leafytwiglet

Wow... Interesting discussion... I always learn so much when I come here, and read everyones different perspectives. For me.. Well I probably am just a simpleton... I do not pretend to understand the scriptures anymore or even when i was in TWI.. What I do know is that when I was a child I believed in God I was raised to believe in God.. But that did not really make me what I would call a Christian. It just means that I came to the process already believing there was a God, and there was a Jesus Christ. I do know that I was and am a sinner... I am a Christian because God had mercy on my soul. For me it was the realization and acceptance that God forgave me my sins.. That Christ died and was raised from the dead and that because of that I could ask for forgivness and God would forgive me. IT happened to me in one evening when I was watching a presentation of the crucifiction, I finally understood that GOd forgave me no matter what I had done before and that I needed to change what I was doing... and try to follow Christs example. I know to most of you it is a very simplistic view and probably doesn't even come close to any reality of what may or may not be in the scriptures... But it was for me an epithany, a moment of clarity, and I changed from that day forward... am i perfect no... but I am definately a different person.. and this happened long before I had ever heard of TWI.

Thats because I only have to remember 4 of them even still they are a bit blurry.. as far as what was what.

Okay I am back sorry i left you all hanging. One of the nicest things that happened on my WOW year was that our two families got to go stay for a few days with teh WOW's in Kalispell. Our groups 9th Corps guy was best friends with the family coordinato of that group s 9th corps leader, who happened to be one of the corps that came through Pueblo CO and put together the PFAL class I took. We got to go to Glacier Park but they didn't. IT was a really nice thing .. THe Limb Leader of Montana set it up he was Kipp Holdren. He was really a good guy at that time.. not sure if that changed later on. Anyway it was nice.. I would have wished for a couple of girls there for some more of the feminine perspective but it was good.. and Glacier Park is beautiful but of course all things come to an end and we had to go home. Okay at some point in 1980 we went to Bellevue washington for a regional get together, They let all the WOW's go... or that is what they said.. of course I am sure it was a way to get all the numbers of attendees up, there were a lot of us. Maybe if Cherann comes on she will remember when it actually was as she was in Idaho when I was in montana. Also i need to make a correction, the guys running twigs when I took the class were eighth Corps.. The corps on the WOW field with us were 9th Corps. Being all of 20 years old it was all very exciting and fun... keep in mind please my family was actually all getting along for the most part. A couple more things happened right at the end of my WOW year one of my WOW brothers told me that he knew things about TWI and stuff that went on that would blow my mind.. aluding to the fact that i was not spiritually mature enough to deal with it. He made no bones that it was sexually explicit stuff and involved an early Corps girl, and stuff she had told him that she had done and some of the stuff he and she did... I ignored what he said because I thought he was exagerating. He hinted at just enough to make me remember it and worry a little about it. It wasn't until I came here that the whole picture became clear. The other thing that happened was that when we got back to ROA at the end of our WOW year all of the WOW's met in the woods at the site of the future WOW Auditorium... I think it was just at the beggining of it all .. They hadn't broken ground yet or maybe they were just getting ready to start setting aside money for it. Every one was cheering and I was at the back and had a hard time hearing everything they said. THey also had recently finished teh Log cabin that Craig was living in. Okay ROA 1980. I met the WOW's from Hawaii, OMG they spent the whole year BAKED. they were high the entire time at the ROA as far as i could tell and no one did anything about it. Okay and I went there with a bunch of people from the class we ran in Great Falls. We went in a 48 Ford Pick up with a hand built camper shell on it... We looked like the beverly hill billies LOL. I think the scariest part was when we got to OHIO in the middle of the night and it was pouring rain. THe truck had one window wiper on the drivers side it was a manuel wiper meaning you had to turn the nob back and forth with your hand while steering with the other had. I was driving .. IT was pitch black out and dong a typical Midwest rain storm .. you know the ones where it is like some one is dumping a bucket of water on you. The vents were open and my legs and feet were drinched with water coming in through the vents. We finaly found a rest stop to pull over. And honestly I have no idea ho I managed to not run us into aditch except that there was another car infornt of us and I followed their taillights as best I could. This was a very wet muddy ROA that year. I spent most of my time there being very wet, I did meet people from all over the world too. And a bunch of the New york. Manhatten crew.. A bunch of them were artists. One of them actually has gone on and done quite a bit of stuff. I am not sure if he is still in TWI or moved on. One of these days Maybe i will email him. I went back to Montana for a year in a Way home, 1980/1981 THe next thing I can tell you about is VP in spring of 1981 had a Word in the Arts Conference at head quarters, it was a four day event. I went with one of the artists from montana and of course met up with the guy from Manhattan as we had been talking on the phone pretty regularly. We hadn't quite hooked up as it was a really long distance romance LOL. any way the things i remeber about that were that one of the presenters was a gay artist who VP used as a very public example of how God could heal you from being gay. VP was very nice to him publicly so it gave an impression of a more accepting TWI I guess. There was also a sculpter there, he was very good.. and of course I remeber almost none of the names.. VP spent a lot of time emphasizing that we should all be using our talents to illustrate God's word.. I think the one thing that was disapointing was that VP didn't talk much about how to use the word to help you enhance you talent it was all teh other way around.. that the only real way to use your talent was in ministry activities.. He also bragged about how he wouldn't let the art department have paints they could only have crayons.. and how wasn[t he clever because look at what they produced.. mind you they did do some really awesome psters using the crayons in a pointilism style(little dots used to make pictures) but I kept thinking it was kind of odd that he would hinder them in this way. OF course now that I have gotten older I look a it and see how very one sided it was. I went away from it with a more limited view of what i could do with my talent than when i was on my way there. There was also a word in Business COnference that year... I can't remember if it was the first year for this conference or if there had been one before but teh word inteh Arts Conference was teh first for that. As far as my way home experience goes it was probablly pretty standard. We had the usual angst of money issues and one person trying to push everyone else around. and we managed to put together a PFAL class. We also did alot of fun things. We wnet skiing.. and a bunch of people went Skidiving Not me because i went to the Word in the Arts Conference and had only been back two weeks when they went so i didn't have enough money to go. Now when i went to ROA 1981 I was supposed to go on to New york to try to get a career in Art started but I never could find The artist guy from Manhattan... Interestingly I did meet up with his Twig coordinator or area coordinator who told me he thought it might not be a good idea for me to come to New York.( I had been talking to a bunch of people organizxing a way home and they were inviting me to come there).. he was concerned that i would be going there with out a support system in place, and he was worried that the guy would not come through for me as in his words he was not a reliable person.. this actually turned out to be a good thing.. the guy i was looking for had hooked up with another girl.. And i ended up going to Idaho to live with a girl friend. or that was the plan... I landed in A small town a sew days ahead of her... and started hanging out with the twig leader .. a just graduated 9th Corps guy .. the same 9th Corps guy that was the Family Coordinator of the WOW's in Kalispell . the same 9th Corps guy who had been part of the crew that put together the PFAL class that I took but I didn't get to meet. Anyway we ended up spending a ton of time together. The person i was supposed to live with showed up a week late and was going to go back home she had met some guy she was going to marry and wasn't going to stay in idaho at all.. So i ended up moving in with the 9th Corps guy and another guy and we set up a way home. We each had our own room and we started running TWIGS. Okay I am going to take a break here again. I will come back tomorrow and go throught 81/82. This is when I started to see some not so nice changes to TWI and of course I am not sure how much of it was because I was now a part of Corps or that the whole thing was changing.

Okay i am back.. I just realized this may take a lot of time LOL Okay Working at ROA and Corps week.. I was on Mark Graesers crew.. so let me tell you I was so surprised upon arriving at Grease spot to see he had continued in the ministry and on into CES. While I was on his crew he was nice enough to us on the crew but there was a long lament about TWI and different leaders.. he was clearly unhappy with VP and the entire organization, so I am not sure why he stayed, he also had a pretty volitile temper.. and would get mad pretty easily but then lots of people are like that. When they had me work the gate I noticed they all really hussled and ran to open it for VP when he would drive through and asked about it... aparently it was VP's practice to aim for you if you were opening the gate and speed up. So I was cautioned to keep an eye out for him and let them know if I saw him comming... of course it fell to me to open the gate one day and Of course VP came through... I dutifully hussled out there and he sped up and of course I tripped and stumbled and he never even hit the breaks. Not that it matters maybe he could see I didn't fall down maybe he didn't care not sure but now as an adult with a little more circumspection I often wonder why he allowed that particular rumor or facet of himself to be put out there. that when he came through you better get yoursef running because he isn't stopping for you and will run you over. I don't for a minute think he would have run me over but he really did speed up when he came to the gate I was there several times and watched him do it myself when I wans't opening the gate. I also want to take a moment to talk about some other people I ran into that first year at ROA. There was one of the original families that had been there from the begining with VP, I met them quite by chance, I happened to sit down by them on the grass during a teaching and when it was over we chatted for quite a while about how much they like VP and how long they had been part of the ministry... (I was asking question because i still wasn't too sure if I wanted to be part of the ministry and all this in the midst of being about to go WOW.) Also that particular year there was a lot of talk about deprograming because some guy had recently escaped from some deprogrammers and he spoke at the ROA.. I can't remember now if it was at a Corps only meeting he spoke at, or one of the general meetings because as I was there during Corps week I ended up at a couple of Corps only meetings. (It wasn;t that hard to get into them) During the actual ROA I met Chris Geer and Let me tell you that was interesting in and of itself. He was running around with a big gun on the grounds Loaded because he was supposedly guarding VP from people who wanted to kill VP (his words). The Corps person I was with(from Florida) knew him personally and so I got to meet him in one of the people from Floridas RV.. and I can not remember their name they were really nice.. they had a couple of little kids with them. This was when Spoon training was just being introduced. So there was not the rampant control stuff going on with that teaching yet though I have to say there was some teaching in the class I believe about your kids doing every thing you said to do with out question. I could be wrong about this and maybe it was at some other teaching I went to tons of them during my time in TWI.Any way back to Geer he was very wound up about doing his guard duties with the guns.. and there was this air of being in danger that was given out not just with the Corps but even at the regualr events. THat some how people were out to get VP. In the midst of all this I was trying to go WOW . I had purchased a car I had been making payments on but when I was getting ready to leave my parents decided they would not let me take my car with me... (a tactical mistake on there part if I had actually had the car I would have not been allowed to go WOW) any way there was lots of discussion about if I could go WOW even though I did nto have the car because I was supposed to make payments on the car. in hte end because i did not have the car they let me go. but I spent most of my time at ROA worried whether I would even be lalowed to go WOW. in the midst of it all I just wanted to find a quiet place to think and figure out what I was going to do so I went wandering in the WAY woods which really is just a strip of woodland not very wide but it was a good place to escape teh huge crowds of people there. So apparently while I was off teh beaten path in the woods VP decided to walk through there. I was on a tree stump and saw the parade of folks go threew but I was sitting real still and they did not see me. so when I did come out the Corps person guarding that area asked where I was and how come I was in the woods... mind you I had walked in past him at least a half hour before this and he did not stop me.. I guess some Corps had been supposed to clear the whole woods out so VP could walk throuhg it with Craig and a couple other people. THe poor Corps guy was scared to death and after that no one could go wandering through the woods. (I am sure they thought some one else could hide in there and ambush VP but really who would? I also met a couple of guys who had done a whole research project and were being bad mouthed by other Corps becasue their research contradicted VP. again 79 I don't remember what the topic was but tehy were really being bad mouthed. there was also another guy there who was doing some research on Christ and his brothers and sisters.. he had some ideas that really were kind of out there.. One of the things I was told was that if you researched the word some people would really go off the deep end and this was one of the reasons i needed to be careful and only study PFAL material. On the day we left to go WOW we got to meet our families I was all excited thinking I would be going with 3 other girls. Imagine my surprise to be in a family of two guys and two girls. and we were going with another family of four guys. I have to say as far as WOW families go I really was lucky my family Coordinator was a good man he tried to live according to the bible and we really did have a difficult but good year also the guys in the other family were also really intent on trying to follow teh WOW rules.. We were all there to make God the focus of our lives that year... that year they had you go to one place for 6 months and then some of us got moved to a new place for the next 6 months.. So the first 6 Months all we were in this little town in montana on hte edge of Canada We lost one of my WOW brothers .. he had a drug habit and was continuing with it on the WOW field my Coordinator Bill W told him he couldn't do the drugs and be on the field... HE wanted to do his drugs and he wanted to know who put Bill in charge.. We had a long talk with him about how much we wanted him to stay with us but the drugs had to stop. HE left the field the next day so we were 3 in our family... For the most part we did well, There was a lot of controversy in the town we were in because we were a cult and the churches of course made sure every one in town knew it.. but most peopel were very kind to us there and Honestly I think we were actually more in the wrong and rude a few times when we should have handled things differently. For example there was a gentlman who came to twon to do a little youth group ralley thing and we of course attended it and instead of praying when he prayed we all sat there and stared at him and were really very rude... he was actually pretty kind to us now that I think about it. anyway at the endo f our first 6 Months they moved us to Great falls. and we got two new WOW brothers added to our families one for each of us... they were military WOW's and of much the same temprement as the rest of us we were there to really put GOD frist in our lives. I can honestly say we had a pretty uneventful WOW year when I hear about others years here but like I said I was lucky. Okay I have to take another break but I do wnat to share about another incident from my WOW Year and then I will talk aobut 1980

Well I am going to just go through my whole time there with my list of stuff I saw or ran into I was in TWI from spring of 1979 to spring of 1983, My memory of some events is a bit fuzzy but I will do my best to share it I will probably break it up in bits. 1979 I took PFAL it was a pretty big class I think there were about 18 or 20 of us in the class. A group of Corps people had come through witnessing at the local college (one of them eventually ended up being my spouse though I did not meet him then) and had rounded up a large class I wasn't one of those witnessed to but one of the people they signed up for the class told me about it and I wanted to go to the class... To put this into a bit of perspective, I was at that time, having been a Christian for about 3 years looking for something that would give me a better understanding of the bible and somewhere to learn a little more about how to read it... So as you can see I was the perfect sort of person to fall for the green card. Anyway I took the class... I tend to be a bit of a rebel as far as, I listened to the class but I wanted to really read it all by myself to see how much of it was true or not... (any of you who have spent much time in the way can see where this is going to head) From the very beggining I was already being reprimanded that I needed to trust VP and just study PFAL... I was trying to take what I learned in PFAl and see if it really lined up with the bible. I also decided to go WOW... for a lot of reasons. One of them being I was really trying to put God first in my life and learn to stand on my own two feet on the word so it seemed like the perfect thing to do. And i was young so traveling to a new place sounded fun and exciting. VP was visiting Camp Gunnison in July it was not officially opened yet and i believe the only thing open was the main Chalet. Anyway we all sat outside and VP taught all about how we needed to stand on God's Word and if that meant seperating from our families then we darned well better be seperating from our families because the WORD was what mattered the most... (littel red flags began to fire in my head and I should have listened but I quelled them.. this was a man of GOD you know). Another incident happened there that I should have paid more attention to but i didn't. I wanted to meet VP but the Corps person I was with, instead of just taking me over and introducing me to him kept trying to make me go over myself and introduce myself..(I wonder now if this is because he was afraid of getting yelled at for interupting VP, he was ninth corps and going back for his last year of residence, I am sure he knew VP's temperament by then but not sure why he would send me over for this with out some kind of warning)mind you I was all of 19 and very shy... so this was not going to happen.. anyway he kept pushing me and I of course dug in my heels... I ended up not meeting him and maybe that was a good thing, not sure..maybe if i had shook his hand I would have left... (Because I was sexually molested as a child it is one of the things I recognize when i actually meet people, Shake their hands, I can see it in them or sometimes if I see them with their victim... a look in their eyes, the way they look at their victim, they look predetory I guess you would call it) I probably would have walked away from TWI then. ( Now i often wonder why I didn't listen to the red flags and my unease with TWI from the get go, I guess i really fell for the whole MAN OF GOD thing, plus I was young still) Anyway as we were getting ready to leave we decided to meet VP on the side of teh highway he was traveling with his motorcycle( a gift from the Corps), he and the Misses, and we, all the believers from Pueblo, met them on the side of the road and prayed with him... then he was off and so where we, we had a long ride home sitll and it was getting very dark. I arrived at ROA a week early as I was traveling with a 9th Corps who was going back into residence that year and so I being a nice person volunteered to help the work crews i was on Porta potty patrol and a couple of shifts of gate patrol.. some of you who have been around a while will know the spot it was the gate right at the edge of tent city and the farmers market, the one VP would drive through going full speed with out stopping while you had to run to get the gate open in time. Sorry I have to take a break now... I will be back to share more as the weekend goes on. I know it is mostly probably just my story of my time in TWI but I want to share the things I learned as I went along and saw stuff so those of you who were more in the know or who came later can see how it was to those of us who lived sort of on the edges of TWI and maybe why people got fooled. Also because right from the get go I believe I was singled out as Corps material I spent a lot of time around the Corps with out being corps... So, well, I saw things from a different perspective. Feel free to ask questions and stuff as i go along. edited to fix a couple errors I just saw

Thanks Geisha for pointing that all out so clearly. This brings me to the point of wondering ... If I knew all that VP was doing .. the drinking, the molesting, the carousing, The Lying, The plagerizing. Would I have become a member of the way international? I probably would not have. I took the class and tried to incorporate the teachings of the Way and VP into my life becasue he was portrayed as a Man of God who knew the scriptures and had studied them and wanted to share what he had learned from theem. I was there because he presented himself in that class as a man who had spent over 40 years studying God's word to understand it and was sharing it with us.. He portrayed himself as being upright and following God's word in the Power for Abundant Living Class. When I went WOW he lectured to us as we were about to embark on our WOW year to "keep your Penis in your pants" Regular believers were given a picture of who VP was ... not the real picture I might add. apparently people who were in the Corps not only got to see him up close and personal but saw how he corrupted the bible to get his own way and some of them not only followed but dragged the people in their fellowship down the same abyss.

Something I heard over and over again from Corps men and women... usually said when i spoke of trying to study the bible on my own rather than study PFAL. Why are you doing that .. you need to just focus on PFAL... you don't need to learn to research and study for your self... you need to just read PFAl... or my favoirte you are not capable of studying the bible on your own Like i was some blathering idiot. So much for a research ministry. oh and when some one did do some research on their own and try to share it how many of you heard about how they were totally off the word and the devil was working through them.

FOr a ministry that was supposed to endow us with Power for living an abundant life there sure were a lot of supposed evil spirits running around wreaking havok in peoples lives.

this all make me wonder too how many people did die or were seriously injured... and as Dagoo said which of those in the video are true. Edited to add okay I went to the actual Youtube video sources for this one are listed as

All these things just point out in glaring clarity that VP and The Way were no Chrisitan ministry and were not following in the footsteps of Christs Example. Christ healed people. He did not label them and send them packing after yelling at them and denigrating them. He spent time with the sinners bringing them healing and support. Not looking only for those who were financially and emotionally stable. The question at the beggining of this thread was, Was VP a good man. I Say no. For all the reasons above. How many of you went to the few meetings off HQ campus that VP was at hoping for him to heal you or someone you knew... I never saw him heal anyone... infact the one time a friend had an epileptic fit during a meeting Craig was at, Craig called him possesed and told every one not to touch him... he left The way immediately after that meeting. He was a good Christian Man with a scar on his brain tissue which caused his seizure not a possesed person... It was one of the times and incidents that started me on the road to walking away from TWI... It would still be many more before I got it. But I certainly get it now. Councilors and psychologists are there to help you recognize what happened to you during traumatic situations... they help you with coping with the trauma and give you alternate ways to deal with situations that come up in your life or that are bothering you. THey give you alternative actions to use instead of the actions you have been doing. I see so clearly now how very inadequate what TWI did was, how counter productive. VP was a very bad Man.. He was not a man of GOD. He was an alcoholic, a lier, a cheat, a rapist, a swindler, a thief... he ran a long con, and we all fell for it. He was a wolf in sheeps clothing and he stole lambs from God's flock. THe Bible that he taught was horribly flawed and he purposefully taught the errors he taught to run his con... was there truth mixed in the lies... well there would have had to have been in order for the long con to work. He was everything he accused all the churches of being and then some. I find it sad that people have continued teaching his drivel and I would question their truthfulness and integrity and I suggest in light of recognizing VP's Long Con--- that they are all running their own long con.

Hmm.. Good things classified as evil. Donate to TWi but do not donate to any other charity. all your donating should go to head quarters as they would know who was deserving of your donations... You could not possibly know yourself. The cross as a symbol of christianity was really a symbol of death and you should not wear it. You should only be singing WAY songs any other song is evil or could be bringing unclean thoughts into your head. Your children should mind you unquestioningly... as you should mind your church leaders. IF they tell you to jump you should you never know what they are saving you from.

That is a lot of people... for such a short amount of time. at least one about every year. That doesn't count the accidental deaths does it.

quote = Leafytwiglet: As others mentioned VP sexually molested his own daughter... what makes you think she was a teen ager and what makes you think he only did it once quote = johniam: She lives in MI. Why don't you call her and ask her about it rather than blindly believe what someone posted here. There's a website called zabasearch.com that will give phone numbers and addresses for free. Go ahead, call her. And while you're at it, why don't you ask her how she feels about the things said here about her dad? Reply to Johniam I would never presume to call her out of the blue as a total stranger... and you forget I was abused by my stepfather and would have no problem with others discussing the merits of whether he was good or bad in light of his own claims on what he did. Also as a person who was molested and have heard what my step dad told others about what he did,considering that information in light of what was actually done... my step dad never told anyone the extend of his depravity... so if VP claimed only one instance of molestation, I know to the very bottom of my heart that there was more, how many? who knows... but I also know that My step dad used a lot of excuses for why it was okay, what he did... just as VP did. but that doesn't make it right ... and no real man who put's GOD and God's word first in his life would do anything so horrible.. and then justify it with what some obscure supposed aboriginal tribe(he probably made up) did. And in regards to basing your behavior on what some aboriginal tribe does... why would you do that when you have decided that your life will be based on what followers of God and jesus Christ have set as the standard for their life. I am not talking about reading about other religions and seeing where tehy all meeet in agreement about what is right for people to do to live in harmony... I am saying look at how he took something like that to excuse himself from following what was so obviously set forth in the bible as the way to live your life.

I want to thank Johniam for making me see just exactly what the Way International did... The leadership taught and we all followed along to some degree or other that, we were not subject to anyone elses religious rules. Any rules in the bible were old testament and so we were not subject to them. ANyone who was abused was responsible for the attack.. it was their fault anyone who is attractive is fair game for sexual abuse and brought it on their selves because of how they look or some sort of action they did... never mind they were just walking down teh streeet minding their own business. God forgives you so you can commit any crime because you are not bound to the laws of the community. Nothing a person does especially the MOGFOT who gets some kind of pass because he was so "SPIRITUAL that decency did not apply to him" I think the many moons went down on your anger comment cemented it for me. Crime is Crime and you can pretty it up anyway you want but it is still crime... and just because someone can get pregnant does not mean they are mentally or emotionally ready for sex. Let me add this little caveat.. a 12 year old looking at another 12 year old does not equate to a grown man (over 21 trying to have sex or molest another child... and there are plenty of instances of grown men having sex and abusing little children... babies even... and women abusing shildren to not to let women off the hook. As others mentioned VP sexually molested his own daughter... what makes you think she was a teen ager and what makes you think he only did it once. He was a first rate piece of trash... and quoting scripture does not make someone good... it is just quoting scripture lots of criminals do it all the time. For that matter what makes you think that girls who are molested consented to it?

Going back to the original subject posited. was VP good or evil... I am going to base this on my own experience with an abusive step father and say he was not all bad but not all good. I survived abuse but just barely. The emotional toll that abuse of any kind (verbal, sexual , or emotionsl) imposes on a person no matter male or female is very high. Every survivor of abuse suffers from depression to some degree more or less depending upon your personality, you also will have issues with self respect, and self confidence. your ability to have close personal relationships is marginal at best. When i say this I do not mean you can not have friendships... I mean if you get married or have a couples relationship of any kind you will have difficulty in sharing your emotions and feelings with your significant other. Your relationships with your children are strained and you find it difficult to treat them respectively of their age(expect too much or too little of them) I know that part of my coming to terms with the abuse i endured growing up involved learning to understand the whys of my Step fathers abuse. But understanding my step father brought me to the conclusion that he was not a good man... he had some good qualities and he did some nice things once in a while, But when I weigh it against all the hurt and bad that he did he comes up lacking. When i look at VP and all the hurt and pain he caused in light of his claim to be trying to bring people to a fuller knowledge of the word of God... i find him lacking in the good department. If i judge him by that I find that the good he did is so far outweiged by the bad that he is a BAD man... Was there instances of good... yes, but do those negate the bad... no. Not in this case. I understand that there was a cultural norm of dismissing what women thought and said but that is not what VP's abuse was about at all. VP chose to twist the bible teacings in order to justify his decisions to do wrong. He hid behind the notion that he was spiritually superior and because of that he could break rules and do what he wanted to do... but if he was superior as he claimed then he would have realised how much his actions hurt those women and that he was actually acting with evil intent. I also want to add that abuse, any kind of abuse is always about being in control and manipulating someone to do what you want. Abuse is about controling and destroying the other person... In light of all this, no VP was not a good man. And Morals are societies rules to make living together work.

When ever I read this I get this picture of these naughty boys doing exactly what they were told to do every time the teachers back is turned and burst out in giggles. Too funny.

LOL waysider That song is all kinds of awesome. So does she have freckles on her face or her butt, Snicker.

what TWi was selling itself as and what it really was were two different things. VP refined his product as he went along... feeding off of the angst of we the disenfranchised youth of the time. What TWI morphed into under Craig was not anything so different from VP. Just more angry and more out in the open When you look at the bigger picture of how VP built TWI and his whole life and look at it through the teachings he made and the teachings he choose to take from others and cobble together into his take on what GOD wazs saying in the bible... it changes everything. For me... there were red flags or rather there were questions I had but I set them aside to wait and see... I went to a teaching at gunnison where VP spoke and he was carrying on about dividing from your family if they didn't become a part of the WAY... my radar was going off all kinds at that point. I decided to go WOW for me (yep I was very selfish ... I wanted to become more spiritual in my own walk with God) When I went to ROA '79 there were some older people there who had been part of Weirwilles ministry from his very begginings... Their whole family was involved with TWI. It made me stop llistening to that voice trying to tell me something was not right. I thought these are adults they wouldn't be here if there was something wrong with TWI... ( I was a foolish girl of 19 but I figured tehy were adults they would have a better clue) ILt took me a coup;le of years and becoming A spouse corps to really start to see what TWI was teaching to start to really wonder if I should be there. Even still I never knew the whole picture just bits and pieces. I am the first person to give leeway and recognize that people are human and not perfect but when you really stop and analyze what TWI was selling and what VP was living in his life and how he and we were comporting ourselves and line it up with what Christ was telling us to do in our lives... well they just didn't line up did they. Christ was about following God's commandments HE did not say to throw them out he said that the greated comandment was to love God first and then your self and in doing that you would be following the comandments... Christ did not say well teh more you know the word the more you can break the commandments, Because you have the spiritual chops and you can handle it. He was about considering others and bringing pwople to an understanding of how we needed to be kind to each other and work together. What ever a church is or does is about how the people in it work together to help each other and help their fellow man... getting the bible right isn't realy about knowing every jot and tittle it is about recognizing that the books of the bible were written by people who wanted to share their experiences trying to walk with God... and when you sotp trying to make it about some legalistic mumbo jumbo and look at what they each really were trying to say you realize it is about how we treat each other. Maybe in the beggining VP had some well meaning purpose; who knows, but it seems to me that from the very beggning of his ministry he was trying to break the commandments and twist the bible to make it okay to break the rules. I realize you are now going to say so did David but when you read the story of David you see at the end that he admitted his wrong doing repented and brought himself back to the commandments in humility. I believe when you look at the bible and what all the different stories and parables say you see that they are saying this.. If you make the commandments part of your life and try to live your life respectful of your family and friends and all the people in your community you will find a peace and happiness. I stopped trying to reconcile all those little discrepancies and to look at what the bigger picture was.

Brainfixed... This makes me so sad... I taught childrens fellowship in our Twig... I loved the time i got to spend with the children... and I know what I did which was play games sing songs and pray with them. It makes me ill that anyone would do this to children and worse under the guise of being there to teach them about God. I also get sick when I hear what you and some of the other kids who grew up in TWI endured. I would hope that If any of it happened around me I would be Brave enough to stand up and stop it. I would hope I would be strong enough but it would have been very very hard. I always hope there is some special hell or karma or something for Evil people. Some fitting punishment for them. Any way sending hugs to you Brainy. Edited to add taht when I was in TWI there were still relatively few children and there was not the wholesale control stuff going on... IT was there but not to the degree it moved to in later years. The childrens fellowship program was just getting off the ground. I think I had one fo the few groups at that time at least out west. My Hubby really was the one who encouraged me to run one. THey didn't have any materials I made my classes and stuff up all by myself.

My Abuser used that same "excuse/ Reason" HE was teaching me about sexuality. Never mind all the rest of the lies he filled my mind with that took years to overcome. Worst of all is he managed to convince my own mother that it was all my fault. So yeah i believe from what you have said Waysider, that Weirwille did abuse his own daughter.. I am guessing too there was more to it than the fondeling. He was a first rate bastard. The more I think about what you have all said the more I realise how much of the class was about the victim being at fault for every bad thing that happens to them. I guess it is not too surprising I got the impression weirwille was saying anyabuse was teh victims fault in light of the rest of the calss... weither he said it or some variation of it.

Waysider ... I am sure it was in that part about believing... I remember it was a very direct statement that peple who were abused were responsible for it... I just can not remember it exactly word for word what he said... and it bothered me ... maybe it is one of those things where how I remember it is not very accurate. Excie...After coming here to the cafe I have been very very thankful that I never ended up at Head quarters and in the direct line of fire of Weirwille as I am sure I would have been a target for this very reason... I was a victim of abuse and so I would have been an easy target if not for him then for someone else. After I had my own children I came to understand how little I was when it all started and how I held absolutely no responsibility in what happened. That I could not have changed that outcome and that I did nothing to invite it. It was just such a blatant statment in the class. or maybe it was something about no matter your age you are responsible for it. I have walked away from most of the TWI teachings or at least I hope I have, every once in a while I realise there is some other thing I took as ,truth, what was said and I shouldn't have.

When I first took PFAl back in 79 there was this statement weirwille made... it was near the end of the class some where around maybe the third or second class to the end. anyway the statement, and forgive me but I do not remember it word for word..IT was something like this, "any abuse a persone has done to them is their own fault or when you are abused you caused it yourself". Something like that. IT upset me then, and has continued to bother me. The reason it bothered me and still does is that I was abused and it started when I was very little... at the time I took the class I was just really begining to grapple with the abuse. It took me a long time to really come to grips with what I endured and this did not help me to place the blame where it belongsed.. squarly with teh abuser. Can someone who knows, tell me what really was said... I know it is a twisted lie but I really want to get it out of my head for good, and I can't seem to shake it with out seeing what really was said. One of the things I have learned coming to The cafe is that when i really see the words and phrases from TWI now .. I can look at them and logically break them down so i can get them out of my head. Any way thankds for any help.

OMYGoodness... I loved that. Thanks Javajane.

I won't say i am sorry I was involvedin TWI because ... well I found my Darling Hubby who really means the world, the moon, the stars, and the universe to me.. and by meeting him I got my darling daughters... but I should have stayed in business school and finished it.. but then I wouldn't have my hubby and girls... I guess really I shouldn't have gone WOW... no that helped me to grow up and understand that my walk with God was just that... MY walk with God... also was instrumental in me meeting Hubby. Okay what I really wish I had done was drop it all ... the way teachings, when I got out.... I should have realized it was all a pack of lies sooner... i should have listened to my gut instinct right from the begining... but then I really wouldn't have become who I am today... and I am a keen spotter of all things Baloney pucky .... now .. thanks to TWI. SO my biggest regret is the superior attitude I picked up thanks to TWI. I was one of the lucky ones... I wasn't in that long... my life was slightly derailed by TWI, and my relationship with my parents was bent a bit.. but it was not that good to begin with. (alcoholic stepdad who abused the entire family) My WOW year turned out to be probably one of the most life changing years of my life... and was probably one of the happier ones, judging by what I have read of others. I consider myself very lucky. I think what I would most change is the whole "I know it all attitude"... and the not listening to others, and thinking I knew "the only truth".... The years of holding on to that.... I would change that, because that is the one thing that held me back the most.

The way it is worded .. the integrity of the word is always at stake... was done to give people a purpose to rally to... We were protecting God's word from people who would twist the meaning of the bible to their nefarious purposes( the irony of this is not lost on me) But now as aa adult with a better ability to look at what is said and break it apart, It really sounds like anything or anyone can sully the bibles integrity. It is such a poorly choosen turn of a phrase. IF the word is truth ... then it is truth and nothing can change that. And truth certainly needs no protector. IT is truth no matter how you slice it. A lie now... that is a different animal, and that needs guarded or it risks being exposed in the cold hard light of day.