms
ps While the "school" was not what I thought it could be, I did see benefits. The young people got together after hours and seemed to have a good time.
Yup, Dover New Hampshire, 1986, still have the book and my class picture. I'll have to scan it and put it up on my site sometime. LOL
Yes, 1993.
Actually, like Cruzn, I loved to study, so it was up my alley. Plus, we had an inordinate amount of brothers, Elders (I think 4) and Ministerial Servants also attending the class. It was a large class but very full of people that were grown ups with jobs. Only 2 women didn't work, wives of elders. I think 4 teenagers...... living at home still.
It was conducted by Brother Meier and Brother St. Clair. I really did benefit in a way that still carries with me.
Brother Meier encouraged research, even through secular and Christian books. Brother St. Clair was very much into practicality.
One piece of advice....... Brother St Clair asked what the rule was about nylons and service..........oy!!!!!!! Many hands, many opinions (like assholes). He got so frustrated. He finally said, "The rule is, "if you have good legs, you don't have to wear nylons!" Hehe........ he was also gave an example of a girl who refused to shave her legs wehre it was commonplace to shave and be neat........said, even though it was not a rule, the area that was being preached to demanded either nylons or a shave.
Brother St Clair asked what the rule was about nylons and service........simplesally
simplesally, Was that Wendel St. Clair?
tms
Nonetheless, we prepared well and gave it a go. We found the discussions stifling. Sentence outlines were read out of the text. Scriptures were read. Very little "putting of a meaning" into anything.
Exactly my feelings.............."stick to the material" and very little extra discussion.
Simplesally............was that Arlen Meier? If so, he is an amazing mind. We thoroughly enjoyed him. I believe St. Clair was another CO they had here after we quit.
Arlen Meier is the CO we had in the mid 70's and he had interesting advice for counting your service time. "Make out your schedule, stick to it as well as you can, and don't worry about the details. Turn in your time, according to the schedule you made and sort of followed. That was neat."
I was one month short of attending, however I would usually serve food at them............ As if that counts.....
Somewhere in all that I met a young pioneer stud who, after two years and countless episodes of throwing up the food he bought me, married me and took me away from all that. And we are still living happily ever after, especially since we're no longer pioneers.
that is so sweet.
i luv reading all these...some threads resonate more than others. this one makes me think of that scene at the end of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", where the people who were abducted by aliens all come walking off the ship...they all shared a common, strange experience and only others like them can relate to them...
(I'm pretty sure that I've posted this story before, but since it's a new thread... here goes.)
I went to pioneer school in August of 2002. Oddly enough, it helped me quite a bit on my way out of the Watchtower.
For anyone who had grown up a JW and always studied well, as I had, there was definitely nothing new in the textbook. But I did have two rather interesting instructors.
One was Robert Hahn. He was an organization man through-and-through: former military, intelligent, sharp-witted, critical, dogmatic, and obsessed with procedure and efficiency. He would often toss out some bit of scriptural 'understanding' that had last appeared in print 30 years ago. (I did catch him in a mistake, however; and being fairly annoyed with his dogmatism, I brought in the highlighted Watchtower article to show him that he was wrong. )
The other one was Darrell Marlowe. He was without a doubt the most compassionate and reasonable CO--or elder at any level--that I've known. To some degree you could call him a reformer from within; he tried hard to orient his congregations away from rules and dogmatism and more towards charity, mutual support, etc. But there was only so much he could do. I'm pretty sure he was still a captive to the concept of the "organization."
Darrell was quite a scholar by JW standards, and he did his best to make the class stimulating and challenging for even the experienced students. What affected me the most, however, was a side comment he made while talking about the "pioneer spirit". He said: "The word 'pioneer' is nowhere in the Bible. A more scriptural term would be 'evangelizer'." It hit me that he was referring to the scripture that says that "some were given as evangelizers." If some were given, it logically followed that not all were given, and thus the Society was wrong to insist that every JW had to participate in the 'preaching work'.
After spending an evening agonizing over this conclusion, I spoke to Darrell about it after the session the next day. I found out that was exactly what he believed. That was a watershed moment for me; I realized that it was possible to question--even disagree with--a major WTS doctrine without turning into an evil apostate. I went on to question 1914, the parousia, blood, etc. and the rest is history.
I'm sure that Darrell must have been deeply disappointed to hear that I left the Witnesses, and would probably be even more disappointed to learn that I'm an atheist now. I guess we're even, since I am deeply saddened that he's decided to stay and uphold the Witness cult. But I still think he's one of the most genuinely compassionate people I have ever met or expect to meet.
August 1990, Woodburn, OR.
My instructors were Guy Pierce, (yes of the GB) and Don Arnoux. Both had been our C.O.s prior to the school, and our house was the designated Phone house (meaning the C.O.s would come to our home to use the phone during their stay in my hometown.) So by the time of Pio. School, I knew them fairly well.
I certainly don't have an interesting doctrinal story to tell like Euph, , but 1990 was the launch year for the "Illuminators" rewrite. It was very exciting, there were now WIDE MARGINS, LOL. Also, besides minor revisions, there was an entire new chapter specifically about the NWT. Very exciting. Yes, I'm being sarcastic, but at the time it was very exciting for some of us who lived and breathed the organization.
Like some of the others on this thread, I loved the school environment and learning new stuff, so I had a good time at Pio Sch. Plus I had my own little room, no roommate. In retrospect, I realize I really didn't learn anything, and the chapter on the NWT is infantile in its reasoning, but at the time... very exciting. HA!
The instructors were polar opposites, though both always very friendly and kind to me. Arnoux was like someone's grandpa, and actually was a grandpa, having entered into circuit work after raising his son. Pierce is also a parent (step-dad I believe. I have met his son, he is at bethel also.) Arnoux was really bad with names and faces. I mean REALLY bad. There were two girls in the class with similar hair color, and he couldn't keep them straight for anything. They switched places at the beginning of the second week, and Arnoux carried on for two days before he figured out their trick. Pierce noticed the second he walked in the door, but didn't give up the joke. Silly, but memorable.
There was a sister there who had taken three tries at pioneering, and had finally made it to school, causing herself great hardship. She stopped pioneering shortly after school, and later left the organization. Last I heard though, she still believed it all, though her daughters had made their total escape, earning the label of "apostate."
I don't keep in touch with any from my school, but last I heard, only three (not counting me) had left the organization. It was a pretty hard-core group.
Well, that's enough of that. LOL.
O
