DogLover

MRAP .. Yes ... Donna Lombardi (now Martindale) was assigned to NC to be Limb Secretary during her interim year of the 4th Corps. That was the first year the Corps had an interim year.

For some reason, I vaguely remember their being nine fountains .. manifestations inspired. Don't really know. Do not particularly care ... just a random memory. I like fountains in general. In another location, I would enjoy it.

Well, I suspect in-state tuition would have played a part in it. Reasonably close to home, not horribly liberal. Perhaps they found they could get a good bang for their buck there...I would suspect all were eligible for PELL grants, given the Way's shabby way of paying their employees these days.

Eve got a bad rap. VPW presented her saying, "I have gotten the man from the Lord," as having the emphasis on "I" and being a prideful statement. Other scholars say that this was proof that Eve believed God's prophecy of the Messiah in Genesis 3:15. There is, therefore, evidence that she repented, but there is NO recorded evidence that Adam ever did. Just sayin'.

I think LCM was moved to Toledo, not Akron.....

I spent a good amount of time over many years at that laundromat in St. Marys. It was particularly full the day after one of those horrible rainstorms so common in Ohio in August.

I think it is mostly for show and to keep the tax-exempt status intact. I doubt that they have very much fruit. It also provides a way for the numerous (HA!) Apprentice Corps to spend part of their interim year. It provides the nostalgia that the old-timers have for their now-grown children to do a supposedly similar to WOW program...however, six months is hardly time to actually build anything. Speaking from my own experience as a WOW, six months would have been a much easier time to serve, but would have made it difficult to find housing. Most people want a year's lease.

Isn't George Harrison singing about Hare Krishna in "My Sweet Lord?"

That is so awful, Dana. My God comfort your heart. There will be a price to pay for all those folks that had a part in the deceptions over the years, as well as those that are involved in deceptions now....and we will be there to see it!

So true, Steve Lortz. The Twig was the life of the ministry, and the Twig Coordinators were the real heart of the ministry. There would have been no ministry growth without them.

I think Gunnison and the Indiana Campus were bought outright, no loans. I remember hearing about VPW saying when they burned the mortgage for Emporia (they had mortgaged the International HQ to pay for that), that he would never do that again. I suspect they had plenty of money to buy the Indiana Campus and Gunnison without a mortgage. It may be of interest to some folks that are new on here to know that Craig M. is still on the Board of Trustees/Directors for Gunnison. Gunnison is not owned by The Way International.

That sounds like something they would have made Corps folks do on LEAD. I remember reading about a LEAD session where they were told that if one person went back as a "failure," they would all be considered failures. The outcome of that ingenious idea led one woman to have to amputate her own toes/toes and others suffering from severe frostbite. IMHO, of all the cold and heartless things the Way did in the name of spirituality (that was not at all spiritual) was LEAD and its predecessor, TFI.

Thanks for the number estimates. I had really just meant in-residence Corps because I had forgotten that the Corps Coordinator would be in charge of all the Corps still left, not just the ones in-residence. Pitiful numbers. Good thing people are getting smarter!

I saw on LinkedIn the other night that the current director of the Way Corps is Chandler Greene, son of Bill and Marcia Greene. He has a PharmD degree, enabling him to be a pharmacist, yet his current post is Way Corps Director. Just how many people are IN the Way Corps these days? How many were in the last graduating class?

ABS = abundant sharing, according to TWI ... they no longer use that term

I felt exactly that way ... Sunk Too Much Into It ... when I got to Gunnison my final year in-residence. TJ actually threw all of us out of the Corps one day after lunch for acting like "short-timers". Only one of us, a woman named Denise, had the good sense to leave. All the rest of us knew our time was short and we just tried to play the game until graduation. We should have all left that day. I know my life would have been much less stressful for nearly a decade afterward if I had.

We had to memorize it in the Way Corps. Here is what I remember of it: "The Way is a fellowship of the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ for the manifestation of the more abundant life. A follower of the Way is filled with, and manifests power from on high, holy spirit, and freely avails himself of .... for spiritual nurture and growth." I have been "out" for 19 years come January 11, so that is obviously not exact ... oddly, I have found no need to remember those words in my post-Way years.

I just downloaded a Kindle book written by a former fellow 13th Corps brother of mine, Rand Burkey, which was published in 2011. His parents paid to have him deprogrammed in November 1984, but he had already left the Way Corps by then, but not TWI. He paints a very accurate picture of his time in-residence and at the Way HQ our interim year. It is also available in hardback and paperback on Amazon. I have not gotten to the part where he becomes a crusader against the Way and similar cults, but that is part of what he does now, I understand. The book is called DELIVERED FROM DECEPTION.

Reading all these makes me so, so glad that I do not have to think about crazy stuff like that any more. On January 11, 2015 (my brother's 65th birthday), I will have been out of TWI for 19 years.

Allan, I agree with you. Speaking in tongues edifies me and is an important part of my daily prayer life and just a great way to give God thanks for all the neat things He does for me that there are just not words in my vocabulary to express (and I have a reasonably extensive vocabulary). So .. if you think SIT, interpretation, and prophecy are fake, don't do them. I, on the other hand, choose to.

This may sidetrack the issue, but here goes: Why don't those folks get together for fellowship and help local people or the charity of their choice and forget about sending money to the Way? It's not like they couldn't still read or study the Bible. That said, I think it is appalling how the Way has treated the most faithful of its staff over the years when they age.

The administrator of the site is Howard Walker, Way Corps 11. The site is classified Secret, meaning that anything you post there does not come up on Google or Bing, etc. when you do a search of the person's name. Only that you are on Facebook.

Yeah, ask Bo and Stanley Reahard if they got to keep the house on TWI property that their family built. Not!

Skyrider, Thanks for cleaning that up. I do remember seeing the semi, and it was in no way as glamorous and decked out as was described earlier. Just a bland serviceable vehicle.

There must have been some 18-wheeler owned by the Way as recent as 1984 (and probably beyond) because one such truck moved all the goods that went from HQ to Gunnison and back again and transported all the Way Corps's luggage they chose to box up and send on those trucks, as well as any Way Corps's bicycles they chose to send.