All I can say is NOBODY wants to be around me when I don't get at least 8 hours of sleep. Anything less than that and, well, let's just say it ain't purty. :ph34r:
That's an absolutely ridiculous schedule and so friggin tight that it would be impossible to follow that schedule to a "t" even if one wanted to for some reason.
Where's the commute time? What about time to actually prepare what you're going to eat for lunch and then clean it up - cause I'm sure dishes left in the sink attracts devil spirits.
30 minutes to eat and get dressed? No way! Especially not when they are all sharing a bathroom.
And what are they doing after 9pm? You better not call my house or knock on my door after 9pm unless you want a ride to the emergency room - cause if you do.... you'll need a ride to the emergency room.
Just one more sample of how TWI doesn't really care about taking care of people. People are to be used and things are to be loved? That's the TWI motto, isn't it?
On twig nights, we would include the fellowship itself as witnessing. Even if there were no new people. We sang lots of songs, and prayed for everything under the sun.
We were sent to a small college town, and spent alot of time in the student union watching tv witnessing. When school was out we went tanning witnessing at the park.
A day off? Ha! I can count on one hand how many days off I got.
As a family wow, I worked 40 hours a week and I think it was 20 hours a week witnessing. We took Saturday off - oh man, did I love Saturdays! We witnessed from 7-11 pm most weeknights.
We were a family of 3 single moms so one stayed home with the kids and the other 2 went out. Seems to me the only night we didn't go out witnessing was twig night.
The other family in our team had single people with no kids. They worked 4 hours a day and witnessed 8 hours as I recall.
We also had twig on Sunday mornings and then spent 4 hours witnessing and had people in for the SNS hookups each Sunday night. I had a 13 year old and it was hectic enough for me to keep that schedule! I don't know how you with all those kids managed!
LOLOLOL - OK Oakie - here was what we did back in the late 70's when I was a WOW BC... Pipes feel free to correct me here where my memory fails me...and oh yeah - please remember that this response reflects when I was when I was still IN TWI not condoning anything even close to TWI now now - as if it isn't clear on my posts... smirks - and when ya read below you'll figure out why I was never a favorite with the rest of the clergy
[*]Wake up at 6:30am - "study the Word" and speak in tongues for a 1/2 hour
Never bothered to check on 'em - didn't matter - figured they were cool and knew how to worhip God in their own right
[*]7:00 - 7:30: shower & eat a quick breakfast
Ditto
[*]8:00am - 12 noon: work (assuming a 20-hour workweek, five days per week
Horsecr@p - I told 'em to get jobs that they could make money at - lots of them were wait staff working lunches 10:30-4:00 or even evenings - even had one WOW get a job as a school bus driver - so she worked two shifts - guess that blows THAT schedule
[*]Noon - 1:00pm: Go home, eat lunch
Ignored it
[*]1:00 - 5:00pm: witness
Ignored it based on work schedule
[*]5:00 - 6:30pm: cook dinner, eat and wash dishes
Ignored it based on work schedule
[*]6:30 - 10:30pm: witness (4 hours in the afternoon, 4 hours at night)
We witnessed at bars and clubs - so Belle ya never had to worry about the 9:00 PM knock on the door. And we got to party at the clubs - sheesh - got quite a few folks in the evil class that way - but we partied at the same time and had a gas
[*]10:30 - 11:00pm: family meeting
Never checked on 'em but I know that the WFC's cared about their families. We had our best "family" hours when we got back from a bar or club as MORE THAN ONE FAMILY and just hung out.
[*]You now have a whole hour to yourself before being in bed by midnight.
My one and ONLY requirement was that everyone covered everyone's butt... and they did with a completely amazing fierce sense of loyalty to each other and to God - but not to TWI. Pipes was one of those who you didn't want to cross if you messed with her family or anyone else in the "branch". Dammm the whole branch was like that as I recall.... Pipes? You there? Or am I hallucinating again? Ever here from Billy pipes?
Hey there Oak. WOW!! (no pun intended) -- that's a hefty sked-jule! :blink:
Even though I was *free wow* (I think that's what they called it in '78), I worked a full time job, as did my (then) wife, and we witnessed when we could. Maybe the criteria was different then -- though I do remember they wanted you to hold down a part-time job rather than full time. We witnessed when we could (mostly alone), but sometimes as a twig also (Bullinger).
As far as I can recollect, there was no time limit on being home, or in bed, or getting up, etc. At least if there were such *mandates* -- I never followed them. We got to bed at a decent hour, simply because we had to be at work the next day. Not saying we didn't take the *wow committment* seriously, because we did -- but after our own fashion. And so did the other wow's here that year. 5 families of 4 wow's each were here in Duluth in '78. I think 2 or 3 folks *left the field*, but the rest remained -- and worked out their own schedules as well.
It was pretty laid back. None of the *Nazi BS* that would become so prominent in later years. We were never asked to give an accounting of our time (although money was ALWAYS accounted for). It was assumed we were doing it. We ran a few classes that year, met 2 or 3 times weekly as twigs, and once a week as a branch. Even though the wow's were supposed to *do their own thing*, and be separate from the *home believers* --- EVERYONE here in twi became a tight knit family. Folks actually became friends sharing ideas, hobbies, interests, resources, needs, etc. -- just like it SHOULD BE.
I remember one time when all of us guys decided to check out the meanings of the word *Faith* one evening, after a branch meeting. The wives (for those of us who were married), were smarter than we were and said
"See Ya!!" and went home to bed. We stayed up till 1 or 2 in the morning (BIG POT OF COFFEE ON) doing our *pathetic research*, which consisted of finding the word *faith* in a verse -- and someone saying "I heard so and so say it was THIS".
Bingo -- we just figured out another usage in a verse!!
But that was the camaraderie that was going on THEN, versus what must be going on NOW. :(
I really feel for the folks that sign up now to go wow (WD-40 - whatever it is now called),
given their tight collar, short leash, and glaring *master*.
(PS -- we WERE told not to witness in bars after 11 PM, since the folks would be too drunk to accept Truth.
Having played music in bars -- I can say this might be one of the few things twi got REALLY RIGHT,
Let me clarify something: that's not a real schedule, but in order to get your 20 hours of work and 48 hours of witnessing in, you're committing 12 hours a day to those 2 items alone, if you sleep only 6 1/2 hours, then you have only 5 1/2 hours for everything else in your day including cooking, eating, showering, getting from point A to point B, studying da Word, etc. The "schedule" was meant to illustrate how impossible it was to really do the program.
Three of us in our group worked closer to 30 hours per week. I worked in a nursing home for about half the year and worked 7 days on and seven days off; the way the schedule was written I would have four 8-hour days one week, and 3 the next, but the days off from week one would be Thursdat, Friday, Saturday, and the next week Sunday - Wednesday...sweet!
Our fearless leader couldn't keep a job. At one point he got a "job" putting in a lawn for our landlord in exchange for reduced rent. What he really did was sleep late, smoke cigarettes, and hit on the wives of guys who were in jail over in the trailer court, or go over to other belivers' to watch t.v. When the landlord found out he demanded a refund of all the months of rent reduction that he had given us. Since our leader was now out of work, the other 3 of us had to come up with the money. All along, since the rent reduction was considered his share of the family fund, we were giving him money for cigarettes and other incidentals out of the family fund, since he wasn't actually getting a paycheck. Double wammy.
We witnessed when we felt like it, which became virtually "never" as the year drew to a close.
Not me. My family was in a small town so we weren't watched very closely. We heard once that the average wow in our state witnessed 1 hour per day.
Late in the year one of the girls got kicked off the program for, uh, indiscretions, and THEN we witnessed together every hour possible for the rest of the year.
I still say that the most noticeable result of WOW was not outreach, but rather that the people who went WOW would see what they were in for and to decide if they wanted to stay in the ministry or no. LCM once lamented that the "dropout rate" in the ministry was highest during the year after the wow year. He thought that was a bad thing. I think it was a good thing. Nobody gets blessed if you stay in TWI because you think you have to. Not you or anybody who is around you.
We were in a small town as well. Sidney, Nebraska for 6 months, population about 5,000, Kearney, a college town for the rest, closer to 20,000.
During my own WOW year (1980-81) there wasn't much of a dropout rate. One Corps couple left about a month in, but everybody else in Nebraska stuck with it. About half were in a WOWvet program the next year, and all of them stuck it out.
I didn't have much to do with WOW's again until the last year of the WOW program (1993-94?). Lincoln and Omaha each started out with 4 families of four people each. I believe that by the end of the year there were a total of three WOW families, a couple with 5 people absorbed from other groups. If I remember correctly there were four people, 2 couples, who were gone within a month. One family in Lincoln lost 3 out of 4 people. Every time we saw the WOW's there were less of them.
I'm familiar with Sidney and Kearny. When I lived in MI I hitch hiked to San Francisco and back several times in the early 70s. Most of that route was I80. Those 2 cities are toward the western end of the state if I remember right.
One neat thing about being a wow was that you were sort of a ministry celebrity for that year. Every branch, limb, or SNS meeting I ever saw/heard they would have the wows stand up and officially recognize them and people would clap.
But wow was like a rite of passage. Once you were done you were "experienced". And if it was a bad experience, you probably didn't stay around much longer.
Sidney is about 60 miles from the Wyoming border, and about 12 miles north of the Colorado line in the Nebraska panhandle. Kearney is cloer to the center of the state.
I think I was in the ministry less than a month before going. Took the class, the next weekend was the Rock and then WOW! Talk about fun!
We had 2 Wow families.. Us 4 guys and then the 4 gals in the other family. Not a single one of us over 20.. So we're all just kids, having fun in a big town, and both groups hittin on each other, only they tried to keep our families apart for that purpose.. So what did our fearless coordinator do? Find another gal he could shack up with the entire time. Only, we called it his witnessing time. She actually did take the class, and then after the year he dropped from the Corps and married her.
My typical day...
Worked at 5am till noon. (40hour week) Slept for a few hours after getting home since no one else came home for hours. Cooked some. Then was witnessing, or playing, time.. And then to sleep.. We would rent a nintendo or sega game system each week and that consisted of much of our witnessing time. And then every week it never failed that we felt bad we hadn't witnessed, and actually went out for an hour or more to the mall.. Maybe really we just wanted to do some shopping.
All in all.. The gals never got anyone to the class and one person to fellowship a couple times the WHOLE YEAR! Our Coordinator got his "soon to be wife" to take the class.. I got a couple people from my work and witnessing to join us and take the class. And that was it.. One small class filled in with local believer's kids.
And Way Disciple.. I did that too..
Really they changed a lot of things for the better. Honestly there.. I have to give them some credit. As much as I don't respect many of the things they do, I try and call things like they are..
It's no longer a whole freakin year that takes your life away..
No more neophites..
A lot more oversight, so we had to have part time, work together, and then we actually had time to witness.
No more exaggerated witnessing hours.. 2-4 hours a day Mon-Fri which was simple when you only worked 4 hours.
I'd have to say a lot more fun too. Cause we actually bonded.. Something our WOw team never did since our Cordinator was off getting his fix, and the other 2 guys in my team wanted to go underage drinking or sit around doing nothing..
So yeah.. They've improved it..
Only witnessing is done with so much ulterior motives, what's the point. That's not being honest!
Wow! no pun intended. Although I never went wow the schedule I was expected to follow was just as rigorous. I still don't know how I got through it for all those years.
wake: 4:30 pray- read
make breakfast and lunch for husband so he could be out the door at 5:30
Run over check on greenhouse, work in garden
come back make breakfast for kids so they were ready for animal care by 6:30
sewing for family, doing dailies and any prep for homeschool
8:00- 12:00 homeschool children, make afternoon snack for men and young men, bring it set it up and get out before they could see me
12:30 lunch
1:00-4:00 work in garden
more dailies, check on foodroom (cleaning-stocking)
remembering to check greenhouse every hour and watering
5:00 make dinner men and young men needed to be back to work by 6:00
Don't forget to go down and clean up break stuff without being seen
stitch here and there to produce enough clothing for whole family and any others in need
kitchen clean-up
7:15 twig or music practice until 9:30
finding time to make bread, butter, snacks for family, homemade pasta
many times I had to fit in working with young men on property beautification (i was in charge of all flowers and shrubs on property)
during evening hours of course more sewing, poetry for ministry, little projects like invites, preparing classes in weaving or crafts for young girls, laundry, studying plants so I didn't kill all the food in greenhouse.
Saturdays was set aside to do all the errands for all houses and foodroom shopping for my family along with most major projects like butchering, cleaning chicken coop, etc
during lambing season we ladies had to move lamb fence every other morning plus check ewes throughout night - try checking 200 ewes butts at 2am while you got snow blowing in your face, if labor occurred could be another couple hours of work before you fell into your bed for an hour or so of sleep before you started all over again.
This does not include all reproof sessions that could and would take place at any moment of the day and being that I had the most kids it was more often than not.
Needless to say I ran away and at that point I was a whopping 98 pounds and limping. My earthly family saw me and cried for the death they saw in my face and body.
Grand-daughter - oh my!!! I must have missed something, I see you're new here. What group were you with? That schedule would kill anyone! I'm glad you're out.
I was involved in a group in Minnesota ran by Victor Banard. For the last 8 years of my time in it was like this but especially the last 4 when I moved to the main farm of the church. We were the ones that did most of the work in the ministry. I was in the church from 1990 until 2003-2004.
Grand-daughter, I thank God you're out. Maybe you could share your story on the "My Story" section. I'd love to know how you got in, and how you found the strength to leave.
My WOW year was filled with sex, alcohol and hangin' out...
The guidelines were a joke. My WOW family consisted of 2 gals and 2 guys...all of us in our mid twenties. They sent us to Chicago and we had a blast....by midyear, we all had members of the opposite sex that we were "undershepparding"...The two drink limit really meant 8 or 10 and we witnessed about 4 hours...a WEEK!
I was feeling guilty at the roa when they gave me my wow pin...that is, until my wow brach leader told me that I was one of the best wows in the branch!!!...
My family co-ordinator (aka Corps field year) tried to make the rules extremely strict.
We told her to shove it.
She tried to ram Corps down our throat. We eventually told her to shove that too.
We saw them as guidelines. The only ones we really worried about were the bedtime and the wake time. Of course, me NOT being a morning person, the wake time went out the window, expecially since I didn't have to be to work until 11.
Of course, we broke the bed time too, quite a few times. And all we were doing was talking, most of the time, in the living room, or in one of our rooms.
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Belle
All I can say is NOBODY wants to be around me when I don't get at least 8 hours of sleep. Anything less than that and, well, let's just say it ain't purty. :ph34r:
That's an absolutely ridiculous schedule and so friggin tight that it would be impossible to follow that schedule to a "t" even if one wanted to for some reason.
Where's the commute time? What about time to actually prepare what you're going to eat for lunch and then clean it up - cause I'm sure dishes left in the sink attracts devil spirits.
30 minutes to eat and get dressed? No way! Especially not when they are all sharing a bathroom.
And what are they doing after 9pm? You better not call my house or knock on my door after 9pm unless you want a ride to the emergency room - cause if you do.... you'll need a ride to the emergency room.
Just one more sample of how TWI doesn't really care about taking care of people. People are to be used and things are to be loved? That's the TWI motto, isn't it?
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VeganXTC
On twig nights, we would include the fellowship itself as witnessing. Even if there were no new people. We sang lots of songs, and prayed for everything under the sun.
We were sent to a small college town, and spent alot of time in the student union watching tv witnessing. When school was out we went tanning witnessing at the park.
A day off? Ha! I can count on one hand how many days off I got.
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bowtwi
As a family wow, I worked 40 hours a week and I think it was 20 hours a week witnessing. We took Saturday off - oh man, did I love Saturdays! We witnessed from 7-11 pm most weeknights.
We were a family of 3 single moms so one stayed home with the kids and the other 2 went out. Seems to me the only night we didn't go out witnessing was twig night.
The other family in our team had single people with no kids. They worked 4 hours a day and witnessed 8 hours as I recall.
We also had twig on Sunday mornings and then spent 4 hours witnessing and had people in for the SNS hookups each Sunday night. I had a 13 year old and it was hectic enough for me to keep that schedule! I don't know how you with all those kids managed!
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RumRunner
LOLOLOL - OK Oakie - here was what we did back in the late 70's when I was a WOW BC... Pipes feel free to correct me here where my memory fails me...and oh yeah - please remember that this response reflects when I was when I was still IN TWI not condoning anything even close to TWI now now - as if it isn't clear on my posts... smirks - and when ya read below you'll figure out why I was never a favorite with the rest of the clergy
My one and ONLY requirement was that everyone covered everyone's butt... and they did with a completely amazing fierce sense of loyalty to each other and to God - but not to TWI. Pipes was one of those who you didn't want to cross if you messed with her family or anyone else in the "branch". Dammm the whole branch was like that as I recall.... Pipes? You there? Or am I hallucinating again? Ever here from Billy pipes?
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dmiller
Hey there Oak. WOW!! (no pun intended) -- that's a hefty sked-jule! :blink:
Even though I was *free wow* (I think that's what they called it in '78), I worked a full time job, as did my (then) wife, and we witnessed when we could. Maybe the criteria was different then -- though I do remember they wanted you to hold down a part-time job rather than full time. We witnessed when we could (mostly alone), but sometimes as a twig also (Bullinger).
As far as I can recollect, there was no time limit on being home, or in bed, or getting up, etc. At least if there were such *mandates* -- I never followed them. We got to bed at a decent hour, simply because we had to be at work the next day. Not saying we didn't take the *wow committment* seriously, because we did -- but after our own fashion. And so did the other wow's here that year. 5 families of 4 wow's each were here in Duluth in '78. I think 2 or 3 folks *left the field*, but the rest remained -- and worked out their own schedules as well.
It was pretty laid back. None of the *Nazi BS* that would become so prominent in later years. We were never asked to give an accounting of our time (although money was ALWAYS accounted for). It was assumed we were doing it. We ran a few classes that year, met 2 or 3 times weekly as twigs, and once a week as a branch. Even though the wow's were supposed to *do their own thing*, and be separate from the *home believers* --- EVERYONE here in twi became a tight knit family. Folks actually became friends sharing ideas, hobbies, interests, resources, needs, etc. -- just like it SHOULD BE.
I remember one time when all of us guys decided to check out the meanings of the word *Faith* one evening, after a branch meeting. The wives (for those of us who were married), were smarter than we were and said
"See Ya!!"
and went home to bed. We stayed up till 1 or 2 in the morning (BIG POT OF COFFEE ON) doing our *pathetic research*, which consisted of finding the word *faith* in a verse -- and someone saying "I heard so and so say it was THIS".
Bingo -- we just figured out another usage in a verse!!
But that was the camaraderie that was going on THEN, versus what must be going on NOW. :(
I really feel for the folks that sign up now to go wow (WD-40 - whatever it is now called),
given their tight collar, short leash, and glaring *master*.
(PS -- we WERE told not to witness in bars after 11 PM, since the folks would be too drunk to accept Truth.
Having played music in bars -- I can say this might be one of the few things twi got REALLY RIGHT,
since the crowd does turn ugly about that time.)
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Oakspear
Let me clarify something: that's not a real schedule, but in order to get your 20 hours of work and 48 hours of witnessing in, you're committing 12 hours a day to those 2 items alone, if you sleep only 6 1/2 hours, then you have only 5 1/2 hours for everything else in your day including cooking, eating, showering, getting from point A to point B, studying da Word, etc. The "schedule" was meant to illustrate how impossible it was to really do the program.
Three of us in our group worked closer to 30 hours per week. I worked in a nursing home for about half the year and worked 7 days on and seven days off; the way the schedule was written I would have four 8-hour days one week, and 3 the next, but the days off from week one would be Thursdat, Friday, Saturday, and the next week Sunday - Wednesday...sweet!
Our fearless leader couldn't keep a job. At one point he got a "job" putting in a lawn for our landlord in exchange for reduced rent. What he really did was sleep late, smoke cigarettes, and hit on the wives of guys who were in jail over in the trailer court, or go over to other belivers' to watch t.v. When the landlord found out he demanded a refund of all the months of rent reduction that he had given us. Since our leader was now out of work, the other 3 of us had to come up with the money. All along, since the rent reduction was considered his share of the family fund, we were giving him money for cigarettes and other incidentals out of the family fund, since he wasn't actually getting a paycheck. Double wammy.
We witnessed when we felt like it, which became virtually "never" as the year drew to a close.
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johniam
quote: Did anybody actually do this schedule?
Not me. My family was in a small town so we weren't watched very closely. We heard once that the average wow in our state witnessed 1 hour per day.
Late in the year one of the girls got kicked off the program for, uh, indiscretions, and THEN we witnessed together every hour possible for the rest of the year.
I still say that the most noticeable result of WOW was not outreach, but rather that the people who went WOW would see what they were in for and to decide if they wanted to stay in the ministry or no. LCM once lamented that the "dropout rate" in the ministry was highest during the year after the wow year. He thought that was a bad thing. I think it was a good thing. Nobody gets blessed if you stay in TWI because you think you have to. Not you or anybody who is around you.
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Oakspear
johniam:
We were in a small town as well. Sidney, Nebraska for 6 months, population about 5,000, Kearney, a college town for the rest, closer to 20,000.
During my own WOW year (1980-81) there wasn't much of a dropout rate. One Corps couple left about a month in, but everybody else in Nebraska stuck with it. About half were in a WOWvet program the next year, and all of them stuck it out.
I didn't have much to do with WOW's again until the last year of the WOW program (1993-94?). Lincoln and Omaha each started out with 4 families of four people each. I believe that by the end of the year there were a total of three WOW families, a couple with 5 people absorbed from other groups. If I remember correctly there were four people, 2 couples, who were gone within a month. One family in Lincoln lost 3 out of 4 people. Every time we saw the WOW's there were less of them.
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johniam
I'm familiar with Sidney and Kearny. When I lived in MI I hitch hiked to San Francisco and back several times in the early 70s. Most of that route was I80. Those 2 cities are toward the western end of the state if I remember right.
One neat thing about being a wow was that you were sort of a ministry celebrity for that year. Every branch, limb, or SNS meeting I ever saw/heard they would have the wows stand up and officially recognize them and people would clap.
But wow was like a rite of passage. Once you were done you were "experienced". And if it was a bad experience, you probably didn't stay around much longer.
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Oakspear
Sidney is about 60 miles from the Wyoming border, and about 12 miles north of the Colorado line in the Nebraska panhandle. Kearney is cloer to the center of the state.
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TrustAndObey
Wow... What an experience..
I think I was in the ministry less than a month before going. Took the class, the next weekend was the Rock and then WOW! Talk about fun!
We had 2 Wow families.. Us 4 guys and then the 4 gals in the other family. Not a single one of us over 20.. So we're all just kids, having fun in a big town, and both groups hittin on each other, only they tried to keep our families apart for that purpose.. So what did our fearless coordinator do? Find another gal he could shack up with the entire time. Only, we called it his witnessing time. She actually did take the class, and then after the year he dropped from the Corps and married her.
My typical day...
Worked at 5am till noon. (40hour week) Slept for a few hours after getting home since no one else came home for hours. Cooked some. Then was witnessing, or playing, time.. And then to sleep.. We would rent a nintendo or sega game system each week and that consisted of much of our witnessing time. And then every week it never failed that we felt bad we hadn't witnessed, and actually went out for an hour or more to the mall.. Maybe really we just wanted to do some shopping.
All in all.. The gals never got anyone to the class and one person to fellowship a couple times the WHOLE YEAR! Our Coordinator got his "soon to be wife" to take the class.. I got a couple people from my work and witnessing to join us and take the class. And that was it.. One small class filled in with local believer's kids.
And Way Disciple.. I did that too..
Really they changed a lot of things for the better. Honestly there.. I have to give them some credit. As much as I don't respect many of the things they do, I try and call things like they are..
It's no longer a whole freakin year that takes your life away..
No more neophites..
A lot more oversight, so we had to have part time, work together, and then we actually had time to witness.
No more exaggerated witnessing hours.. 2-4 hours a day Mon-Fri which was simple when you only worked 4 hours.
I'd have to say a lot more fun too. Cause we actually bonded.. Something our WOw team never did since our Cordinator was off getting his fix, and the other 2 guys in my team wanted to go underage drinking or sit around doing nothing..
So yeah.. They've improved it..
Only witnessing is done with so much ulterior motives, what's the point. That's not being honest!
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grand-daughter
Wow! no pun intended. Although I never went wow the schedule I was expected to follow was just as rigorous. I still don't know how I got through it for all those years.
wake: 4:30 pray- read
make breakfast and lunch for husband so he could be out the door at 5:30
Run over check on greenhouse, work in garden
come back make breakfast for kids so they were ready for animal care by 6:30
sewing for family, doing dailies and any prep for homeschool
8:00- 12:00 homeschool children, make afternoon snack for men and young men, bring it set it up and get out before they could see me
12:30 lunch
1:00-4:00 work in garden
more dailies, check on foodroom (cleaning-stocking)
remembering to check greenhouse every hour and watering
5:00 make dinner men and young men needed to be back to work by 6:00
Don't forget to go down and clean up break stuff without being seen
stitch here and there to produce enough clothing for whole family and any others in need
kitchen clean-up
7:15 twig or music practice until 9:30
finding time to make bread, butter, snacks for family, homemade pasta
many times I had to fit in working with young men on property beautification (i was in charge of all flowers and shrubs on property)
during evening hours of course more sewing, poetry for ministry, little projects like invites, preparing classes in weaving or crafts for young girls, laundry, studying plants so I didn't kill all the food in greenhouse.
Saturdays was set aside to do all the errands for all houses and foodroom shopping for my family along with most major projects like butchering, cleaning chicken coop, etc
during lambing season we ladies had to move lamb fence every other morning plus check ewes throughout night - try checking 200 ewes butts at 2am while you got snow blowing in your face, if labor occurred could be another couple hours of work before you fell into your bed for an hour or so of sleep before you started all over again.
This does not include all reproof sessions that could and would take place at any moment of the day and being that I had the most kids it was more often than not.
Needless to say I ran away and at that point I was a whopping 98 pounds and limping. My earthly family saw me and cried for the death they saw in my face and body.
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Sunesis
Grand-daughter - oh my!!! I must have missed something, I see you're new here. What group were you with? That schedule would kill anyone! I'm glad you're out.
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grand-daughter
I was involved in a group in Minnesota ran by Victor Banard. For the last 8 years of my time in it was like this but especially the last 4 when I moved to the main farm of the church. We were the ones that did most of the work in the ministry. I was in the church from 1990 until 2003-2004.
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Sunesis
Grand-daughter, I thank God you're out. Maybe you could share your story on the "My Story" section. I'd love to know how you got in, and how you found the strength to leave.
I hope you are doing well now.
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GrouchoMarxJr
My WOW year was filled with sex, alcohol and hangin' out...
The guidelines were a joke. My WOW family consisted of 2 gals and 2 guys...all of us in our mid twenties. They sent us to Chicago and we had a blast....by midyear, we all had members of the opposite sex that we were "undershepparding"...The two drink limit really meant 8 or 10 and we witnessed about 4 hours...a WEEK!
I was feeling guilty at the roa when they gave me my wow pin...that is, until my wow brach leader told me that I was one of the best wows in the branch!!!...
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Attack Gypsy
I was a WoW in 85-86 in Akron, Ohio.
My family co-ordinator (aka Corps field year) tried to make the rules extremely strict.
We told her to shove it.
She tried to ram Corps down our throat. We eventually told her to shove that too.
We saw them as guidelines. The only ones we really worried about were the bedtime and the wake time. Of course, me NOT being a morning person, the wake time went out the window, expecially since I didn't have to be to work until 11.
Of course, we broke the bed time too, quite a few times. And all we were doing was talking, most of the time, in the living room, or in one of our rooms.
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