outandabout

OK, so when are we going to get the whole story?

Girls read comics. I was a girl, and I read Lois Lane comics, Lana Lang, Archie, Casper, and of course Mad Magazine! There are still things I think of from MAD that I laugh about today. And as for Archie comics, I always rooted for Betty to get Archie instead of Veronica because she was a stuck up rich beeyatch. I used to go to the drug store with 25 cents and get a comic book and a couple of candy bars. Yup, reading comics and eating candy bars. That's the life!

I was at a Family Camp in 1974 near Rye, New York. I had a pain in my abdomen and I asked someone to minister to me, and they prayed for what was going on. Then, just to be sure, I asked a second person to minister to me. They prayed for the same thing. Well, that wasn't enough so I asked a THIRD person. (Jan Jesse, I think) When she ministered to me, she said that the cause was gone and what was left was only symptoms. It was like God said, "Cut it out, you're healed already!" So, I do believe that we are capable of ministering healing to others and of receiving healing. I had other instances of people ministering to me and hitting the nail right on the head. I can think of at least five instances I experienced like that off the top of my head. But I have given up trying to anyalyze why or when or if. I just know it can happen. And I still minister sometimes and receive the same. When Belle said in a post farther above, that by the 90's people wouldn't and couldn't minister healing, to me that is one more example of how TWI got totally ripped off by the Devil.

Weren't there like 21 keys to walking in the spirit? or how many? Man, what a way to trip all over yourself while trying to "walk"!

Thre I was, August of 1982. I arrived at my parents’ house. Here I was, coming home again. Crazy again. Deja vue. I was in the middle of another full-blown manic/psychotic episode. Whoopee. What a ride. For those who have never been through a manic episode, consider yourself fortunate. It's like being on speed and acid at the same time. I have since been diagnosed as bi-polar (what a surprise). Anyway, this was my first major episode since 1974, when I had “lost it” on the way to Amarillo. You can see why I hadn’t really thought I’d go off deep end again, since it had been 12 years. But stress is a major factor that can cause these things in those so inclined. So let’s see - in the past year I’d been held up with a gun, almost murdered and continually psychologically beaten over the head by not only Mot and Barq, but Jammit. Oh, and then I was supposed to be going WOW, otherwise known as packing up again to go off to some unknown place and live with people you never met. A total crap shoot with your life. And the emotional side of things, there were the unresolved attachments to Buster and Merkel. I moved into the room down the hall in the back of my parents’ house. The walls of the room were yellow, which I thought was really significant spiritually. I turned on all the lights in the room to make it “spiritually light”. Then of course my parents told me to turn them off. Two of my younger brothers were living there at the time. One of them, who posts here as "outintexas", was getting ready to leave for ROA and then go WOW. It was somewhat disturbing for him to have me around, since I was saying things like “It’s really OK to listen to natural music.” I took a pillow off my other brother’s bed and washed it because it was “spiritually unclean.” Oh, I was just so busy, so many things to do. --> I would also confront my youngest brother about how "he had always had it so much better than the rest of us" in the family. My dad told me to stop saying things like that to my brother because I was disturbing him. I saw a mental “vision” in my head. There was a skeletal, gray metal structure. It was empty and cold. Out of the structure flowed a “river” of life – people, flowers, spiritual life, joy. It flowed out and away from the cold, boxy gray structure. To me, it meant TWI was dead and the life was flowing away out of it, or would be. Now, that “vision” actually had something to it. To top it off, I made tapes on a cassette recorder with “significant and meaningful music selections” playing in the background from off the stereo, accompanied by my emotional rantings about the great truths that were being revealed to me. I sent one to Rinse Minagain, and more than one to Buster, along with several letters. I also wrote letters to Merkel, addressed to him at Emporia, since I knew he would be going back in residence. One day I told my mother I was “going for a walk” and took my camera. I met a mail-man and asked him to take a roll of film of ME. I also took several other rolls of film of all kinds of things. Then I went to the camera shop to get them developed, telling the guys at the counter the exact order in which to develop the pictures. And then there was the band of metal I found that I put around my head under a hat, the better to attract spiritual energy. In the middle of the night I walked down to the beach and danced around. I was totally manic. I was also convinced that I was called out to be ordained with ALL FIVE gift ministries! WOW! Surely Dr. W would realize that and I would hear from him. Oh, and here’s the clincher. I wrote a letter to Dr. W, using the method they had told us, putting a second envelope marked “private” inside the original one. I had drawn some sort of configuration with lines connecting certain TWI people together in some way, which I was convinced God had revealed to me. And because I thought the Devil was after me, I enclosed the remaining gold hoop earring that I still had after I’d lost the other one during my encounter in Mississippi with the unsuccessful strangler. I came to the conclusion that I hadn’t been able to find the other one because the Devil had stolen it during the struggle. The Devil had the earring in his realm somewhere and was using it to have power over me, and the one I still had was counteracting it. So if I sent the one I had to Dr., I would be safe because it would better balance out the powers since Dr. was "spiritually stronger" than me. Well, it made sense at the time.... Merkel called me from the ROA because Bittwy had my last paycheck and Merkel got it from her to send to me. I thought that was really nice. He ended the call saying “I love you.” Ok, so what did that mean, I wondered. We all loved each other didn’t we? And Buster called. He had received so much stuff from me that the postal service had left him a note saying “We care. You have mail for you that does not fit in your post office box.” And when he went to pick it up there was this big pile of letters and packages of the tapes I made. He was very supportive and nonjudgmental when he spoke to me. I have often thought that in August, 1982, I could have easily dropped out of TWI. I was kicked out of Corps Week, I had no assignment and I was living at my parents’ house. How easy to disappear. And I would have, if only I had realized that it was OK to leave. But I was too darn loyal. I knew that the “armour of God had no covering on its back.” And if I was being “pursued by the Devil” I needed to stay with the household. If I had known the truth about the evils that were really going on in TWI and seen through the hypocrisy of so much of the leadership, I would have had the strength to leave. But none of that was known yet by many of us. It would be four more years until the “Passing of the Patriarch” and its reverberations, and two more after that before I could see the open door that had always been there. So I went with my brother to see “Bopp Heartfelt,” the branch leader of San Diego. Bopp had been the branch leader there for years, going back to the seventies. I knew him from then. Now I can say nothing bad about Bopp. He always was just a really good guy. Though I do think my state of mind unnerved him a bit and he never did quite see me the same after that, never did trust me enough later to give me much responsibility in the branch. I just went to see him that dayt to get reconnected with TWI in San Diego. Here’s a picture of "outinTexas" and me in the driveway in Del Mar on that same day. :(--> I still liked Merkel though and was hoping for something to come of it. He still wrote from time to time and said he wanted to see me at the next Corps Week. I went to an Art/Advertising school that had a year-long program. My Dad foot the bill, as he always had for my educationsl forays. By the time I finished, it was January ’84. I found a job as a “production artist” for a company that made gun instruction manuals for the military. A bunch of us artist-types all sat together in this big room at drawing boards doing illustrations and paste-up of guns to make these manuals. The management didn’t consider my paste-up work to be fast enough, so I was assigned to be a “cell cleaner.” I only made a little over minimum wage. In fact I had been making more at the waitress job I had been working at while I was in the Art/Advertising school. But my mom had been ....ed off at me after I graduated from the Art program because I wasn't looking hard enough for a job in the field I had just studied. She had called me a "32 year old adolescent" because I was living at home and going to school. So I took the first job I could find. Despite the low pay, this job was a lot of fun because my co-workers were clever and funny and we would all crack jokes and carry on while we worked. Meanwhile Ropert and I switched twigs to one in Escondido, farther north of San Diego. I used the excuse that it was closer, which it was. But really I felt that since the twig leaders weren’t Corps, they would be less threatening to be around. So I went to twig and hung around the branch, not wanting to stay in TWI that much but not aware that I could leave. My twig leader, “Mock” and his wife were nice people who pretty much left me alone, and that’s all I wanted. Time for my Corps Evaluation came along. I hated those things with a passion. On my way there, Billy Joel was on the radio singing "My Life." Yeah, that was it! Screw everybody, it was time to start claiming "my life!" In a fit of rebelliousness, I had given myself these great ratings. Then during the evaluation, the DS, the limb leader told me they were a "bit high." And of course by the time I was face to face with him, I was the old meek me. When the subject of my episode that got me kicked out of Corps Week came up, DS told me that the only reason the devil had kept me alive was to get back at Dr. Wierwille, and if it "happened again," the devil would kill me. Inside, my "smart foot" self was thinking, "That's funny, I always thought it was God who kept me alive." And by the way, there have been through other episodes since, and I'm still here. I'm not aware of the devil killing bi-polars when they go through episodes. Oh, maybe if you're in TWI he does. ;)--> One day I decided that I should move out of my parents’ house because they were basically just tolerating me being there. During the iterim at my parents' house, I had moved out for a while to live with a couple in Encinitas, who had invited me to move in with them. They had sold me a car that didn’t run very well and then invited me to leave. When they kicked me out, I moved back in with my parents and my Dad yelled at me when I returned. So I found a place from the want ads and moved in. It was a dumpy studio in an old house near downtown that you had to go up some outside stairs to get into, but I was glad to have my own place. The studio was a small room with a kitchen off of it and a bathroom. Meanwhile, I was still working at the “art production” job. As I was moving in, as soon as my phone got put in, I called the branch leader, Bopp, to tell him I had moved. His wife answered. I spoke to her and she told me she would tell Bopp. Bott Salad, (the Corps guy who ran the Way Home) reproved me later for moving “without telling anybody.” I wanted to tell him that I had told the branch leader’s wife but why bother. It would just be making HER look bad, and I would get reproved for that. I knew the drill. I also switched twigs to the nearest one to my new place, which happened to be run by “Cliff and Yojanna” from the 10th corps. I had known them in residence because we had been in the same twig at one point. When I drove up to their house for the first time, Cliff came out and gave me a big hug. I felt more at Home in the Way than I had in awhile. Cliff suggested that I move into a Way home with two other women and at first I didn’t want to. I had my own place, even if it was a dump. But then I decided that it would be “better spiritually” for me to do that, so I moved out of the studio after only two months. I felt kind of sad about leaving it. Sometimes if I’m in that area, I drive by it to see how it looks. The outside stairs have been rebuilt. So I moved AGAIN, to the Way Home. A returning female WOW vet, “Kripp” was the coordinator. It was a nice town house in a San Diego suburb, but it never felt like home to me. Kripp made a lot of decisions that were mostly for her own benefit. When I was coming home to find Kripp's 9-year-old lying on the floor of my room watching my TV, it annoyed me. So I tried to talk to Kripp about it and she started screaming at me. She also told me I couldn’t hang my towels in the bathroom because they “didn’t match” but hers didn’t either. When it was her turn to grocery shop, she came home with shoes. One time, she left town and said she didn’t have to pay for that amount of time into the family fund because “she wasn’t there.” But later when I was gone for awhile, I asked if I didn’t have to pay, but she said I did. One time I put my name on a soda in the fridge, her friend drank it and they laughed about it. She made me deal with a carpet cleaner to get a deal out of him that I knew he would argue about, while she conveniently had to be somewhere else. One day I tried to hang up a picture but it was in the “wrong place.” Stuff like that. To this day, I say marriage is easier than a Way Home. The other room mate and I got along pretty well, though, because she was basically mellow. Despite all those annoyances, it was still a LOT better than Mississippi had been. At least my branch leader liked me. Because of where I'd been, things that bothered other people didn't seem so bad to me. Like the New Year's Eve at Cliff's where he was teaching and then started yelling at us. Hardly fazed me, though a lot of other people were upset about it. What's that saying? About the bee who thought vinegar was so sweet because it had been stuck in Sh1t? Something like that. So there I was, in a Way Home in Cliff’s branch in San Diego. Life in Way World went on. I went to work, went to twig. I was spiritually numb. I was biding my time before I could finally split, though I didn't know it. On weekends sometimes I’d go to Ropert’s rented house farther north in Vista, and watch the latest Friday night episode of Dallas. I really loved Dallas. I kept hoping that Pam and Bobby would get back together. I’d sometimes tay at Ropert's over the weekend to get away from everything. I’d sleep on the couch under an electric blanket. I'd make a big breakfast for us, and then sometimes cook supper. It was good to get away from the Way Home where there were three females vying for territory. Ropert and I would go to cheap-o movie theaters and sometimes watch double features. I've seen a lot of movies that were made in the mid-80's. Meanwhile, our other room-mate in the Way home moved out (the mellow one) and Kripp’s boyfriend moved in. Then he moved out and there were only two of us to pay the rent. I was freaked out about that, so I got a second job in the evenings at the same restaurant where I had worked before when I had been going to the Art/Advertising School. This went on for awhile, and then another guy moved in. Then suddenly, most of us got laid off at the art production job, due to a lack of contracts. We all went out to dinner together to say good-bye. Some of the artists had drawn up good-bye cards and everybody signed everybody else's. If I can find the one I got, I’ll scan it and post it here. Funny how the people I got the biggest kick out of were “unbelievers.” Found it! My bubble says "I'm confused and I don't understand." The reason I'm “confused” is because I "watched Dallas re-runs during the week and the new episodes on Fridays". It was a running joke. Guess you’d have to be there. I also remember that at time I had this job, LCM made a statement that if you “were only working for a paycheck” then you were “out of fellowship”. Deep inside, that really irked me. Like, was anything we did ok? You'd think it would be enough that we were sending TWI enough money for God to spit at us, but it was wrong to earn it by “working for a paycheck.”! I was starting to feel a deep annoyance with things in TWI. For example, Cliff told us once that we had to get the ABS in the mail FASTER because HA said they were losing money on the interest. Like it wasn't enough that they got our money and now it wasn't coming in FAST enough? My restaurant job kept me afloat, except that it was an evening shift. OHHHH NOOOOO!!!! Can't have that! Cliff said I had to get a daytime job so I obeyed the “Man of God” by quitting and going to a temp agency. They sent me to a file clerk job in the Trust Department of California First Bank in downtown San Diego. It was January, 1985.

I was single and didn't have kids yet when I was in the Corps, and afterwards as a grad. I was 7 mos pregnant when we left. My whole point of view about kids changed after I became a mother. Looking back on it, there were times I was impatient about kids and how they acted but I didn't have a clue because I'd never been a mother. I do recall a twig I was in one night when a kid fell asleep and he got dragged out and yelled at. The corps person who did that didn't have kids either. She acted like she was the ultimate authority about children but had never had one. I learned from experience that your whole point of view about children changes if you have even one. I couldn't tell a 2-year-old from a 3-year-old from an 18-month-old, but once I'd had mine, I could tell a child's age with a lot more understanding, and with a knowledge of where they were at developmentally. It is true that kids weren't allowed to be kids. I even remember another person saying just that, and I can't remember who it was who said it, but looking back on it, they had a lot of insight. I remember being taught that kids shouldn't color or draw during fellowships because they should be "learning to sit and listen to the Word." I thank God I got out before my daughter was born.

I'll be baaaaaack ;)-->

Hi, Bro, I'm glad you finally got out. I remember there was that period when I was out, and you weren't. I guess that "spiritual probation" for your "dirty" house was the final straw. Please continue with your story.

Yeah, Belle, really? WOW, thanks!

This is a good thread. Hope you come back and continue.

Steve!, yes I knew of their departure. Circa 2000 sometime, right? Maybe they do know about the hearts they stomped on. I don't think mine was the only one. Then maybe not. I've wondered about that. They weren't totally "monsters." But their moments of niceness were followed by acts of arrogance and heard heartedness. There were more incidents than I recounted. My room mate who split out wasn't the only one who disappeared. Others were kicked out. Their rules for the mens' Way Home was that the guys had to be either witnessing or working. And they would threaten to "kick people out of the area." One guy they said that to was FROM the area! Like they were going to kick him out his home town? Oh well. And A la, I only think that way sometimes because of the remnants of what Waybrain still lurks in the back of my brain. Sharing here has helped and what people have shared here has helped. And Wayfer not, that's funny you didn't get the names at first! :D-->

A la: I am very happy to know that it is healing for you as well. Because it was so difficult to speak up for myself, it has been healing to speak up here. After I got out, I would talk about it sometimes but recounting it in this way has helped me see it more. I still wonder what I would do if I saw Mot or Barq again. There's still a part of my brain that thinks maybe they were right. We were so conditioned to be "subjected to the higher powers" as Vee Pee interpreted Romans 11. Vee Pee taught from Romans 11 that the "higher powers" were the "gift ministries," i.e. the ordained clergy. Thus, many of us dared not to question them or defy them, because to do so was to disobey God himself. This opened us up to abuse because the TWI clergy could say ANYTHING to us and many of us would assume they had to be right because they were "ordained of God." It got to the point where it defied common sense. Most normal people just don't treat other people that way. We were taught that the "unbelievers" were all out to lunch but normal people simply know how to be polite and considerate to others.

Oh thank you, to all of the above! I will continue. That year in Jackson that I just wrote of was the worst (of my whole life) and it gets better after that. Mot and Barq never had "offspring." "They must have eaten them." Ha ha LOL LOL It is very healing to write of this, especially that particular time in MS.

SO - I went to Jackson for my “assignment.” It was beginning to dawn on me that as a Corps Grad this was to be my lot it life. That is, every year, I would have to be “assigned” or continue to be where I was already “assigned.” I didn’t have a real home, I didn’t really belong anywhere, I was just “assigned.” We had a meeting and Barq read out a list of WHO would be living with WHO. I was to live with “Bittwy”, a WOW vet, her 9 year old daughter, “Laquisha”, and “Danielle” another WOW vet, who was from Jackson and had returned home. They announced that Danielle was to be coordinator. Later, Mot told me that he didn’t give me the responsibility because I was to “show them what I was made of.” And later on, Barq said, “We’re watching you.” Wow, that got me off to a really good start. So I guess I was supposed to prove myself worthy before I could run anything. Barq spoke to me one day about how I would be really good at “writing children’s songs.” (I had a history of playing the guitar, singing and writing songs, playing at meetings, etc) OK, so I tried but it’s a little hard to crank out music on demand. So I didn’t really get too far with it. Danielle, Bittwy, Laquisha and I found a two-bedroom place in a complex called Camelot. We settled in, had a little meeting about how our family fund would work, etc. Danielle and I shared a room and Bittwy and her daughter were in the other. I found a job at I-Hop nearby because “Jammit” (6th corps grad) got a job there and knew Jorge, the manager. Jorge didn’t want to hire me at first but then he started me out as a hostess. Later I got on the day shift as a waitress. Jammit and I worked the same shift a lot. So I would run around all day waiting on tables, getting yelled at by Jammit. For example, Jammit decided the tickets should be in TWO piles after they’re rung up. So I forgot at first, got yelled at. One day I picked up the wrong plate from the cook’s station. OH NO!!! She yelled and yelled, right in front of customers, employees, everybody. One morning I was the first one in, so I set up the the restaurant the best I knew how. Well, in comes Jammit and she yells and yells because I did it all wrong. I was still glad I had a job though. Later on, Jorge told me I was his “most improved waitress.” Barq asked me how things were going for us at our apartment and I said really good, because at that point I thought they were. Then Danielle, the coordinator, started getting really crabby and ....ed off about everything. One day Bittwy and I came home from somewhere and Danielle was gone – all her stuff cleared out, outtathere. I think her boyfriend, another WOW vet, had helped her make the escape. Some of us got smart early! Meanwhile, on the other side of the complex, “Jane”, “Wanda” and Wanda’s little boy were living in a three bedroom apartment. Barq had told me once that Wanda was a “turd.” I remember being kind of shocked that a branch leader’s wife would call another believer a “turd” but gee, she was the spiritual one, ordained even. (In fact BOTH Mot and Barq were ordained.) Anyway, Jane and Barq had it in for Wanda. One time Jane showed me the paper bags in the kitchen that Wanda had folded up all wrong. So Wanda was kicked out of Jane’s apartment. Oh, I mean, encourage to leave and get herself more together. Next thing I know, Barq tells Bittwy and me that we had to move to Jane’s apartment. Not would we, could we, but we WERE to move. That’s how it was with those two, Barq and Mot. You did what you were TOLD. (After all, they were ORDAINED). I sure as he11 did NOT want to MOVE. I’d settled into that other place, Bittwy and I each had our own bedroom and bathroom on different sides of the place, we were getting along. I’d even hung up plants. Dammit. So we moved over there to Jane’s. This time Mot and Barq made Jane the coordinator. Life went on. One day Barq told me how “I hadn’t done ANYTHING they’d asked me to”, blah blah blah. The only thing I could think of was those children’s songs I was supposed to write. And then she accused me of not being honest when I said we were doing really well at the apartment earlier. And she laid a guilt trip on me about Danielle leaving because I was “Corps.” Like I should have stopped it somehow. All I knew was that Danielle had been acting crabby and then she left. So on it went, I worked at I-Hop, went to meetings, etc etc. I missed Buster of course. I talked to him a few times. He asked me to come up to Greenville to see him but I couldn’t do that, because how could walk away from the sanctity of God’s household to go off into the darkness to be involved with an unbeliever? Christmas was coming up. My dad sent me a check for $700 and said I could use it for a ticket to come home for Christmas or for whatever I wanted. I was at Mot and Barq’s house for some meeting and I told Mot that I wanted to go home for Christmas and he said, “OK, why don’t you just stay there?” Gee, I could do that but then I’d be breaking my “assignment” and be in disgrace as Corps, but then I could stay here in your stupid branch where you don’t want me. OK. Yeah. This year was when I began to feel a deep desire to GET OUT. Deep in my heart I wanted be OUT. I remember standing there in I-Hop one day, watching customers go out the door and I envied them because they could go home and watch TV. But then of course I would feel guilty and “out of fellowship” for wanting to GET OUT. Because it was a trick of the Devil, wasn’t it? I had made a commitment to God to be Corps and now it was making me miserable. It was like a boulder around my neck. But I felt guilty for being miserable, because it meant I was weak and unrenewed and there was something wrong with ME. I would apologize to God all the time for my bad attitude, my lack of commitment, my unfaithfulness. One day I came home from work, and before I started up the stairs to our apartment I noticed a flower. I wanted to lean over to enjoy the scent of the flower but I felt inhibited from doing so. I think this moment stands out in my mind because it shows how I was internalizing all the oppression. Barq came to our fellowship to teach one night. She taught on “freedom.” Later I shared with her, “What’s funny is how I was listening to you teach on freedom but I don’t feel free.” She just gave me a quizzical look. One day Bittwy and I were in I-Hop. I think Bittwy was working there too then. At that point the twig we were going to was at Jammit’s. Jammit and her husband and another couple lived in the house where Mot and Barq had lived. (But Mot and Barq moved because the house was ‘too dark’) Maybe Jane’s and Jammit’s twig had merged. I don’t recall. Anyway, Jammit knew we weren’t going to their twig that evening and as she walked out of I-Hop, she said to Bittwy and me, “Have a great evening.” That night, Bittwy and I visited some one Bittwy had witnessed to and we led that person into tongues. Next morning I walk into I-Hop and there’s Jammit standing there glaring at me. “Where were you last night?” she demanded. I was rather taken aback. There she was all PO’d about us not going to twig when she’d told us earlier to “have a great evening.” I told Jammit about the person we led into tongues being glad that we'd done something "spiritual". But why did I have to justify why we weren't at twig when she had already agreed to us not coming? I mean, these people were going to drive me nuts. I prayed to God to give me a break from Jammit and when Jorge made up the next schedule, I wasn’t scheduled to work with Jammit for awhile! One weekend our branch was supposed to do some outreach blitz. The So and So’s were coming to town. They were that quartet group of guys that sang songs written by other recording artists but they'd changed the words. They were this big deal. After we had the joy of running around Jackson with flyers to get people to come see the great So and So’s sing their versions of other people’s songs, it was now time to take off for the big fun gala at the limb home. On the way I stopped for gas and the people in my car all got out and wandered into the gas station snack store and there I was getting all nervous because we were going to be late. FINALLY they all came back and piled back into the car. Whatta ya know, when I got to the branch leaders’ house, the big event was going on already. I drove down the drive, and when we got out of the car, out came Barq to yell at me. “I don’t want to see you coming late like that here again, driving down the drive at 20 miles an hour and if you’re late don’t come at all yada yada yada…” Then the So and So’s were up on the roof top doing their gig and I remember feeling totally dead inside. I mean, this was NO FUN. This was supposed to be fun and we were supposed to be enjoying the music and I was numb to it all. Too numb to have fun. Then there was the time I was on my way to some event in the Southwest, and on the way, I was dropping off some one at the limb home and then taking some one else to a state-wide Dealing with the Adversary class that Mot was running somewhere else. On the way to the limb home in Jackson, one of my passengers said she knew a shortcut but then she fell asleep before the turn I was supposed take. So we ended up taking a way that was even longer than the original one. Then the trunk of the VW flew open and all the stuff we were carrying inside flew out! So there we were at the side of the road picking it all up. This VW had a trunk that didn’t close quite right and you COULD NOT slam it down and latch it because if you did, then you couldn’t very easily get it open again. So before I could say anything, some one slams it down. Needless to say we were running late. We got to our first stop at the limb home. Of course, we couldn’t get the trunk open to get the stuff out for the person we were dropping off there before going on to DWA. Which was making us even more late. Mot called me up from where the DWA class was and yelled at me over the phone for his student not being there on time and about how awful I was and that “I couldn’t lead anybody out of a paper bag.” Another incident I recall was when I was told to make posters for some event we had. There was one I thought was especially good, and I was told it had to go in a rather obscure location in a downstairs room. I jokingly said I thought it should have a better spot because it was so good. It was just an off-the-cuff pseudo-egotistical remark. After the Advance, some of us Corps were in a restaurant “reviewing” the events of the Advance. The person in charge of organizing it, who had told me where to put the poster, made a point of soundly reproving me for what I had said about where I thought the poster should go and how it was so wrong for me say such a thing and yada yada yada. The tears just came and I couldn’t stop. I sat there and cried. No one said anything. It was just getting to be too damn much. Every time I turned around some one was yelling at me or reproving me. Everything I did was wrong. That year, a few more things happened. One evening I came home, parked in the parking lot, and after I got out of the car, a guy approached me and said, “How are you doing?” Then he pulled a gun on me and demanded my purse. Well, did I rebuke him in the name of Jesus Christ? Did I boldly resist because of my believing? Uh,no. I gave him my purse. As he ran off I did yell, “There’s only $7 in there!” I went into the apartment and Jane called the cops. I had my glasses on my face, my keys in my hand and my MS license was coming in the mail. The guy got my make-up and the $7. Later I almost got strangled to death one day when I was laying outside on a blanket reading a book. Some guy I didn’t know came up behind me, I felt his hands on the back of my neck and the next thing I knew this pressure on my neck got tighter and tighter and I could hardly breathe. I rolled around trying to fight him off and called out to Jane in the hopes she would hear me. I rebuked the guy in the name of Jesus Christ as much as I could yell. (Things do really move slower when something like that happens). The next thing I knew, he ran off and I looked down to see a rope with some of my hairs twisted in and around it. I went inside and told Jane what had just happened and she called the police. The same police officer showed up. He said to me, “You sure have your problems, don’t you?” I still remember the exact date of when this happened. And I sometimes think of how my life could have ended that day, but I've still had so many years of life since then. How close I came but it was GOD who save me that day! One of my gold hoop earrings I was wearing disappeared during the struggle. (That will come into play later) Jane and I looked all over the grass for it and never found it. Then the grand finale for the year. I went to see the movie Porky’s with “Rockhead”, a guy from our branch. When we came back, we were standing around outside the front door of the apartment. He asked, “Do you ever feel like leaving the Way?” As one friend to another I said, “Yeah, sometimes.” Wow, little did I realize where my little admission would lead me. Next thing I know, while I was in the living room the next day making posters for some meeting coming up, Mot comes over. He looked at me all intensely and asked, “And how are you doing?” Then he asked me to “come see him” the next day. I literally did not sleep all night because I was dreading what I knew would be the confrontation coming up. So I went over to Mot and Barq’s house to see Mot at the appointed time. He asked me into his office to sit down. He sat at his desk and I sat in front of him. And then he started in on me. Did I want to stay in the Way or didn’t I? Well, sometimes I didn’t, I said. He called me a liar because I had said I wanted to go WOW the next year and then I had said I didn’t. He said I wasn’t married because I couldn’t make a commitment. He said I thought the Way was just some organization that told me to go here and there. He said I was just living with a bunch of women and working at a “job I hated.” He accused me of being afraid of everything. And as for Buster, which he had found about, he said that if I went to him “It will be good for about 3 years and then he’ll kill you.” Oh and I had a lazy mind. That was another one. I broke down and cried. Then Mot did a 180 degree turnabout. He came over and hugged me and comforted me and then walked me out to my car and told me how great I was. I felt all cleansed by the reproof that I so deserved. Now I was set straight again and I knew how wrong I had been. Rockhead later apologized for going to Mot to rat on me by telling him that I had said I wanted to leave TWI sometimes. Right as the year was ending, an 11th corps guy that I knew, “Merkel Schmitvergen”, suddenly dropped by. He was driving a truck somewhere with some limb leaders’ stuff in it and stopped on the way. I had met him in Greenville when I first got there because he had been one of the WOWs there before he left to go into the 11th corps. I was one of his “spiritual partners.” We had a nice evening together. He told me he had always thought I was really pretty and even had my picture by his bed. WOW. Then he kissed me. When he left he said, “See you at Corps Week.” That gave me an uneasy feeling because I was thinking, “See you? Where? How?” So now to the end. (for this year) It was time to pack up and leave for Corps Week and the Rock. I was going WOW for my next “assignment.” Oh goody. I was driving there with Jiffy, Jammit’s husband. A bunch of us spent the night at Jiffy and Jammit’s house. I laid there on the floor and did not sleep a wink the whole night. By the time we were taking off, I was starting to lose it. Another episode was coming on, like the one on the way to Amarillo in 1974. I hadn’t flipped out since then and it was 1982. We got to Corps Week and Jiffy was telling me I’d better figure out “where to put my stuff” and it was starting to rain. There was some canvas shelter that I wanted to put my stuff under and they let me but told me "I couldn't keep it there". And I was wondering if I’d see Merkel and if he’d want to see me and was this going to go anywhere since I was starting to like him. To make a long story short, I was getting nuttier and nuttier. I was sitting in the audience at one of the meetings and I looked at "Rinse Minagain" who was sitting on the stage and I knew I just HAD to tell him about what I had just realized. God had showed me a vision of where I was REALLY supposed to go. I was supposed to go to Yellow Springs, OH (the town near HQ where I’d gone to college and where I first got witnessed to). And I would get people to come to HQ to go to the Sunday meetings in the auditorium and I would really move the Word there! So after the meeting I went back stage and there was "Jotty Mousehand" and I asked him if it was ok to see Rinse, and he shrugged and said sure why not. I thought WOW it’s not so hard to get in with the heavies. I found Rinse and I started telling him everything that I knew God had showed me. I was manic so I was talking really fast. For some reason I felt it was Rinse I was supposed to tell all this to. He told me to sit on a nearby golf cart and wait for him there. So I sat there on this golf cart and thought “Wow, now I’m one of the cool people who gets to sit in a golf cart” Then Rinse came back with Mot and "Pot Limb". We were still in one of the tents and they had me sit in a chair. The three of them stood over me and started in on the reproof. Pot asked me if I “wanted to be there out on the street.” Huh? Why would I? Pot asked me if I’d been “smoking dope.” I said I hadn’t smoked a joint since 1973. That seemed to be answer enough. Mot started reproving me for what a failure I’d been all year, and I said, “What about how I got Wayne in the class?” and he said “That was grace!” So then they took me up to some room and I was asked if I knew if there was a place I could go. I used the phone there and called my parents in CA to ask them if I could come home. You know what’s funny? Nobody prayed for me or ministered to me. Here I was at Corps Week with ALL of the MOST SPIRITUAL people on the planet (I say that facetiously) in one place and not one of them thought to pray or minister to their wacked-out Corps sister. To them, I was worthless because I wasn’t together enough. I wasn’t worthy of being there. Some people say it didn’t get really bad until the 90’s? This was 1982. Maybe I wouldn’t have prayed or ministered either at that point if it was some one else needing it. I’m just saying that we were losing the ministry already by then. Here we go again. Repeat of 1974. The crazy daughter returns. Someone booked a ticket and I had just enough to pay for it because I had my WOW money and some extra. Soon after that I was driven to the airport. I was sitting in the back seat of a station wagon, probably a ministry car. Jiffy (Jammit’s husband, the twig leader) was with us because he was probably “spiritually responsible.” I don’t remember who else, but around 4 or 5 other people were in the car, probably Bless Patrol, and I remember thinking that finally people recognized how important I really was, because, look, I was getting such an entourage to accompany me to the airport! I had extra boxes to put on the plane and fortunately I had just enough to pay for them all. I had tried to reduce the amount of possessions I had when packing but I still had several boxes of stuff. This time I was gettin put on a plane to California and not a bus to Rochester. So I got on the plane and flew home.

Thank you, too Sunesis. I've just written it.

Unbelievable!!!!!!! Boggles my mind to this day. In fact, the longer I've been out, the more boggled I get!!

Thank you, exie, act2 & tonto! I am now working on regaling you with the tale of my wonderful year in Jackson, MS.

A la, Wow, that reminds me of once when I was driving to a meeting of some sort, I was crying, and praying out loud, "Please God, don't let me get yelled at this time." Your post brought that back. Wow was that ever sick to even be in something like that. At the meeting I actually got spoken well of by the leader. I guess God heard my prayer. :)-->

Hey wha happen??? Are we stuck or somethin?

Independence Day?

ok so it's probably too easy.... So great is this ship Yet one night so wrong it goes Down down she is gone

LOL! LOL! :D-->

Harry Potter

Hey, just loafing, Dontcha know that those two were SO SPIRITUAL and always right? If they said you were banging your friend all night, well you were banging your friend all night! You THOUGHT you just stayed in a motel!