Posts by life is to short

56

Who REALLY believed in the idea of living forever on earth??

by stuckinarut2 in

seriously.....even when you were 100% in "the truth", did you really believe in living forever?

?

life is to short

Totally Why else would I have put my life on hold, not had kids, buy a home, go to school, live life. I put everything off for the new system. I believed everything that was told to me. If I questioned anything I was told my thinking was skewed. My whole life was the JW world and I thought everyone felt the same.

Now I look back and realize that I was so stupid. If everyone felt the same then why are there JW kids. Why did the parents not pioneer and go where the need was great, go to Bethel like I did. My husband kept telling me to keep my blinders on. One day they just feel off and I realized that no one else bought all the garbage that I bought otherwise there would be no kids at the meetings, no one would own homes, no one would be buying new cars because no one could really afford them living on part time minimum wage like we were.

I was just so stupid to keep my blinders on as long as I did,

LITS

48

How many here gave up having a family for the sake of the "truth"?

by stuckinarut2 in

this is a sensitive topic for many of us i know, but i am wondering how many here actually gave up the idea of having a family "in this system" for the sake of "kingdom activity or service"??.

start the count here with my wife and i.

life is to short

Myself also. I always wanted kids. I always thought I would have children. I even had names picked out. But all of that was to wait till the new system as we had to pioneer and be where the need was great and sacrifice our lives now for the kingdom.

It's provably for the best as I did not wake up util my mid 40's and I would have really missed up the children if we did have them, as I was such a stupid devoted drone to the cult.

LITS

59

Kendrick " Letter of Introduction " from Elders regarding Candace Conti Case

by flipper in

as many of us saw in the pbs news hour program and the abc news nightline program the elders from one congregation failed to communicate properly to the elders in another congregation concerning the child molester jonathan kendrick when he moved to a new congregation.

i have parts of this " introduction letter " from the fremont congregation to the oakley congregation elders so you can read it for yourself and decide how irresponsible these wt appointed elders were.

dated 1/16/98 it opens : .

life is to short

This is what happened in my congregation as you know flipper. I just happened to know that the husband of a new family that moved into my hall had raped his own daughter and molested two other children and had served 20 years in prison for it. While in prison he became a JW and once out married a women with a small little girl divorced her dated my sister and many other women who you guessed it had little girls and then married another JW women with a little girl and they had a little girl together.

I knew his past and yet the elders were furious with me because I knew it. They never received a letter on him from his prior congregation only the wife and daughter did. What's with that? When I told the elders what I knew of his past they told me if it was true they would have gotten a letter about it from his former hall and since they didn't what I was saying did not mean anything to them and I was to keep my mouth SHUT!

I went and got the police and court records myself to prove to the elders what I was saying was very much indeed true. The elders were beyond infuriated with me and refused to even look at the records much less take a copy of them. I had made copies for every elder in the hall. Only the CoBE took a copy and who knows if he looked at it or threw it away. I guess they finally after six months got some sort of letter from is prior hall about him and I swear if it were not for me he would have held some kind of position in the hall.

I was a true believer before all of this happened. I truly thought that they would do the right thing, it was probably the one of the hardest times of my life. The elders, the CO and even the DO forbid me to tell anyone what I knew. No parents were allowed to know period. And as you know flipper I did not keep quiet.

I realized it was not the truth because of this. It just totally broke my heart to see first hand that they do not care about children, it still breaks my heart. How can people do this? How can they go dtd and try to act like they are upstanding people knowing that they are allowing this?

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing...Albert Einstein

LITS

33

This Year's Memorial

by TD in

jw
friends

perhaps i'm just getting older and crankier, but it really seems to me that the jw faith is deteriorating at an accelerated rate.. case in point: this year's memorial talk.

it was one of the most incoherent messes i've ever heard.

(and i've heard a lot of memorial talks over the last 50 years....).

life is to short

I went tot he Memorial where I live in the Northwest part of the US and it was the same. The talk just made no sense to me and the speaker kept looking at his watch. It was really distracting. He just kept flipping through scriptures and I was just wanting it all to end so I did not pay as close of attention as I probably should have.

LITS

31

Where is it said , not to independently do deep study of scripture

by william draper in

i do believe it is written somewhere in jw literature .

life is to short

And to think they slam the Catholic's for not letting their believers read the Bible and relaying only on the Priests or at least we were told that. The more I know of the facts of the religion I was born into the more I realize that it is the same as the Catholic's just the names and titles have been changed.

LITS

22

The 50 Ways to Be Disfellowshipped

by Wild_Thing in

jw
friends

i was wondering ... what are all of the "official" reasons provided by elders for disfellowshipping someone?

i know the most common reasons are adultery and fornication, but what about the others?

a couple of years ago i traveled back to my hometown` and one of my old jw acquaintances told me that her grown son had been disfellowshipped for refusing to stop associating with another disfellowshipped person.

life is to short

I was threatened with being DF'ed for causing divisions in the hall because I told a mom that one of the brothers who was holding and taking care of children while at the meetings and was having sleepovers at his home for children was a registered sex offender and was listed as such by the state we live in.

LITS

96

21 Years as an Elder, 5 as an MS, I will never be that guy again.

by James Jack in

i was deleted as the cobe after i let my adult child move back home and he admitted that he fornicated under my roof while my wife and i where away on a rbc project.

of course the elder mode in me kicked him out of the house.. the elders moved quickly to remove me because i was too involved in "theocractic activities", i had neglected my adult son.. i accepted this primarily because i didn't want to serve with a boe that did not want me.

i was devastated however because it was the only life i knew.

life is to short

Just saw your post and wanted to add my welcome.

LITS

107

I have a serious problem

by My Name is of No Consequence in

i have a serious problem that i cannot solve on my own.

i was born-in but am only in by a thread at this point.

i quit the tms a few weeks ago and wrote a post on it.

life is to short

Also I have to add that this does indeed look like grooming as with a pedophile grooming. I do not mean to be an alarmist but the hall I was in had three child molesters in it and one of them did just what this guy is doing with your son. This pedophile would pick a child and study with him, buddy up etc. He did it was single mom's but be careful very careful. The elders all knew it and did nothing. In fact one of the pedophiles even had a sleep over at his home and one of the elders let his grandson go. The pedophile raped a girl so I guess they felt he was OK to be around boys?

Just a word to the wise.

LITS.

107

I have a serious problem

by My Name is of No Consequence in

i have a serious problem that i cannot solve on my own.

i was born-in but am only in by a thread at this point.

i quit the tms a few weeks ago and wrote a post on it.

life is to short

I totally agree with millie210 and worf.

You need to jump on this fast. I was a lot like worf expect I am the wife and my husband was an elder. I let a lot of things go that were wrong because I was a women who was supposed to be in subjection, plus it's just not my nature to be in your face. I always thought being nice and kind would be the best. You know the old saying you catch more "fly's with honey than vinegar."

That is not how it works in this religion. The more time you let pass the more aggressive they become and then they throw it in you face of 'well why didn't you say something back then or step up and do something if it was so important to you' 'It;s all your fault because you allowed it by not saying anything or doing something.' I have truly and honestly been told that I allowed it all the garbage that happened to me to happen because I did not speak up loud enough.

I did and did and did say things and tried to talk to them but like you I was told I can't speak right now or I will call you next week. Next week never came. I even went over to one sister's home who used to like to go out in service alone with my husband while I was at work. It drive me crazy that they were going out by themselves while they were both married to other people but I was treated like a child for being upset over it. I talked to my husband till I was blue in the face and I tired and tried to talk to this sister but like with you she was always to busy or something so this one day I just went to her hone. While this sister was beyond mad at me for daring to even confront her. She shoved a foot stool at me while she sat in a tall chair looking down on me and treated me like I was a stupid child. I begged and begged and begged my husband not to go alone but this sister lived down the road and she wanted to pioneer and she did not have a car and we were her only ride and I was the crazy one for even thinking it was wrong, yada, yada, yada. That happened 20 years ago and it still hurts till this day. I had a right as the wife to say no, but my no was shot down. Now my husband tells me I was just to nice and I should have been more aggressive. Really I thought I was aggressive, I thought I was speaking out, no one listened or cared about my feelings. Even now I do not know what more I could have done to stop it expect for just leaving my marriage.

That was just on example of many, many, many things that happened to me and many were worse than that one I just wrote about. Way worse.

So you have got to jump on this and do it now or you will look back like I have and regret it. And I mean really regret it.

LITS

34

The "5 Pillars" of Witness life...

by stuckinarut2 in

oh, there is one brother that keeps prattling on about "the 5 pillars of faith and worship".

- prayer.

- personal study.

life is to short

I have heard it all my life, They used to liken the five meetings to our five fingers. The example I always heard was being at the meetings was like hanging on a cliff by one hand and waiting for help to come, our help was Jehovah of course. So if we were hanging on a cliff what finger would we stop using? None of course because having a strong grip was life saving. Thus the same with the five meetings. If we missed just one of them we would loose our grip on the "truth" and we could loose our life.

In your example I think it was prayer, personal study, meeting attendance, field service and spiritual association. The spiritual association always got me because I was never included in anything. In fact when we pioneered with ten other pioneers in the hall we were never once invited to do anything outside of service with any of them. I would have them to my home but NEVER would they allow my husband who was an elder by the way into their homes. This one pioneer who soon because a prominent elder told me we were just professionals just doing our job? What?

Anywho I always felt with the example I had only four fingers because even when I did associate with them it was never up building. Out it service it was just a big gossip fest with all the pioneers back stabbing everyone in the hall. I often wondered why they spent so much time trying to get new ones into the religion when when as soon as they got baptized they seem to turn on them and hate them. What was the point of any of it.

LITS