A mother of three children and a very loving husband. We both got baptised in 1984 and were very pleased to realise that life had a meaning and their was a purpose to all the bad that happened in the world. Life was good for a few years and we enjoyed being very active as witnesses - field service/quickbuilds. We had a few challenges on the way but the biggest one was the disassociating of our daughter (the only one of our 3 children to ever be baptised). It was a very traumatic time for us as parents as it was for her to make that very difficult decision but unfortunately we didn't handle it very well and tried to uphold the society's view of shunning. This was very alien to us as our children have all been close - and to just not believe and to be shunned for that seemed very ridiculous. We tried desperately to 'do the right thing' but emotionally we were wrecks - it was killing us! We just wanted to be able to have our family back together again. Eventually our daughter married and had a baby - another difficult situation to handle if continuing in the same thought as the witnesses. Our daughter at the time was starting uni doing her degree and so we offered to babysit our grand-daughter. Things went along quite happily for a year or so and then we were visited!!!! We were fraternising with the enemy and privileges were being taken from my husband. All the assumptions were a lie and eventually six months later we were visited again and told that they had been wrong and that they were missing us at the meeting (we now haven't been going to meetings for about a year) and to wipe the slate clean and everything will be okay!!! What hypocrisy. The lies and deceit really hurt - especially when you have come 'from the world' and have a comparison on lifestyles we actually thought this life 'in the truth' was ideal. How we were fooled - very cleverly!!! It has been hurtful but we feel that those elders did us the biggest favour in that our 'veil' has been lifted and made us see the 'real truth'. We are so thankful that we have our family back as a complete unit again with no guilt feelings - life is so good. We enjoy day after day now in the present - not just looking forward to the future developments - who would realistically want to live with these people forever!!!!!