Oakspear

Regarding the so-called "orgies" by the teens at ROA: In the early 90's I had some inkling that some, shall we say, "inappropriate" things were going on in the tents. Never witnessed anything, just heard rumors and a little putting two and two together. My own teenage boys were required to sleep in my tent, and I made sure that I knew where they were at all times. Some other parents sent their teenagers to the ROA with other adults who provided no supervision, just a ride to the ROA and back home. When I approached "leadership" about some of my conerns, I was literally laughed at and reproved for "thinking evil". A year later Martindale got on his high horse about the teen sex, etc, and all of a sudden parents were required to do what I had been doing all along.

Hey! That was Carl who brought that up, not me!

Happy 6th Anniversary John & Hope. You guys were an inspiration to me during my last year "in".

Plenty of Wiccan opinions to go around! I've been reading a lot of Raven Grimassi (why do Wiccans so love the name "Raven"?) who makes a good case for pagan/witchcraft traditions surviving into modern times.

The ROA was fun when I was single and had no responsibility. I could take off for a week with little consequence financially, sleep in a tent, or in a hotel room with 12 other people, and look at it as an adventure. The road trip aspects of ROA week were part of the fun. But as others have pointed out, it wasn't nearly so friendly for families, nor for people with carreers or professions, as opposed to minimum wage jobs.

We, as ex-wayfers, sometimes refer to Wierwille's sources as obscure nobodies that wouldn't have been heard from apart from The Way. We sometimes forget how small a blip on the radar of Christianity TWI is. It takes on a larger image because of how much it affected us. Pick twenty people at random and see how many have ever heard of The Way, Wierwille, PFAL, or anything else that we think was so important.

Witchcraft isn't as exciting or glamorous (in either a positive or negative sense) as the media makes it out to be.

I hated caravans!

As I recall, the "teeth" directive was another example of Martindale saying something that he thought was humorous and it being taken as dead serious by the "leadership" (another example being when he referred to an aspect of Corps training as the WC Field program)He was telling us that it was a waste of time witnessing to the poor, i.e. those without cars and jobs, who couldn't get to classes or fellowship on their own anyway, and certainly couldn't afford to pay for anything. The reference to teeth was a lame attempt at being funny. The next thing you know it was being taken literally.

Davenport is just down the road from Orlando, 20 miles mebbe. Lake City is about 150 miles north of Orlando. We'll be in Lake City Thurs, Fri & Sat, and staying in the Orlando area Sunday, leaving Monday morning. Son of Oak says that we're setting up the reception room on Friday before doing a rehearsal. I'll be sure to bring my string for the chairs.

We're leaving Thursday morning (me, wife & stepdaughter). the wedding will actually be in Lake City, Florida. Due to the Navy making other plans for the Best Man, I'll be filling in.

"The Way Class" is the approved abbreviation for the Way of Abundance and Powe Class.

We heard similar things in our area in the late 90's He taught that since tithing pre-dated the Law administration, it was not affected by the Law being eliminated in the Grace administration. I recall that this video went out, and I also recall being told about it by our "leadership", but didn't notice any actual difference in how things were carried out

Some of us have attempted to interact with some of those kids who are "having a good time" on other message boards and on myspace. For a bunch of people who are in an organization that still claims to be teaching keys to understanding the bible, and still claims to be a research minsitry, they seemed pitifully unable to discuss why they believe that what they trumpet as truth is truth.

I hate to admit it, but even though I was never in the Way Corps, I plan for trips in an overly detailed manner.

What made me scratch my head on the decision to cancel the full-time Way Corps program was LCM's comment that we non-Corps would need to increase the percentage of our giving...that many people were barely tithing. And that if, in a few years, the Corps had to go back to 'secular' work, "we will have failed". One of his justifications to us that the decision to send them back out to work was beneficial was that the Corps would now be able to win people in the workplace that would not have previously heard 'the Word'.

I don't believe that there is one supreme being with the ultimate power to make those decisions and judgements, so therefore I don't believe that there is any tallying or scorekeeping going on. My opinion about what the afterlife is like is far from settled, but I think that we'll all be surprised to some extent.

You will drink coffee mwahahahahaha Better than Kool-Aid!

This statement agrees with what I personally observed, not only regarding TWI speaking in tongues, but tongues among Catholic charismatics, Pentecostals, and even some Pagans. People who had exposure to or familiarity with more than one language tended to have a broader range of sounds than those who spoke only English. The only time that I would hear glottal stops, harsh gutterals, clicks, or unusuallly shaped vowels would be when someone with a broad knowledge of language would speak in tongues.

Appropriate to the discussion... http://www.despair.com/demotivation.html

Galen: Even though you and I disagree on the value of what is taught in PFAL and Wierwille's doctrine in general, I do like your methods.

There are people who disagree with me :o

I agree with you to an extent, TWI leadership didn't tout nametags as an indicator of one's spirituality, but they did view graduation from certain classes and programs as proof that you had "arrived" at different spiritual levels. The nametag was the evidence of that. Many of us "on the field" got awfully obsessed with the nametag itself. However, during the last 1/2 decade of the Martindale years, the Big Forehead made several nametag changes to highlight some of his big organizational changes. Corps nametags no longer were white on green or green on white with the Corps number on it, they were a new color (kind of a bluish-grteen maybe?) with Way Corps II on each one. This coincided with Corps no longer being identified by Corps number in the Way rag, but by their year of graduation. New white on blue Advanced Class nametags were issued for grads of the WayAP advanced class. We were supposed to get rid of the old white on green advanced class nametags. I was reproved once for wearing my green one.

Takit toured in 1980 and '81. I recall seeing them in Cheyenne, Wyoming during the first half of my WOW year, which ran from Aug '80 - Feb '81. They were also playing at the big regional extravaganza in Minneapolis that was in the Spring of '81.Their music was similar to mainstream rock & roll. David garibaldi & Skip Mesquite were in the band, as were Danny Hoefer, Dan Moran & Dean Ellenwood.

Sure, I thought so too, but the story was an illustration of Allan's position of "manifestations", so I took it at face value