I was just reminiscing about the last thing I did as an elder. After a painful awakening due to family matters,,deleted as an elder due to what i now have come to realize is normal children trying to be more than just zombie tag alongs who don't make problems for their parents and want to explore their talents and intellect. Mistakes and difficulties arise in families but real families do not resort to draconian measures when hormonally influenced children want to take a different path. Anyway I was deleted as an elder. It was painful as there was much envy and animosity that was under the surface by others on the body since I had so called privileges in the Org. Const work Worldwide, local RBC work etc. I really enjoyed these services but others were harboring resentment and when the opportunity arose they pounced.
It was difficult.I wondered why people who were part of the ;most loving people on earth' would act this way. I will not go into the details of the difficulties but after a few years I was reappointed as an elder but the damage had been done to my psyche as far as my attitude to the Org was concerned.I continued to serve but doubts continued to grow and finally I went to the public library and started to do research on the history of JW's . The book was Raymond Franz's In Search of Christian Freedom. The blinders were off and i continued to research and became a lurker on these sites I knew there would be a day of reckoning if I did not move so my wife and i put our our home in seattle for sale and was planning a move to the outlying area,,it sold and we were moving in a month. I was assigned to be on a judicial committee. It dealt with a new sister who had fallen in love with a member of a trade group having a convention in the city.
The other 2 elders wanted to DF as I could read the tea leaves so to speak as this sister was saying she could not tell what she would do if this man approached her again since she still felt this was 'love'.
In front of the other 2 elders i explained that the answers she was giving to the questions she was being asked about were giving these elders ammunition to DF her , I explained what she needed to say from the elders manual about what repentance was according to JW's. Ithen told these 2 elders we should let her thank about matters. The meeting was then adjourned.
I later found out that the Bro. whose wife had studied with her was my replacement and she was not Df'ed
That was my last act to prevent this good person from becoming a victim of JW treachery
My wife and I moved to another cong. {Des Moines} and I declined to serve again thinking to just lay low for awhile,but the matter came to a head later as I felt i could no longer be there let alone serve in any capacity.
We moved to Phx. Az. and have been free of this evil, cult. ever since.
