The Year of Our Baptism in the Cult.

My JW Husband, who had convinced me that JW had the Truth and that they were God's People, and I were baptized at a motel swimming pool in Mountain View, Arkansas. We had a couple, the wife of which claimed to be of the 144,000, babysit our little boy, and we went down there to get baptized. At that time, at the Circuit assemblies, they had the baptism on Saturday Morning, and most JWs did not go on Saturday Morning for that reason. (they changed that without telling anybody after a few years) So that morning, September 9, 1976, was a big day in which I recieved a lot of attention; hugs from sisters, congratulations, etc., and it was somwhat like getting married again; I was for the moment a Celebrity.

Soon after that, my unstable JW husband started getting sick, and they did find an ulcer in his stomach. I took the bull by the horns, and started cooking for him, paying attention to his diet, which he hated, but the next x-rays did not show the ulcer. I am telling you this, because in between this, he had a few job losses, and he blamed me for that. Then, his brother came down from Wisconsin, and that was made us end up back in Milwaukee. He promised that if we went up there, he would give us the money to get back. I was not aware that my JW husband's family did not keep their promises to each other, but that was what happened. I had to call my dad and get the money to get back to Arkansas, where we did have a house yet, and still lived in it.

When we got back down there, we had a lot of problems, and first of all, the gas was off, and the house was cold. Our son was three years old, and of course his dad did not want to live there anymore, because he was cold too. I was the woman, who had no influence on the situation, according to the elders, and all our new jw friends, so I had to do what he wanted to do, which was move back in with his aunt and sick uncle. We did that, and all of a sudden he wanted to move back to Milwaukee. My mom had just died, and so I had money which of course he was going to help me spend.

The people in Arkansas thought we were welching out on our bills, the elders thought we were wanting to get out of "the truth", and this was really bothering me, for I was sick with a kidney infection which was to last a few more years and culminate in two major surgeries, but life went on, and we ended up back in Milwaukeed again, and nothing was the same; he had no job, and the congregation was no help, but that was the first of the gossip, and the stuff that I was to go through.

I thank God for all these experiences now, but at that time it was not so nice.

It was after I moved back to Milwaukee that I experienced my first awakening. Second part of "secrets"

It was about 1977, and I had been married to my second husband since our son was 2 years old. We had gotten married in 1975, which was the first year that I had heard about as the predicted end of the world, otherwise known as Armageddon, as Sue had first told me and my current husband was confirming. We had spent the last 18 months in Arkansas with his aunt and uncle, who were Baptists, but were not church goers, since his uncle was very sick, and so was his aunt, who died the same year the uncle did, which was the year after we went back to Milwaukee.

Having said all that, this was my first bad experience in "the truth" and let all who read this take heed. I met a woman who was the wife of an elder; her name was Gail. Her husband's name was Dean. We were having financial troubles, and we could not pay a bill, so she got me a job with the agency for which she worked, at the company where they had placed her. Gail had a lot of friends at this company, and she picked up a woman for work, who was living with a boyfriend. She told me not to try to tell this woman anything about being a witness; she said that there was a difference between being no part of the world and having to live in it. She would come and sit with me at lunch and tell me about supposed conversations she had with "born-agains" and people with whom we both worked. She never talked about anything like that when we worked together at the same table, but would tell me things only at lunch. One day, she and a couple of the girls spent lunch hour in a local bar and she came back to work quite inebriated. She also told me that the boss, who was African-American, had a crush on her because her derriere was large. Then her husband broke his ankle, and had to stay home and take care of the kids, and one morning, my husband dropped me off at her house so she could take me to work, and she started hollering at her husband so bad that I knew he felt like two cents; it was like she was the man and she was abusing him. An elder, no less. Well, I brought it up with her later, and she swore up and down it had never happened. But two days later, she started talking to me about the way I treated my husband, because he had forgotten (?) to pick me and my son up at her house, and I was complaining about it. Well, I stopped hanging around with her after some other incidents, all of which were bad. For an elder's wife, I didn't think she had the qualities of an good Christian, let alone be an example to me.

This was my first bad experience, and not the last.

More later.

Secrets of the Cult; part one

When I was a Jehovah's Witness, I was privy to many things, and I think it was because people thought I was too naive to understand anything.

I was first a student of Jehovah's Witnesses in 1974, but my first affiliation with someone else who studied with a JW was in 1971. I was very vulnerable, because I believed anything and everything. I had a friend I will call Sue. She would call me on the phone, and would tell me she was "witnessing to me" by reading the Bible over the phone. One of the things I remember her reading was that God wanted a person to get married if they felt in the least bit sexually aroused. I had never read that before, and Sue told me that "that's what it says". I thought it to be quite odd, but I didn't know any better, since I did not feel to close to God at that point in my life.

Sue claimed to be a devout student, and she felt that her Bible studies gave her good luck. Little did I know that she was also a friend of the man with whom I was married, the man whom I could not trust, the man who was not faithful, and who in 1964 had been accused of child molestation, but not convicted. This faithful woman, who read the Word of God over the phone, was devising a way to help this child molester take my children away from me.

In 1974, when I began my studies in earnest with Jehovah's Witnesses, Sue and I came in contact once again, after my divorce from the child molester. At that time, I was told that she had made changes in her life, and of course because it came from those I was studying under, I believed it. She had succeeded in aiding and abetting him to take my children away, but I could not prove it.

I could not get away from her, for she had told the elders about her contact with me; I was not aware what had been said, so I was intimidated.

More later.