You are right. I apologize to justanothermike for my recent comment. I admire his strength and integrity for opening this thread, and I should not have said what I did.
Thanks, Baker.
Wrong. I did not know anything about her religious heritage when I met her–we were in a voice class in college. I have put up with a great deal of her hostility, partly because she was not constantly hostile; I guess she understood that I was not a patsy and I would only put up with so much (occasionally I would walk out on her rather than prolong a shouting match). And, of course, she would “cool off.” I had an excellent rapport with her parents; I even attended her mother’s funeral. (She did not let up even then; in the car on the way to the funeral, she continued rather vicious criticism of her mother, something I was certainly not interested in hearing.) I did not make an issue of her family’s religion–but I took her to the Museum of Tolerance and she saw the documented account of the Holocaust. From what she said and did in weeks after that, it had, unfortunately, no impact on her. 
You thought a Jew somehow wasn’t aware of or didn’t understand the WWII holocaust? Or what? You thought a tour of a museum was going to somehow change her as a person?
I really don’t understand your thought processes there.
Broomstick and dougie_monty
Apparently I wasn’t clear enough
Drop it. I will not allow ** justanothermike’s ** thread to be hijacked. Use the pit or start your own thread.
Warnings come next.
Thanks ITD! Not sure how this got so off topic and became the Dougie Monty show about totally unrelated things.
I’ll throw this out there. Yesterday my wife and I went to see “The Book of Mormon”. For any who have seen the play, the experiences related are very similar to that of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s all about me, the song, is reflected in the attitudes JWs have out in their ministry. Turn it off, like a light switch, is a song that reflects the intense cognitive dissonance that thrives in such a high control environment. I remember JWs making fun of Mormons and their Joseph Smith story and one day realizing that it’s no less believable than what we were taught. So if you’re interested in the JW experience, the play really mirrrors a lot of it. We too knocked on doors and thought our books would fix people’s lives.
I’m glad you enjoyed it, even with (maybe especially with?) the parallels to your own experiences.
I don’t know if you’re doing a lot of reading or are really thinking about psychological impacts and continued recovery (you seem here like you’re both doing amazingly well on that front) but I recently discovered a book called “Leaving the Fold” by Marlene Winell, which is one of the few resources I’ve found that deals with religious abuse and trauma. It’s been really difficult to read in places, but I think it’s helping. It’s especially helpful to see that other people have “been there, done that” and made it through to better things, which is always reassuring to me.
There is also “Breaking their Will” by an NPR reporter, Janet Heimlich, but I have not yet read that one. I don’t know if I can at this particular point, but it also seems pertinent, and maybe interesting to others.
I had a less dramatic objective in mind.
However, because of the moderator’s notice, I shall take this matter to a new thread in MPSIMS titled “Hostile people and the concept of friendship.” I wanted to resolve this issue, but I understand the moderator’s objection that this is in fact an unnecessary tangent in THIS thread.
Hey, thanks for those suggestions! I looked up both books, and unfortunately neither comes in audio form, which is how I typically consume books. I may pick one up though. I do think there may be blind spots that I have where the cult impacted me and I haven’t yet seen it.
After watching the play yesterday, The Book of Mormon, my wife and I drove out by my mom’s house. I had heard that they were moving, and if they do then I won’t know where my family lives anymore. Turns out their car was sitting out in front, so at least I know where they are for now and that they still exist. Then my wife and I went and ate at a Mexican restaurant that we love and that we used to go to with my parents.
So it was really good to see that the play put such a message out into the world, a message that kind of devalued religion and played up genuine human kindness in the end. Too bad some religions take that aspect away from their followers. I hope that the books helped you to be kind to yourself and others in the process.
justanothermike, I want to thank you for starting this thread. I’m a bit late to the party but I just discovered it and read through the entire thing with considerable interest. I do have a few questions if you’re still in the mood to answer. Specifically, I’m curious about the door-to-door proselytizing that happens.
Earlier you said
I’m curious about this bit. Obviously the proselytizing is some sort of requirement. Did you have a daily / weekly / monthly quota and if so, what was it? Did it depend on each individual—for instance, did a young person have a higher quota than an elderly person? Were you allowed “time off” for vacations and the like? How did you manage to get it done between working full-time and going to meeting several times a week? I seem to recall you mentioned earlier in the thread that many JW’s live on government assistance so as to be able to devote more time to hitting the streets. That seems like a massive scam to me, how common is this?
Apparently I’m not rude or assertive enough as I seem to get JW’s knocking on my door regularly. Usually the same guy or couple of guys, always elderly. The only time I had one come by and never return was a lady in her 60’s. We were living in a house that had built right after the war and had been added to and remodeled a lot over the years. As an ice breaker she mentioned she had lived in the house as a child, before the renos. I was instantly hooked, and began grilling her on what the house and neighborhood looked like before a big flood of a nearby river necessitated changes. She couldn’t get a word in edgewise or deviate from that conversation, so when she left she must have put me on some “do not contact—guy’s a nutter” list. Although different JW’s came back some months later.
Finally, a few months ago a couple of young Mormon missionaries stopped and knocked at my door. They gave me their sales pitch (yeah, I really need to learn to shoo them away as soon as I open the door…) and during so they mentioned “we were told you’re receptive to missionaries” I’m not even sure he realized he said it, or understood the implications. Since I’m not a member of any church and the only people who come to my door are JW’s, did the JW’s give my name and address to the Mormon kids? Seems like that would defeat the purpose of the whole JW mindset… but I cannot fathom any other explanation for that comment. Maybe they just guessed since I didn’t immediately slam the door in their face.
Your neighbor could have told the LDS kids you are receptive to missionaries to get them to leave their place for yours.
Whenever I get door-to-door missionaries at my house, I just tell them that I’m happy with the church I already attend, which is true. Never had them make a fuss, no matter what religion they are.
I’m always up to answer and enjoy doing so, so don’t worry a bit. 
I’m curious about this bit. Obviously the proselytizing is some sort of requirement. Did you have a daily / weekly / monthly quota and if so, what was it? Did it depend on each individual—for instance, did a young person have a higher quota than an elderly person? Were you allowed “time off” for vacations and the like? How did you manage to get it done between working full-time and going to meeting several times a week? I seem to recall you mentioned earlier in the thread that many JW’s live on government assistance so as to be able to devote more time to hitting the streets. That seems like a massive scam to me, how common is this?
There isn’t a quota, per se, but there also kind of is. There is a time sheet to be filled in each month and turned into the congregation. In it you report hours and things like return visits (if you go back to interest shown and talk again), bible studies (if you study a publication with them in a question and answer, systematic way), and a tally of how much literature you placed that month. It has changed recently, as I understand it, but the basics are the same. I think now they count things like showing videos from the website at the door.
Failure to report at least one hour for a month makes you “irregular”, at which point elders will take an interest in why you aren’t going out. Failure to report time for six months makes you “inactive”, at which point they’re supposed to show interest once again in your circumstances. They did make a provision a few years back that allows some special cases to report as little as 15 minutes if that’s all you can do, but you have to be approved by the elders wherein they determine that it is truly all you could likely do. We were “inactive” for years before we officially left altogether. We just couldn’t go out selling something that we didn’t feel comfortable with anymore over the years that it took us to leave.
It was always difficult to fit everything into life. Even before we quit going out in “field service”, as they call it, we struggled. We were often dead tired on Saturday morning from a long week of work plus two meetings that we had to attend, and getting up and going out was so hard. You push through though, most of the time.
For brothers that wish to move up in the organization, you typically have to be a good example in the time you put toward the ministry. The national average many years ago was 10 hours per month. It is a number that could be found in the monthly “Kingdom Ministry” leaflet send to every “publisher” (baptized member in the congregation). That number had gone down at some point, and eventually they no longer shared such statistics at all. Still, in most congregations, 10 hours is a goal for most people. Again, no hard quota, but an unspoken one of sorts for sure.
As to how many live off of some sort of entitlement programs so as to go out in field service more, I can’t tell you how common that is. It does happen, but I’d say it’s the vast minority. Still, the fact that it happens at all is really sad. I’d say that I knew of maybe a handful of people across a fairly large area that did so. Then again, I can’t claim to know everyone’s situations.
Oh, and I should add that in the organization you are never good enough. They constantly have meeting parts or articles about “doing more”. Can you simplify your life and get rid of extraneous things and devote more time to the ministry? Can you reach out to be a pioneer (different levels of commitment, varying from 30-60 hours a month or so)? Can you find alternative ways of witnessing (like telephone calls, letter writing, visiting businesses, parking lots, etc.) to be able to put in more time? Time spent truly dominates their ministry. There are rules as to when your time starts and ends and how to count it. It’s a whole thing.
…did the JW’s give my name and address to the Mormon kids?
Nah, that wouldn’t happen. There’s no communication there at all.
Every congregation has its own “territory”. Basically a map is divided up into tiny maps that are then checked out by members of the congregation to work out in field service. Whoever checks it out is responsible for making sure that every door is tried at least once. They also write down “not at homes” and try to go back to those houses again. The goal is to reach as many as possible. The goal is to make it through all of the territories over the year, if possible.
Sometimes people would say that we were there all the time. It was usually just that the territory was checked out multiple times and if there wasn’t enough territory available and a congregation went through their maps quick enough we could come by every couple of months or so. Sometimes there were errors where a number was written down as a not at home when indeed they were, just human error, so someone went back. For the most part though it is very systematized. If you don’t see someone for a long time, the reality is that they have probably been by and you just weren’t home. We sometimes went back to interest shown over and over and never found anyone. Lots of time was spent doing not much of anything but driving all over the territory and speaking to nobody.
JWs do keep a “no call” list, and you can request that nobody visit you anymore. They will likely ask why. Even then, after being put on such a list, the elders will take it upon themselves to come back every year or few years just to make sure that someone new hasn’t moved in or that you haven’t changed your mind, because ultimately they get to make the rules for everyone.
If you take literature for them, they WILL be back. Honestly though, there were times where we were told to “go back on a smile”, so you were punished for even being nice, lol. It’s like any sales pitch in that the longer you talk to them the closer they are to selling you, or so they think. So they will come back over and over again as long as you’re nice and will talk. Remember, they need that time, and talking to someone makes the time go by faster, so you’re their ticket.
Friend of yours, Mike?
Haha, crazy guy. I have to say that I’m surprised that I’ve never heard of things getting truly ugly or violent. When you take away a person’s family and entire life, people can get desperate. There are situations every day in which people are pushed to the edge, fortunately it doesn’t result in mass violence, but sadly many do commit suicide. The religion pushes people to their breaking point. You never know how people will break. That guy is married to a JW wife, so the trauma is right there every freaking day. I’m so glad my wife came out with me. It would have driven me crazy or to divorce to have to confront the cult mentality daily.
huh, I took some Witness literature from two older ladies more than a decade ago, and never saw them again. Maybe they tried and I was never home?
Not that I’m complaining…
Most likely. I mean, I can’t speak for what happens to every one of the millions and millions of magazines (or tracts or brochures or books, literature in general) that they leave (or the actions of every individual of the 8+million JWs), but yes, they are supposed to come back. That’s kind of the point. Place magazines with you, then come back and place more with the goal of moving you up into one of their main study books and starting a home Bible study with you. There are random times when someone writes an address wrong and never finds the person again (we’ve all done that over the years). There are many times where we would go back to a house for a year or more and never find the person home. Other times we would go back and think the person was avoiding us because we heard noise in the house and nobody answered, so we just stopped going and assumed a lack of genuine interest. Of course, you have to realize that most JWs go out at the same times on the same days. So let’s say you were home one Saturday morning because you were off work that weekend. We then would come back, probably on Saturday morning again, to try to build your interest. These visits are called “return visits”, and if we met you again we got to make a tally in the “return visit” category of our monthly time slip that we turned in.
One of our meetings every week was the “Theocratic Ministry School”, followed by the “Service Meeting”. Those meetings were basically some Bible study and sales training. How to speak to people at the doors, demonstrations of presentations, how to return and try to start Bible studies. We were taught rebuttals and ways to find common ground to speak to people in the ministry. So yeah, the point wasn’t just to leave magazines. Lots of people did just that, never really progressing, but they were supposed to grow as a public minister, and part of that was to develop your interest over time.
I just thought I’d bump this to say that I started a podcast about my life as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s just my story, told by me, and I hope to be informative and very real about what it was like. I’ve put three episodes out so far, and just launched over the weekend.
It is called “This JW Life” and you can go to ThisJWLife.com to listen or use an app like iTunes or what I use which is Podcast Republic (I have an Android phone).
I’m not making any money on this or anything. It’s just a free podcast. There’s no advertising on my site. Heck, my site is so simple there isn’t a whole lot on it. I’m just trying to share because I’ve had many people say that I should write a book, and since podcasts were instrumental in waking both myself and my wife up, I decided to go this route. I hope to help people that are curious about JWs or those with family members that are in it, or maybe those that are leaving or have left to not feel so alone. Stories can heal, and honestly telling my own story has brought up some things for me. This AMA helped me to process things and help others understand what it was like, and I hope this podcast takes it up a notch.
So, if anyone that asked questions here wants more information, you can listen to it if you like.
Thanks, Mike. I’ve read this thread with interest, as I am fascinated by “cult life”. Scientology, extremist Mormons, JW’s, etc.
I’ll check out your podcasts.