Galen

Hmm, 3-story multi-family building, on a 1/4 acre lot, maybe a 19 yard wide strip next to it jsut wide enough for a small garden, then a parking lot [kind of drops down into the parking lot, with a 5 foot retaining wall around the parking lot] across the parking lot is a 4-car garage. The garage is painted white with black lettering [Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta] to label each stall. We gave one stall for each apartment and kept 2 for ourselves. Currently one stall has one of my willy's in it [the '57] and the other stall has my gold-wing. I have a '56 willy up in the woods behind the house. Both of them are 'touring wagons' like the woody of Annette Funichello movie fame. But these are not woodys, thus they are all steel. A couple years ago I was playing with spray-on stryofoam roofing and I covered the roof of the garage with styrofoam. It looks goofy but spraying the stuff was fun. Once it hardens it has a peanut-like surface which takes paint well. During the winter, I rarely go in the garage, Bonnie parks her new Saab in front of it blocking 2 of the garage doors. I keep the whole thing cleared of snow so our cars can get in and out, as well as the renters can easily get in and out of their stalls. Next to the garage is a motorhome. Our eldest son lived in it for a while, but he has recently moved to Kansas. He found a cute young girl there, he likes. Our basement has all of my tools, laundry machines, and jaquzzi . We have had larger jaquzzis, and we will likley have a big one again in the future. But in the mean time this little one is great. 6feet across it can be dis-assembled in 30 minutes. 'Spa-in-a-box' I found it with Google. It is great. It fits in the rear bedroom of our motorhome, or in about any room of our house if we wanted. Right now it is in our basement. :-)

vickles: "...what would be so bad if TWI _were_ to apologize?" "one reason that they would not is because it would open up a huge can of worms for lawsuits happening." I agree entirely. As a corporation, to admit that they were guilty of wrong doing would open up every possible law suit. Not saying that they have money left to guard. Rather as a corporation to publically admit guilt is one step before shutting the doors and the auctioneer begins his bid taking. :-)

skyrider: Do you have access to the 1968 pfal version of twi's foundational class? That might be nice to compare. :-)

Weren't these called web-crawlers? Rather than spiders?

Cowgirl: "Find the Man's head within 3 seconds and you're a genius ... within 3 seconds, your right brain is more developed than normal people." You are associating 'genius' with right-brain function. I wish to point out that 'genius' can happen among either right-brain people, left-brain people, or the third option Right-and-left brain people [like Albert Einstien] There exist many many methods of guaging intelligence, aptitude and mental ability. Just about every method will guage these things in different terms, which are then non-compatible. The idea of the military using a 'battery' of exams to measure intelligence is that; some are smart in one-way, while others are really smart in another way. So each different area needs to be measured seperately. The combined score from 6 different areas of testing then forms a number that has value. I once worked with a man who knew every crewman's license-plate numbers for every vehicle they drove, he knew everyone's birthdates and he had memorized every characterizing number for every atomic element [melting-point, freezing-point, valance electrons, number of protons, etc]. He stepped off the sidewalk and in front of traffic twice while I knew him, hospitalized both times. Yet he was great operating a nuclear-reactor. In some ways he is a genius, in other ways he is dumber than a brick. :-)

skyrider: "Do you have access to running the 1968 pfal version of twi's foundational class? LCM's wap class has replaced pfal in most cases." Our PFAL class is the 1976 edition, I think. I really have no idea of what was on the 1968 edition, and LCM's WAP class would have been from after our envolvement with The Way International. " ... many of us requested the booklet ... " When I took the class in 1979, I got: Power for Abudantly Living, The Bible tells me so, The new dynamic church, The Word's Way, and God's Magnified Word. As well as one year subscription for their magazine. "And another thing.....it was discrepancies like THIS that gave momentum to videotaping an updated version at PFAL '77. The plan fell thru with updates when too many mistakes and less-than-best performance by vpw materialized in the '77 class." Bonnie [my wife] attended PFAL'77, she liked it.

Sky, Q: What does an "abusive corps-nazis" do that distinguishes him from other corps? A: Rip out the hearts from believers for pure enjoyment. Q: Were there scores of these guys or was it relatively isolated? A: I did meet a few who were not, though the ones who were certainly made a far greater impression on us than the 'good' ones. Again from the impression made by the first Corpse person I ever met [steve Strezpec in 1980] that impression lingered and may well have 'flavoured' all of our dealings with Corpse during the following 17 years. Q: Why didn't the chain of command, vpw and/or lcm, stop these "abusing corps-nazis?" A: I have no idea. I dont know what they were being taught. Q: Did there need to be any leadership structure at all for "believers to work together?" A: We were taught repeatedly that Twigs were to be self-supporting, take care of our own people's issues, help them minister to their needs first before sending aid to HQ. It did not help the few times that a corpse-person walked in and tore everyone apart. Q: If abusive corps-nazis were working in your area and you saw this abuse (verbal?, emotional?, physical?, sexual?) then why stay with twi? A: Verbal, oh yes. Emotional, of yes. Physical? No, would have filed police charges immediately. Sexual? No, not in any areas that I was aware of. Corpse blow in, they blow out, they rarely knew anyone's names, it would have been difficult for them to have done much more in the way of sexual, they would have needed to have stayed in the Branch areas for that to have happened. Why stay in? Because really so few of the beleivers you deal with were Corpse, and commonly you could continue ministering to people for months sometimes years at a time without seeing a corpse, why let a few idiots get you down. There are a lot of people out there in need. Doing Word Studies together, running PFALs, cook-outs, helping each other out; what time was left for bothering whether a corpse was going to come through the state and screw everyone up? In my case, I was usually living on-board a boat and running Protestant Services on-board, ministering to the crewmen. Bonnie was running the fellowship when I was out to sea or in shift-work [which was commonly 7-8 months a year]. Staying 'in' The Way International meant that there was a bigger organization behind it all. If someone was able to get leave approved during August then there was the Rock they could get permission to go to. Or if we surfaced somewhere new, we could call HQ and get phone numbers for local twigs, to take the young sailors to, rahter than pub-crawls. Q: Have these abusive corps-nazis gained rank up to higher levels? A: I have no idea. I would have needed to pay attention, or found a corpse to have asked about such-such person's assignments, bah. Let their Karma catch up with them, I have enough on my plate to concern myself with. I never saw any purpose in trying to find a corpse person to ask any quesitons of for such a purpose. :-)

skyrider: "Wade was keynoted in pfal and vpw held up Peter's booklet and encouraged all new students to order it from the bookstore. He was vp's right-hand man." Okay, next time I run PFAL I will watch for references to him, thank you. The name really does not ring any bells for me or for Bonnie. :-)

And today, if you could shrink the world down to 100 people (keeping the same ratios and proportions) there would be: 51 females and 49 males; 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Americas and 8 Africans; 70 non-white and 30 white; 50% of the wealth would be in the hands of 6 people living in the US; 80 living in substandard housing; 70 who were illiterate; 50 would be suffering from malnutrition; 1 person would be near death and 1 person would be near birth; 1 person with a college education; and not one person who owned a computer.

great

skyrider: "Who was accountable for twi policies, procedures, corps training, etc.....?" I was accountable, and still am for what goes on within my fellowship. "Why were corps allowed to be "corspe-nazis? and remain corps?" Well they certainly did try to do such around me. I have no control over who goes into the Corpse, nor do I have anything to do with who stays corpse. "Maybe....just maybe, these dots need to be connected back to their source??" Yes most certainly, the person, the individual who adopts such arogancy. "Maybe....at the first sight of evil (corps-nazism, included) we all should have fled!" Many fewer of G-d's people would have been hurt. "Why did vpw leave his church background if "believers can stand together on the bible?" He did not like the inner-policys of the Luthern denomination, to my understanding. Mostly they were centered around their policys handling missionarys overseas. I am not sure what that has to do with the topic? "Why did Dr. Higgins NOT continue following vpw's ministry?" I do not know if I have ever met such a person. Have you? Do you know such a person's story? The last that I heard of this person was from the early 1950's. Maybe they soon passed away, or moved somewhere, or got envolved a in wonderful church. Who cares? "Why did Peter J. Wadx, who helped assist in pfal '68, leave and go to Australia?" Again I never heard of this person, I am not sure why I am responible for knowing who this guy is. Why did he go anywhere? Why do I care? "Sometimes, it seems....."standing together on the bible" implies doing nothing! Not advancing forward....not working together, not moving in unison. Some like to stay uncommitted and yet, claim they are committed and standing." Okay, and your point is? :-)

We are interested in finding Gary Durban. Galen ET1 (SS)

During our 18 years [1979-1997] following The Way International, we did have a corpse-couple in our twig once. It was a 35yr old corpse-grad lady who had married a 30yr old sailor. He was transfered to this area [Ct], but since they were un-equally yoked, they could no longer lead a fellowship, so they were told to attend mine. We learned a lot. She ratted on us every week to the Limb Coordinator about whatever she thought we were doing wrong. We just kept running PFAL classes, despite her complaints. Apparantly they had been down in Norfolk Virginia area and had been accustomed to being surrounded by corpse-grads. She was terribly upset as by living here she was the only corpse-grad in the area. She needed assistance grocery shopping, and finding stores, and just about all living independant skills. It upset her that we would commonly feed anyone who came to fellowship early. We have always enjoyed feeding a crowd and sharing food among a group of the faithful. She was also upset that we provided housing to other beleivers, either by renting them rooms, or by renting them apartments. It is a shame that I dont recall his or her names, their last name was Oborsky? I think.

The first corpse-grad [steve Strezpec] I ever met was the ‘corpse-program-director’, and a TWI Clergy. He was counseling engaged couples [in one case for over a year] promising to marry them. When I confronted him about the delays he told us that only corpse-grads could ever understand the marriage commitment, and as such that only corpse-grads would be allowed to get married by TWI clergy. So dragging these non-corps couples along through counseling was to convince them that they were not meant for each other. But it was okay to promise them that he would marry them. I dont recall any non-corpse believer ever cursing me, or screaming at me. Only Corpse has insisted the God tells them things about me, that God has not told me in first. It was a number of corpse-grads that have insisted that I was not following God’s will in my life since I was not going corpse. I have always asked “why would God tell you something that He has not told me?”. I usually got yelled at. I have served alongside of many fine wonderful believers, unfortunately few of them have been corpse-grads. Only a corpse-grad would ever care about what books I maintain in my library, but one Branch Coordinator [steve Mosquido] insisted that I burn books written by Cummins, or else I was no longer welcome in fellowship. We have discussed this a few times here on GreaseSpot Caf?and yes I understand that former corpse-grads would say that it was the corpse-program and it’s leaders that made them into this destructive force among the faithful. Okay I can except that, though it still recognizes that in fact the most destructive force seen and felt by most of the faithful were corpse-grads.

Excath- I mean no insult to you. I realize that you were hurt, as were many others. As Frankee knows as well. But that has nothing to do with PFAL, or the healing and miracles that happened and still can happen when beleivers come together. Here on GS, it becomes easy to fall into the idea that every Ex-Way Follower is against PFAL. Sure I still have some anger. Toward my God? No. Toward the Bible? No. Toward leaders who knew better but let power go to their heads and become nazis with it? Well maybe. I never saw anyone hurt by the Board of Trustees. I never saw anyone hurt by the 'big name' clergy. I never sucked up to them, thus I never met them. I dont doubt that the higher leadership became abusive, from what I saw of how abusive most corspe-nazis were. So I well imagine that every story of abuse is real. But that has little to do with the topic of what beleivers can do, when they stand together of the Bible. :-)

skyrider: "Wierwille had sat through Leonards class and within 7 months was not only teaching it himself, but had revised it so that others would think it was his work..." "from what I've read in Mrs. W's book, this October 1953 class was NOT revised. As documented on page 100 (noted above), students who sat thru Leonard's class prior to this were considered _graduates_." Yes. Leonard's Class is significantly longer than VPW's. Knowing people who have gone through both classes, it is commonly stated that VPW's is not really 'edited' or 'revised' so much as shortenes. I hve not gone through Leonard's class myself, though we do fellowship with couples who certainly have attended it. "And......its information like this that drives TWI nuts!" Why? because there are other beleivers out among the masses? :-) .

I had no idea that such policy was in effect. I have not been obliterating names, as I feel such is close to dis-honest. I use my real name of my posts. I have no intention of hiding anything. Should I? Is there something that needs to be hidden?[Outside of ID fraud that is]. To me when poeple are 'hiding' behind fake IDs, all that they say would not be taken as complete honesty as they are obviously still hiding things. Reading posts, I have in fact often seen such obliterations as A*** B***, and I have on occassion been left wondering. Who were they talking about? Was it anyone that I knew? Overall in my limited 18 year envolvement with The Way International, I knew very few 'big wigs' whose names would mean anything to people on GreaseSpot Cafe. As such most of the time, unless the writer leaves the name very close to the original, I am simply not going to be able to discern who you were talking about. I would imagine such is the case for most non-corpse-nazi grads. signed G***** :-)

Frankee: "I liked the PFAL class. I liked it that Dr. Wierwille put all of these different pieces of Biblical information together from these different sources." I do too. "I was glad to learn ... I was glad to have been taught ... I was glad to learn ... I was glad to learn ... I was glad to learn ... I was happy to learn ..." I was also glad, as was many many others. "I was just a kid who prayed and whom shortly after that met a ... who got me into the class. And it didn't hurt me, it helped me in a time of serious trouble. So I am glad that VP Wierwille was ther[sic] with that class." Kind of makes it difficult to say honestly that God was not a part of what happened to us. Your phrase for how you came to be envolved with TWI also describes me as well. "... I liked the class a lot ..." I still do. "... I am sorry for you all who were hurt ... and I will pray for you ..." All we can do is pray, but then for many of us prayer does help. "I think that there are still valuable truths in PFAL that we can and should utilize when going to God and the Bible for spiritual guidance." I agree it is still filled with powerful truths, which in part is why we still run PFAL classes. Relax, among the people who post on GS are many who relive their anger at TWI, but there are many others who largely stay away from GS, who still hold dear the truths we learned in PFAL and who still walk in Love as we study from the Word of God. :-)

Mike As always, I am glad to be reading your posts and doubly glad this time to be reading your own thread. :-) "Righteousness is your God-given ability to stand in the Father’s presence without a sense of sin, guilt or condemnation."

Tell you something else too. I go in for lab-work to monitor my liver-function due to cholesterol meds. Male docs will dig and dig for my veins, routinely turning my arm blue from hemoraging. Female docs almost 100% will find a vein first time everytime. My veins are not hidden, I can get them to stand out, jsut some people can't get a needle into one without drawing hair around it. Yes, I am sexist, but female docs are better.

jardinero: Being a servicemember I get my medical care as provided by local military bases. 'Family Practice' is available via a waiting list, where you can wait for an opening, once it is your turn then you can specify which doctor you want to be seen by for the remainder of your tour. From that point on, anytime you need an appointment you and your family will each be seen that one doctor or PA. Being a lowly E-6 I have never been placed high enough on such a waiting list to get my family to the top within the duration of any of my tours. Officers routinely are put directly on the top of those lists as soon as they report to an area, so their can immediately choose which doctor/PA will see them and their familys. Anytime I get an appointment to see a doc it will be 'catch-as-catch-can', whatever doc has an opening within the next 2 weeks. The same for my family. If you have a condition that must be monitored monthly for the next six months, you will likely see a different doc each time. If there are no openings, they tell me to call back in a week. Sometimes I [or my family] are seen by a military Doctor, or by a Navy Medic, or by a civilian PA, or by a civilian Doctor. That 'doc' may be a male or a female. Generally I do prefer the female 'doc's. The civilian ones are the best, the civilian doctors have attended 'internship' and 'residency' training; whereas military doctors often went directly into the military after graduating med-school. Of course medics have attended a military school, but they do most of their training OJT. If it is just a bad cut or puncture I tend to take care of it myself. The last time Matthew cut-up his face badly, the PA on-duty in the ER could not suture his way out of a paper-sack, so I had to do the suturing myself. I do my own stitching as well, so long as I can reach and see the boo-boo. The last couple times that I needed stitches in the back of my head, they assigned these young medics to do the stiching, I would have prefered to have done it myself each time. I cant really put my finger on exactly why, but I do prefer to be seen by female doctors, the ones with a real M.D. hanging on a wall somewhere.

Jim: "No GPS antenna on the periscope mast?" I have been navigating boats since long before GPS was invented. Or should I say swiped from the USSR [see Glonass systems for the original GPS system]. Military-Spec GPS units are huge, water-cooled and have a warm-up time in just under an hour. 1. If you start it without any information, it must 'listen' for brds to fly overhead to begin gathering time ticks, after the first 6 birds have flown by then, and only then will it start to formulate a position fix. Pier-side I have watched these units take greater than 6 hours and still not be capable of deriving a fix. 2. If you knew where you were before you raised the antenna, you can enter it, then locking-on to obtain a fix will be fairly quick . If your position you entered before coming to PD is 'off'. 'off' like 0.1 NM off, then the GPS unit will just sit there looking at you. It can not define a fix. And it will not define a fix, as it gets 'stuck' in a loop. Of the boats I have served on, only one had a GPS unit installed. Sometimes the officers would purchase their own land-held GPS and sneak it in their pocket. As we were surfaced and heading into port, via a shipping lane, the bridge look-outs could easily see that we were about centered in the shipping lane, as we are passing buoys to either side, and land is visible to port and to starboard; the officers are supposed to be up in the conning tower watching for surface traffic for us to avoid, they would commonly play with their un-authorized GPS unit and call us with what they thought should be 'good' fixes. Plotting their GPS fixes on our charts could place us ashore, or in the on-coming traffic lane, or even back out to sea again. GPS is another tool. It can be a good tool. However they do not replace the rest of the toolbox. They are not the best tool in the box. Nor are they as reliable as we would wish. Periscope Masts do have a GPS antenna as they do also have a NavSat capability [which is far better], but when it comes to entering port nothing compares to 'seeing' with my own eyes the light-houses on either side of the river and verifying that we are in the shipping channel myself.

Cindy!: "... I'll probably hafta switch to a male doctor for my sons soon" I would not do that.

Steve!: "Great, yet another thread infected by smikeol trying to promulgate his sewage." Man that is harsh. :-( No need to be nasty to the man.

Best food on the planet. Just dont expect fresh milk, lettuce, eggs [they just dont last very long], not after the first month. :-) It always amazed me how many Bubble-head cooks all ask for either: Ice-Carving or Sauce-Chef for their advanced training in San Fransisco. On the other hand getting you choice of 100lb ice carvings for your birthday dinner, or any special sauces that you may prefer.