JavaJane

Cow poop and piggy poop! With catapults and trebuchets!

Sorry to hear all the gardening problems... But I have a tomato that is almost ready to pick!! And okra that are finally ready! Must be that new garden gnome on the porch....

I have seen it many times, shaz, where people who worked at a RC were TOLD by their leadership that when they left it would be very hard for them out in the big bad ugly horribly adversary controlled world. That being at HQ was heaven compared to living out there. They told people that the adjustment would be hard for them. As if not having someone micromanage your life and pay you minimum wage (or less) while working way tooo many hours was somehow hard to adjust from?? As if having internet access and your own phone was so hard to adjust to? As if having your own bathroom and not moving every six months is hard to adjust to? As if not having to submit a schedule to someone is hard to adjust to? Oh, the HORRORS of the outside world!! THE HORROR of FREEDOM!!!! I always feel bad for anyone who has ever worked on staff and for anyone who currently works on staff. Those poor poor people. I think I need to go pray for them.

Yes yes yes Yes YES!! This is exactly what happened to me. Everything seemed great until I moved to a different area where the legalism was rampant. Even when I talk to some friends who are still involved from my own area they cannot believe the things I have seen and the things that have happened to me and my family. A person's perception is their reality. If what you perceive twi to be is based only on good experiences, then how can you believe all the terrible things that happened? If you only see VP in pictures looking like a kindly old man and written about by his wife in the pages of "Born Again to Enslave" how can you imagine the atrocities he committed? How could you even have a clue if that is your perception? You can't. It seems like a weird paralell universe where all the good guys are replaced with evil people. It could never happen. Right? I found out differently when I moved from the area I was in where people took care of each other, where we weren't summoned to clean the LC's house, where for the most part we were treated with respect while the rest of the organization was collapsing in upon itself with mark and avoid and intense micromanagement. It took getting to a place closer to HQ before my husband and I even had a smidgen of a clue about what was really happening. Protection? I don't know... maybe it was a combination of misplaced good intentions and ostrichization. Neither one of those get you anywhere.

If this is the case, count me in, too! Thank you, skyrider! You took the words right out of my mouth, and I think you said it better than I could have anyway!

I feel the same as you, Johnny... I talk to God all day long and thank Him for every good thing that happens to me. My point was not that you shouldn't ask for what you want, it was simply that we should believe that whatever God gives us in answer to that prayer will be better (Ephesians 3:20 comes to mind here) than maybe the specifics we were asking for. In my opinion, the focus should be on asking God, having the relationship with Him, being able to talk with our Father and know He will reward us... Not focused on getting stuff. And I don't think you are focused on getting stuff from your posts. You seem very in tune with God and you know that He is there to meet your needs in a very real way. WHICH IS GREAT!! (I ask God for someone to bring donuts to work. Sometimes I get them, sometimes I don't - but I figure it's because my metabolism isn't quite what it used to be and He doesn't reward me by getting me fat!)

Glad you enjoyed it, Johnny... I kinda got myself cut off before I was done with the full thought I was trying to convey - needed to feed my starving husband. Anyway... I have been thinking a lot about this "law" of believing, and I think I (and maybe more than just me, from the looks of this thread) were trained to read that "law" into every verse that mentioned believing... we made that the focus of the verse. Really if you read Hebrews 11:6 it doesn't talk about us believing FOR things. It just states that we are to believe that God exists and that He is a rewarder. He wants us to believe that He wants the best for us. Not that we have to get the specifics right, that we have to work real hard to believe and picture the red drapes in our mind. We simply have to believe that whatever He will work in our lives as we pray will be the best thing for us. It will reward the search we have made for Him. The "law" of believing is too constraining. By narrowing God and how He works into a mathematical formula, you cut out the immensity of His existence. God, in His very nature, is something we will never completely comprehend. If God does exist (as I have always been convinced He does) then He is altogether too immense for human comprehension. There are still thing about the human body that we don't fully understand. How can we understand the intelligence behind what created it? It has always bothered me that we seemed to think in twi that somehow we, with our puny little brains, could keep God from acting by our believing. That because someone was "out of fellowship" that God COULDN'T do anything to protect them. That's a complete crock of poo. How can we possibly tell God what He cannot or can do? The entire concept was ridiculous. Our focus should be on the actions God has taken and not on ourselves and our accomplishments. By completely ascribing to the "law" of believing, we make ourselves the focus of what God has or has not wrought in our lives, when all the glory should be going to God. Now, this is not to say that good things have not happened to people who did follow this teaching. I saw it myself in my own life. What I mean to say is that if the focus is only on believing and not on God, then it only glorifies the individual who did the work believing, and not on God who did the giving. I hope that makes sense. It did to me.

Just finished this lengthy thread, and realized a few things... Mainly how much God and our relationship with Him had nothing to do with believing as we were taught it. For instance, Matthew 21:22 In all things, whatsoever ye shall ASK in PRAYER, believing, ye shall receive. I always "saw" the words "ask" and "prayer" but focused on the BELIEVING portion. The believing is just a description of how we are to ask God while praying... Which ties into another verse that was used to prove the "law of believing" from the scriptures: Hebrews 11:6 But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. What are we supposed to believe in this verse? That God is - that He exists. That He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. Simple enough. But it seems to me that both verses focus on our relationship with God... asking God in prayer, believing that He is and that He rewards those who seek Him. Funny.... never really saw it quite like that before... Too much BELIEVING getting in the WAY.

I once read that myrrh was a lot like goldenseal in it's healing properties - that would help. Here's a weird healing recipe from me... Works great on wound infections - in fact, I have seen it dry up bad sores within a day. Mix triple antibiotic ointment with goldenseal root powder (just open up the capsule and take out the powder inside) Just mix as much as you would use if it were regular antibiotic ointment... Put on the wound, cover with a bandaid. Check the next day. For me, it usually kills the pain within an hour and then gets rid of the infection in a day or so.

Because the wicked witch RFR lives there... She forces the children to dance that way or she will eat them.

Question about your plot, there, B... When I had to spend time in New Knoxville it ALWAYS smelled like skunk anyways... SO, how would it make any difference?

WELCOME, debbieb!! Can I get the head waitress over here to get ya a cup of coffee?

This may be the real reason for "squirrel thinning season" at der vey.... Howard lives in fear that one day the angry squirrels will rise up en masse and avenge the unwarranted deaths of their loved ones. I think the squirrels will be HAPPY if we threw them on stage.

Wecome, waytrix... Your avatar is one scary scary picture!! As for the WC and their purpose... What more could a MOG want than people who were willing to sign their name on the line, tell them all their secrets, put money in his pocket, women in his bed, organize expensive collections for gifts among the flock, risk their lives, make sure every little stupid want was catered to... ....AS A LIFETIME COMMITTMENT.... To serving him in place of God? And all the while, many (I would say most) of them thought they were serving God. Why the Way Corps? Many many reasons... The least of which was to stroke his ego (and some other things, if you were pretty enough.) Yuck.

I am one of those "folks" you speak of. But I don't think my problem stems from a lack of self esteem, but more from an addiction to obedience and a very distorted over exaggerated sense of loyalty and respect for authority. While I do have the ability to be quite a rebel at times, my "sweetness" (as my mother used to call it) tends to get in the way... I seem to have a problem with being selfish - because I never am... I have made it a habit to be selfless, always giving whatever I have to anyone who asks for it. I want to be selfish, but it seems so... ...wrong? Once again, comes down to balance. and Shifra... How dare you quote a Pauline epistle??

Ok, BOWTWI.... Tell me HOW you got those eggplants to GROW in the Midwest. I have tried for two years and have only gotten ONE really tiny (almost the size of an apple) eggplant. I love eggplant... but I can't seem to grow it worth a darn!

Then there's hope for me YET!! Thanks, exie!!

I bet that it is... I think you would like it especially, ex!

I say GO FOR IT!! I also changed career paths several times based on twi. Dropped out of college twice, too, so I could do some sort of outreach. One of the nice things about not having someone constantly looking over your shoulder and judging everything you do is that you can do whatever you want without any unneeded feedback from anyone else. I kept from doing a lot of things that could have made me a very rich person because twi wanted me to do something else. I stopped my art and my writing because I needed to stop daydreaming and do something practical... (and my art was supposed to be a "godly" art according to twi standards, which it sometimes wasn't.) I was told by one of my parents that what I wanted to pursue was not a "realistic" job, that I needed to focus on a "real" career (translation: dead end job)... this, I am sure, was influenced by twi, because my youngest sibling was never told this once they had been out for a few years. I see no reason not to pursue whatever you want to do in life. Take a risk. If you don't you will always wonder what could have happened... And your story won't be satisfying at all.

yes. Seeing someone I love get what they want from me makes me happier than anything. Balance is what is needed. I don't need to become a be-yotch, but I don't need to bend over backwards for everyone, either. Catcup's thread about psychology is interesting in this light, too.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? And any great journey begins with one step? Thanks for your thread, Catcup. It's helping to see how the deception happened. I can see how each step you listed happened to me.

Thanks!! I love peppers! I heard a recipe today for zucchini pie that is supposed to taste just like apple pie... You just substitute peeled and seeded zucchini for the apples. Haven't tried it, but I'm sure it would work. My folks used to make bread and butter zucchini pickles when I was little. They were great, and for a long time I thought all pickles were made from zucchini. But, hey, this could become an entire thread on its own - What to do with all the darn zucchini!! Maybe we do need a gardening forum.

And the funny thing about that is that I was told REPEATEDLY that VP had tried to base the idea of Way Prod on the Lawrence Welk show! How long ago was that on? They show re-runs sometimes on PBS, and it is in color... But the clothes are definately Welk-ish. I asked someone in Way Prod a long time ago why the choir's clothes were so ugly and I was told that they are still using THE SAME ONES they did when the auditorium opened. They just alter them to fit the new members... yuck. I don't think I even have clothes that old, and I am a packrat...

Sometimes I wonder if we were twins separated at birth, Chas... I have a similar problem... I don't want to let the company down. And even when I know what they are asking of me is insane (and I tell them that's what I think) I still will do anything possible (including working over 80 hours in less than 5 days) to accomplish the task. I won't even go to bed sometimes to try to get the work accomplished. It's a good thing I don't have any children to worry about yet. My husband gets neglected enough. I just don't know how to say no sometimes. I don't know how to stop and say - "Hey, I am salaried, but that does not mean that you own me!" And I still don't really understand why I am like this. Why I don't want to let anyone down. Why I will do what no one else at the job will. Maybe too many years of doing "whatever it took" to "stand for God" (literal translation: twi)... Being at every event to do set up, tear down, refreshments, ushering, parking, chair stringing, babysitting. Always there - no matter if I was sick, exhausted, or just plain didn't want to... The first time I didn't go to a meeting was right before I got married. My husband and I needed to go out to register for wedding gifts and had no time with all of our work and ministry responsibilities. We decided to (gasp!) skip a Sunday Service and go register. I seriously felt that something terrible was going to happen because we were not at the Service and I was being idolatrous... It still freaked me out to NOT attend a meeting. This problem I have with people pleasing when it comes to work is tied up in this attitude of "doing the right thing" by "putting God first" and working heartily as unto Him. I am totally willing to work until death in order to please God... But is that right? Probably not. I don't think that God would work me to death, but where do you draw the line?