DogLover

At Emporia, John Lynn often had us go to bed quite early on Sunday night, at 10 pm. As I recall, we had to be in bed by midnight there, but at Gunnison under Tom Jenkinson, we had to be in bed by 11 pm. However, at Gunnison, because there were fewer in-residence Corps there, you had to get up in the middle of the night for 3.5 hours of Bless Patrol at least once a week. At Emporia, because numbers were higher, your Twig might have Bless Patrol (with 3 hour shifts) only once per block, as I recall. This was during the time the 13th Corps was in-residence. Of course, at HQ, they had Safety and a Doberman to do Bless Patrol duties.

A Facebook friend who has been in the Way for a long time recently posted there is a Regional Duel Meeting. I am wondering if she just misspelled "dual" or whether guns at forty paces will be involved...or perhaps knights in armor on horseback. Has anyone heard about this event?

In the interview VPW had with Elena Whiteside while she was writing a book about The Way (THE WAY LIVING IN LOVE), he told in detail (and she wrote) about God speaking to him audibly. That book was written in the early 1970s.

I am just curious. Does anyone know whether TWI has come out in favor of or against the COVID vaccine?

Yes, Out and About ... It was an excellent album, and the musical tour Joyful Noise did that year was very good. I enjoyed it immensely and played that album for many years, even after I left The Way on January 11, 1996. A couple years ago, I passed on all my Way and other albums to a close friend, along with a combination record player, CD player, etc. I do not know whether he kept them or not.

In my first year in-residence in the 13th Corps, we saw the video called "A Day with the Wierwilles." He stated this in the film. I later read that Don Wierwille did not agree with that statement.

Rocky said: IIRC, she's (Donna Martindale, then Lombardi) mentioned in Undertow as having worked at the NC limb also. That was during her interim year in the 4th Corps, the same year Ralph D, Joel Burke, and Charlene Little, were sent to North Carolina so that Limb Coordinator Doug Emerson his wife, Connie (later Connie Panarello) and their daughter, Krissy (later Kristyne Panarello) could go to HQ for the one-year "Special Corps" program. David Turk was the Limb Coordinator in Doug Emerson's place. Ralph, Joel, and Charlene were Zone Coordinators, each of one-third of the long state of NC. Charlene later married David Turk.

Beguiled: Just to clarify ... coal miners are mostly in Kentucky and West Virginia. There are no coal miners in the Carolinas.

It always made me chuckle when I sat at or near Ralph Dubofsky's table at lunch in the HQ dining hall during my interim year of 1983-84. His wife at the time, Lori, always brought a bowl of raw, cut onions along with their children when she came for lunch. People who knew this made it a habit of sitting at their table so they could have onions on their salad.

When I was at Emporia (13th Corps), the chef was Bob Gassman. The food was good, with few exceptions. I have read online that one reason the food was so bad there in the early years is that Craig, who was in charge of the campus, was trying to save money. Another issue is that it is comparably a very small kitchen. When it was the College of Emporia, it most likely was not used to cook food from scratch, bake homemade "Benny's Wheat" bread, etc, Most likely, it was used to heat up industrial-sized cans of vegetables and the like.

Ira Hearne, his wife Ora, and daughter, Nancy, are all deceased.

I did an online search. Rosalie Rivenbark was born in March 1940, so she is now (in May 2020) 80 years old.

One thing about PFAL 77: the food was great at Ball State University. Every afternoon was yours to nap, play, fellowship, etc. In that regard, it was NOTHING like in-residence Corps training. Honestly, I quite enjoyed it.

Any word on who is the president now?

Just depended who. VPW said on several occasions that he had no respect for anyone who used the word Christmas because it was not a mass for Christ. It was contempt for the Roman Catholic "Christ mass" that started all the brouhaha about using the word Christmas. Still, many of us Corps at the time (I was 13th) went along with it when we were on campus or at Way-sponsored events, and said and still celebrated Christmas at home with Christmas trees, Christmas cards, Christmas carols, etc. We had a big formal Christmas party at both Way HQ and Emporia, but probably called it something else. It was John Lynn (who coordinated Way Corps 9 through Way Corps 13 at Emporia) who came up with the idea of Ho-Ho Relo instead of Christmas Vacation. We were supposed to not be on vacation during that time, but I suspect everyone was, just another example of being put in a position to do one thing under the watchful eye of the overseers, but another thing in real life. I suspect the few faithful Waybots still do the same ... Happy Household Holidays being the thing now, but I will bet they still have a Christmas tree and exchange gifts.

This made me remember something the HQ Corps Coordinator said to the 12th in-residence at the time) and 13th Corps (interim year on staff at the time) at a Sunday after-meeting when he was talking about the upcoming Uncle Harry/Burn the Chaff Day. He misspoke and called it Burn Uncle Harry day. That would have been 1984, so Uncle Harry had rejoined the soil 6.5 years before (he died in the summer of 1977, IIRC). The name of the event had recently been changed from Uncle Harry Day to Burn the Chaff day. We all cracked up. He was embarrassed, but Michael always enjoyed a good laugh, even at his own expense.

The way The Way celebrated Halloween was discussed in a lame class which was the last one I took before leaving. It was called The Believer's Family, or some such. In it LCM said that was each family's decision. Sometimes they had a "Harvest Festival" or some such. Some believers just let their kids go trick or treating or to a locally sponsored event. VPW talked a lot about Reformation and Martin Luther, but I do not recall in my 23.5 years in that we celebrated it on the same day as the traditional Protestant church calendar. I do recall, however, that on one day around the time Jesus Christ is Not God was published, that he went to the Evangelical and Reformed Church in downtown New Knoxville and posted his Theses (not 95) on its church door. As you might imagine, that did not go over well with the locals.

Thanks to everyone for your responses. I didn't think it was the real LCM, but I just wanted to make sure.

There is an LCM who identifies as Lot Craig Martindale on Twitter. Is this the real one? This enquiring mind wants to know ....

I think that must be the book Mrs. Wierwille wrote, with her daughter Karen's help ... I had left TWI before it was published, but I have seen a copy. Checked Amazon ... it is called VICTOR PAUL WIERWILLE: BORN AGAIN TO SERVE. Available for purchase if you choose to spend an arm and a leg ...

There is a large tree out back of the East Carolina University (ECU) Way Home in Greenville, NC that is a great example, as trees go. I remember being told in my first year in the Way in 1972-1973 that there's where VPW "got the revelation for the Way Tree." Even then, at the ripe young age of 17, I thought, "What? He had never seen a tree before?"

I found it interesting that everyone in the 13th Corps (can't speak for others) was given a copy of Bullinger's HOW TO ENJOY THE BIBLE in September of our first year in-residence. I remember slowly reading through most of it during that year. It was amazing to me how very much of PFAL was taken from there.

Remove and replace is a much better idea.

I remember. It was my first ROA and my favorite ... our local fellowship leader got a wealthy woman in town to donate the cost of the chartered bus we went on. I was 17 at the time. Nice memory.

I remember seeing "A Day with the Wierwilles" while in residence with the 13th Corps. I do not remember a lot of it, but I do remember that VPW had said in it that Luke Somerville (son of John and Mary Wierwille Somerville) should be "groomed" to be the third president of the Way (which, as we know, ended up being Rosalie Rivenbark). I also remember hearing Don Wierwille say he did not really agree with the premise that the stand of the Wierwille family was so crucial to the Way continuing. As I recall, the "day" in question was during a holiday vacation at Gunnison in 1982.