RW67

I thought I'd chime in after stumbling onto this which brought back some memories. I was first introduced to TWI in the early/mid-2000's in Bowling Green, OH at BGSU. I was invited to attend fellowship / bible study, but had no idea it was TWI. They didn't seem to like to call it that, or a church, etc. I noticed a lot of the people I was meeting were only close friends with other members. They had friends, but their closest friends were all members. I noticed a couple things though. I felt like some of them didn't fully agree with everything, but they were too concerned about screwing up their group of friends all associated with TWI. I remember "messing around" with a girl who was very involved in TWI. She was paranoid people in her "branch" would find out, so anything we did had to appear like it was innocent. The funny thing is, I messed around with another girl in TWI also, while one of my friends did as well. It was all the same. They were all doing things that went against their cohorts, and they were all keeping it secret from each other, even though they were all doing the same thing. I noticed something odd though. Some of the girls from New Knoxville looked like sisters but they were not related. I thought this was strange because it's a small town and their families had moved to New Knoxville in the 70's, so none of them were from the area originally. Then, I saw the father of one of the girls. First, they didn't look alike and even more perplexing to me was she was slightly taller than her father. That's not normal. Usually a female is shorter than her dad, almost always. Recently I read about the wife swapping that was going on in the early 80's and it struck me that it's plausible these children of TWI might not actually be the biological children of their mother's husband. (Assumed father). Moving along. I was never invited to any of the fellowship nights by the 2 different girls I was messing around with (roughly the same time, maybe it was, I was a horny college guy). Eventually a guy I was working with at BGSU invited me to come along. It spooked me off though. They acted very open in public, but in the fellowship, it seemed like the views were a lot more strict and not as accepting of traditional beliefs. Then they spoke in tongues. That did it for me. I thought they were freaks and hypocrites. I didn't believe that BS. I remember feeling like they were watching me though. It always felt cult-like, but without being one of those obvious cults. They could plausibly deny being a cult through the ministry but the whole structure and conditions have all the hallmarks of being a cult.