kenwas

My freshman roommate was in a similar situation. I was no longer in TWI but I was still indoctrinated and probably would have returned to fellowship if my parents had and if some of the people I actually liked were in our assigned fellowship. I don't think there's much you can do if she's at an early stage in TWI: what worked for me was a few years of dissatisfaction with the group, being on my own at school, and looking up The Way on Wikipedia out of curiosity. Encourage your roommate to do other activities (though she probably won't feel the need) that will put her in contact with a diverse group of people. And if you guys are in college, I found that my classes (especially anthropology) were eye-opening. Oh, and the best thing my roommate ever did for me was to be my friend even if she thought some of my religious views were weird. I learned a lot from her.

Oh, I wasn't offended by anyone thinking the videos were funny. I just felt really sorry for this young man and others in situations like that.

I wonder who was filming that and why. You'd think the other family members wouldn't want that "conversation" filmed. I think this video is pretty scary. About a month ago, I realized I was an agnostic and while I don't think my parents would act like that, I'm scared to tell them. There is a lot of intolerance of nonreligious people in this country.

What happened to the delightful swaying I remember? And blecch, I thought the clothing was terrible back when I was a little kid. Why has the production quality never gotten any better? I love The Soup.

Maybe it has. My mother just got a call from our old FC. I thought it was really odd when she told me but if this is going on elsewhere, it makes sense.

I haven't been to a fellowship for a few years, so I'm not sure. I was still indoctrinated up until April, though, which is when I consider myself out. But I don't think it could have changed very much in so little time.

I believe that Christianity preaches tolerance and I have met a lot of Christians who are, but not every Christian is tolerant. This seems to be true of all groups, though and the negative sides to anything usually get more media attention. I also think that people confuse ignorance with intolerance. Maybe one leads to the other? I don't know. A Christian person once accused me of being an atheist (as if that were a bad thing) based on my political views and got angry when I said I was also a Christian. I doubt she represented her whole sect. A lot of Christians I've met tend to come off too strong and others have been just plain rude but that had to do more with their personality than their religion. Thanks for these interesting questions. I've been wondering about this lately, too.

I was a kid, so I was just raised to hate the forbidden things, I suppose. We weren't allowed to watch TV and movies without the parental "pause and explain the evil." I remember being scolded by one of the other twi parents for making up "not nice" storylines when I played Barbies with her kids. By not nice, I mean that one of the dolls was an orphan.

That's how I felt when people left. It was a bit worse when they were hostile. People leaving and "attacking" us made us feel closer and brought us under the scrutiny ("protection") of the limb coordinators.

I had a great excuse not to go to fellowship: college. But obviously, I was thinking of it as an excuse, so you can tell I was a bit dissatisfied with twi. My family members just stopped going one by one because they split up our fellowship (though my sister stopped going long before that) and my dad had financial issues. None of us had any problems from anyone still in but I've found that my mom is still indoctrinated. She and my dad found a church that they like, though.

My parents had a sort of black list of books and movies we couldn't read and watch. One we like to joke about today is Pocahontas, which we had to sell because "Grandmother Willow is a devil spirit." We had to explain to other kids why we couldn't read and watch these things. When I was in sixth grade, I felt like an absolute sinner for sitting in the classroom while my teacher read certain books. Surprisingly, it was another set of Way parents who got my parents to lighten up.

Thanks, kimberly. That's exactly how I felt. I liked fellowship a lot because of the people.

Nowadays, I am very glad I could never get through those books. What I find interesting is how often these books were used as references in teachings. VPW was considered a number one authority on everything and a lot of people brought his books along with the Bible to fellowship. We were given the blue book after the foundational class and expected to read it and reading the whole series was an important part of our spiritual understanding if I remember correctly. If we had questions, we were supposed to look at those. So, his gospel effectively continued after his death.

To everybody: Thanks for the kind words and support! dmiller and T-Bone: Looks delicious! T-Bone: Actually, I think the reason I didn't have much trouble adjusting is because I was pretty sheltered from the more horrible aspects of TWI. I've been reading other peoples' stories and it seems that the closer they got to the leaders, the worse their situations were. I only took one foundational class and I only went to headquarters once (not including the ROA, which ended when I was five). Our fellowships were like casual gatherings and I don't remember any major drama, even when I was older. Of course, this made TWI look pretty positive in my eyes and it still did up until two months ago.

There are pictures of my dedication in the family photo album. I don't have any really horrible experiences to share. Mostly, I remember my TWI experiences to be very happy ones. I really liked everyone in our fellowship and I truly believe that everyone was sincere about their beliefs. Perhaps I was too young. I did just find out that this was a cult a little over two months ago. I'm probably still a bit indoctrinated even though I stopped going to fellowship a couple of years ago. I still retained my beliefs and the only reason mom and I stopped going was because the new fellowship was very dry and I didn't get along with the other teens. My parents weren't really that strict. They've since admitted that some things they did, like getting rid of our troll dolls and not allowing us to watch Pocahontas, were pretty dumb. We also celebrated "Ho Ho" instead of Christmas. I remember accidentally singing that in music class (Have a Holly Jolly Ho Ho). When my sister and I were younger, there was another family in our fellowship. They were the coordinators at that time, so they influenced how our parents acted. They inspected our house. I remember them admonishing our parents for the troll dolls. The family had two girls about our age and they were bullies but we were expected to be friends with them. The most awful memory I have is of a couple who was in our fellowship when my parents ran it. They were confronted in front of the whole group by my dad and were kicked out. This, I believe, is a terrible thing to do in front of not just children, but everyone. I always felt sad when people left and was expected to pray for them. There were a lot of kids in our branch and we got along when we were preteens. I think these were my best memories of being in TWI. When we were older, however, my sister began to lose interest as well as my dad. My dad was respected and a great teacher so this made me very unhappy. Then, like I said, my mom and I stopped going, though I still retained most of my beliefs. Right now, I'm trying to find answers and I feel a bit messed up. I'm not especially close to my family, but we're not outspoken by nature. Even so, I don't know if I struggle with relationships because I'm naturally shy or because of TWI. I also feel a lot of shame and bitterness. It's also hard for me to trust other religions. I feel really uncomfortable in my parents' new church. It's partly because they're trinitarian and partly because they have the same kind of pseudo-warm atmosphere that TWI had. I just don't know if any religions are right or if any of my former beliefs are valid at all. If I were going to give advice to parents or children of former TWI people or families that were involved, it would be to talk to each other and express concerns that you have about your beliefs and well-being. I'm very glad to say that everyone in my family seems happy now.