Belle

I'm not sure about the GEEK award, but I'm sure to be in the running for the DORK award. BOOKS - Read all the Harry Potter books. Never read LOTR and never had any desire to. I have, however, read every diet book released in the past 20 years. I still have most of them. MOVIES - Seen all the Star Wars and Harry Potter movies many times. I've also seen every Quenton Tarantino film. "True Romance" being the favorite. 'PUTERS - Knows how to program in SQL and is a whiz in MS Access. Have all my MOUS certifications. MUSIC - Used to belong to the Barry Manilow International Fan Club. Have all my vinyl records from growing up and the turntable that works to play them on. Played Barbies to Broadway musicals. PETS - Owns one very spoiled dog. We have done the Dog Show circuit - she has her AKC Championship title and one leg toward her Earthdog title. We are also working on obdience and agility titles. WORK - I like my job because I get to work with other computer geeks and brilliantly creative marketing oddballs. I also have won over the Network Nazi and get special privileges sometimes because of it. MODE OF TRANSPORTATION -A very practical, dependable Mazda Protege that needs very little maintenance and gets killer gas mileage. TRAVEL - Exciting travel is going to Mississippi or Kentucky to visit family. I have spent an enjoyable week-end up above the Mason-Dixon line recently and I'll be going to Mexico this summer for a family reunion.

Sounds like a great time. I'd love to be there. Saturday, 6pm? And welcome back, Sir! ;)-->

Welcome signals! Thank you for sharing your story. It was so easy to get all gung ho and keep plugging along and getting more and more involved despite those warning lights flashing in our brains, wasn't it?

Chas, I never knew the man either. He was long gone by the time I got involved and hardly ever spoken about except for the classes and I think I got involved during the last couple of years before WAP came out. I never took his advanced class, just craig's. To me he was mostly just the guy who started TWI. I first took PFAL in a girl's living room on audio cassettes while she fixed dinner for her kids and visited with her husband at the end of the day. I liked the way he talked and how easy it was to understand what he was saying. I enjoyed having answers to questions, but now I question the answers I did get. The rest of the "good stuff" that I do hold onto I already learned in church and from my family. TWI taught us that everything is black & white and P*ul Brook* once told a class of us that the more of the word we learn the more black & white everything becomes. I still have to fight that in my own brain today. I can understand those who only saw the good side of vee pee and those who really do feel like TWI saved their lives. I can also understand the nostalgia for the good times in TWI because many people did have good times. Many people didn't. It's okay to have good and bad feelings. Me? I feel that I came out of TWI worse than when I went in. I went in healthy, with a generous portion of self-esteem and with hope and optomism for the future. I came out with health problems, a broken marriage, a biological clock nearing time to sound the alarm, self-esteem issues, depressed and wounded. On top of that, I didn't learn anything about God that would make me think it was worth it. The only good things I can see from my experience is my undying devotion and love to my family for never giving up on or leaving me and getting to meet so many wonderful people through GSpot. :)-->

You're absolutely right, Mr. H, and I in no way meant to imply that everyone in a position to stop it ignored the behaviors and abuse. I apologize if it sounded that way. It's common knowledge that Dott*e Moneyhands counselled women, talked to Donna on the phone frequently and was very aware of the abuses going on - enough to be involved in at least one court case, yet she lied to the entire branch about not knowing anything of it. So did her husband. These are the kinds of people I was referring to.

Conflicted is probably a very apt description, George. We have the same confliction here at Daytona. The business owners like the business that Spring Break, Bike Week and Black College Reunion bring to town, but they don't like all the traffic, crowds, crime and noise. In fact there's a major debate going on about trying to discourage the events and asking them to move to another town so Daytona can establish themselves as a "family" friendly beach. (The prolific population of pedophiles is going to keep that from happening, but that's another story for another day.) I don't much care about the other two, but I sure hope they keep Bike Week around! :D-->

I'm here for too many reasons to be able to articulate. Having been out less than a year, GSpot was initially a place for me to lurk, get information, strengthen my resolved to get out and help with trying to get my husband out with me. It's a place where I met some great and wonderful people who have been an invaluable support to me over the past six years while I was fighting to get out with my marriage in tact. It's a place where I could tell people what was going on "inside" the machine. It's a place where I can vent, share, wonder out loud, toss around ideas, laugh, cry, sort out my waybrain and dissolve it piece by piece. It's been the main reason, I think, that I haven't gone absolutely insane due to the situation I was in the past six years. I'd like to give some of that back and I do correspond with quite a few "innies" who are in the same situation I was. I just like it here. :D--> The people here are the coolest and I hope to get to meet many more of them.

I wonder how many they have graduating this year......they may start counting the kids in their numbers just to boost them. :D-->

And the people in a position to and with the responsibility to stop him did nothing. Many, like the Moneyhands, did nothing because they could not make it in "the real world" and they sure as he11 wouldn't be able to live the nice lavish lifestyle they had become accustomed to.

Very good job, Outin88! Thanks for taking the time to put that together.

I don't know about the business and the money, but I imagine they are glad to see the cult having less and less people. The wayfers still around are probably much nicer to deal with now that they don't have craiggers getting them all riled up. It probably also means less WD's knocking on their doors trying to get them to come to a service.

I would love to know what L*uie L*nd knows about how they cook the books. I'm sure it must be pretty interesting since he just kind of disappeared.

Ain't that the truth! I remember we had a new couple at fellowship once and they were telling us that they had left their church because they were always being asked to "volunteer" or help with something and so they never had any time. We were sitting there telling them how awful it is that churches are like that and that they use and abuse the giving nature of the congregants. They commented on how small our home fellowship was and asked about the "volunteer" opportunities within TWI. They caught on real quick that we weren't really any different and so we never saw them again. It's funny how we spent so much time doing things for TWI and were tired so much of the time, but kept plugging along because we thought we were oh so spirtual. My ex and I asked for three years to be able to step down from being assistant hfcs, but were always given some reason why they really needed us and continued to take our time. It took my big mouth getting us in trouble for them to decide that maybe we needed to take a break from being assistants. No S H ! T, Sherlock!! How absolutely brilliant they are! -->

Glad to have you here, signals! --> I look forward to reading more about you. I see you posted in the My Story section. Sounds like you had one of the more common WOW experiences. I'm glad you were strong enough to insist on getting out of it.

Yep. If they really wanted people to learn about God and His word, they would have made it much easier to get the information and they wouldn't be such a closed loop organization. They only way to learn anything from them is to be involved with them. I remember being scolded for sharing too much information with someone I had witnessed to. I was told to quit answering her questions and to tell her that if she really wanted answers that she would have to take the class. M*tthew H*rmon was my BC for a few years and he told us in a HFC meeting once that we had to get our tails in gear and get people signed up for the class because we needed the money the new people would bring to the ministry. He was parrotting something he had heard from craiggers and probably from Moneyhands, too.

Welcome to the cafe, signals! :)--> I'm curious. Please tell me about the whole other ball game. I know that many of the OT stories are eerily similar to many other stories told by various and sundry countries about THEIR gods and such. I know that there are some things in Christianity that are wrong, but were never "corrected" by the church and now the history of the errors is so far gone that people wouldn't believe they are wrong....

Regarding the "where will we go" question. That's the same argument I got from my ex. Of course, suggesting CES or CFF or any other "offshoot" was out of the question...nevermind the fact that they are closer to what he was wanting to have in TWI. -->

Yeah, but you don't have to belong to a church or any organized religion to be part of the family and to contribute.

It was nice to meet a fellow GSpotter and I really enjoyed getting to spend time with Steve! I'm sure that picture looks like cr@p, but e-mail it to me and if it's not too bad, I'll let you post it. ;)--> scarlettbelle at earthlink dot net

4,000 WOWs in one year?? That's beyond my imagination!! Makes todays numbers look pretty pathetic, doesn't it? I think the first year I even knew anything about the ROA was the year craig cancelled it. Was that the same year as the Living Sanctified "class"? Andreatheflorist, chat away! That's why we're here and I love hearing all this stuff about the way it used to be. I can just imagine the tents and girls primping together.....LOL! Not sorry I missed those days though. Rascal, that's downright awful! I'm so sorry you had to experience that. :(--> Man! They must do some really good spinning to sell the precious remnant reason for the small numbers. BUT, being on TWI payroll like the Moneyhands, how can you watch the shrinking numbers and dollars and NOT be worried about your standard of living??

I'm interested in what's going on, but like Radar, I don't care how it ends just as long as TWI has to fork over tons of money.

Socks that sounds EXACTLY like the church I've been going to!! After the service they have a "coffee house" and we sit around a round table and have coffee, smoothies and any donuts leftover from before the service. We talk about the sermon, the music or anything else that's on our hearts to share. They've had a lot of questions about my experiences with TWI, so some mornings that's what we talk about and they've helped me overcome much of my egotism, cynicism, distrust and waybrain. It's so refreshing, healing and comforting to be in a church that operates like that. We did the "40 Days of Purpose" study groups in my church and they provided ALL the materials and t-shirts for free to anyone who signed up. They wanted the whole congregation to participate. There was a very small note in the bulletins saying that if you wanted to contribute to the cost of the program who to give your donations to, but it was not mentioned other than that.

:D--> You sure have a way with words Groucho!

Oakspear said: As Paradiseden said, the main reason the wc went full time to begin with was to increase membership (participation) and therefore the money coming in. Funny how it's always about money Those full timers should have been so busy WITNESSING AND UNDERSHEPERDING that they didn't have time to micro-manage people's lives. Of all the wc I know not one has ever brought someone new to fellowship, much less had someone finish a class. --> On top of that, once they went back to working in the real world, they STILL haven't been bringing new people into the fold. In fact, all I've ever seen them do is make everyone else feel bad for not doing what they should be doing. LOL!! Yeppers, those big bad wc who would get in your face in a heartbeat for not stringing chairs just right sure cowered like a pansy in the face of lcm or any directive from him passed down by hq. The ones still living off the TWI millions are the worst because you KNOW they don't like the fox and the way things are being run but they continue to keep their mouths shut.

Galen, by the time craig was ousted there weren't really that many people left who weren't AC grads...mostly just kids because there were so few new people. If you don't count the kids, I would say that probably 95-98% of the adults in TWI are AC Grads. Of those AC Grads, the pressure is pretty darn intense to go to the AC Special. It's touted as one of THE most spiritually important events in the ministry. Unlike your time in TWI, most AC Grads do go to this event. Even if a couple can not afford for both parties to go, at least one of them is sent. Again, remember that times changed drastically from your involvement in TWI. ;)--> When I was in, the area was like a ghost town because everyone was gone. We didn't even have fellowship because there were so few people. The WC were pretty much required to attend if I remember correctly. Maybe a few were granted "special exception" to stay in the area and "stand in the gap" for the believers who couldn't go. I know they paid for the in-residence corps to go last time. At least I think they paid for them.....could be wrong, but the in-residence were there to work their arses off. Regarding full time status (yes that's what I meant by paid), when craig sent the WC to full time status it was for branch as well as limb and region coordinators. Our BC's only had maybe 80 people in our branch and they were paid in full by TWI so that they could micro-manage our lives. The rules began to change as they began to realize that it was a stupid idea. I think 50 or 100 was the cut off for being able to stay full time. The BC in Tampa falsley inflated his numbers for as long as he could before being sent back to the "real world" of working men and women.