Watered Garden

We lived in Athens, Ohio during that class. It was a wonderful financial windfall for the townies who owned business like restaurants. Of course, we were taught to be notoriously bad tippers by VPW himself, though Mr. Garden and I felt quite differently. Many bars and restaurants just closed down for the summer months as a rule but stayed open for business during those two weeks.

My own recollection was that in some ways for me personally, it was a giant pain in the patootie. We shared a large house with some other folks, one of whom was a 6th WC grad who was the branch leader lady, and we actually had to move out and find another house to rent so her friends and family could squat in the house we had originally rented with another couple. I don't know if the other couple moved or not. Then Miss BL sent some people over to squat with us for the two weeks. I of course was expected to be their servant. In both places, I recall having one heckuva time convincing the "guests" to leave my dog in the house, this is not a farm, it's a town, and he could get hit by a car or picked up by the dog patrol or stolen, LEAVE HIM IN THE HOUSE!!! At least one of our "guests" was known to Mr. Garden, thanked us for the room, and minded her own business. But still, my resentment probably came from being ordered up like a pizza without asking. Of course no one paid or offered to pay or even to take us out to dinner. I stayed the heck away from getting involved with "hosting" not that a mere FLO grad would have been spiritual enough to do so.

I don't recall anything about him saying he had to cast out devil spirits. The Convo wasn't anyplace I regularly went. I do remember there were a lot of summer colds/coughs/sneezing that year and he rebuked the ill and told him to "renew their minds" because they got on his nerves. And I remember him having a fit because some girl ran up to him and gave him a kiss and she had been eating garlic.

Maybe she thought he had a vampire spirit!

Exactly!

The yellow lab looks like my Sophie... :(

That's perfect!!!!!

A devil spirit can hide in a cigarette butt? Is that a spirit of nicotine???

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Waysider, sounds like TWI-ers are worse to work for than Wal-Mart!!!

Naten00 this was the branch leader in 1996 in a suburb of Seattle. I don't know of it was his thinking only, or that of him and the limb leader, R**man St**iew, or him, the limb leader and the head honchos in NK.

I just know what we were told: "Your son is not your son because he is adopted, and God does not honor adoption."

I hope to God it's not TWI's official doctrine. If it is they are worse off than I could even imagine.

By the way, we kept the kid and ditched TWI. Good choice, I think.

Naten00, one of the reasons we were told to "get rid of" our son was that he was adopted and therefore not really our son at all. TWI does not recognize adoption, because they believe that God does not recognize adoption. At least that's what the pi$$ant branch leader told us when he told us to abandon him.

Apparently, Ephesians Ch. 1 isn't in their rightly divided brains.

Of course there was one couple we knew who adopted a baby girl with the assistance of the then Trunk Coordinator, but they were WC so I guess the rules were different.

Oh, I think not. Just rustling up some dinner for Mr. Garden and me. Later, maybe.

"When our Savior Comes in Glory

We will raise our heads up high

And be drawn to the clouds there with him

In the twinkling of an eye."

Chorus of a song written by a dear old friend of mine about the Return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

My deepest sympathies and love come with this.

Then, according to their twisted scriptures, partial birth abortion is okay, because the abortionist (no way would I call someone a "doctor" who performed this loathsome procedure) turns the fetus into the breech position and delivers it up to its neck, then inserts a trocar through the atlanto-axial junction and sucks out the brain. Since the fetus is never permitted a chance to breathe it would just be a thing with the potential to become human.

This is a vile and foul thing to do to a baby, but I can see where they would give it their stamp of approval.

Those who were not permitted to be born? Their blood cries out against their murderers.

In the cafeteria at RC it was the same; everything had to be lined up perfectly. I remember being a reluctant participant in such activity and thinking I was supposed to learn something spiritual by sighting down a string to make sure each salt shaker, pepper shaker, knife-fork-spoon etc was perfectly aligned table to table to table and thinking, "this is really stupid busywork when they don't give us enough to eat in the first place." (Most of the food we grew went to NK for the important ones to enjoy.)

What a load of manure!

I love that commercial! But it's not me, honest! I wear contacts most of the time anyway.

I seem to recall not too long after the FLO campfire area construction, some or all of us were required to spend the night there in sleeping bags, which in my little mind sucks like an open chest wound. This was in an area on the far side of a creek, kinda woodsy, with the garden on one side and the creek on the other. Very early, right about dark-thirty, some of us were awakened by an ungodly scream, which a country girl from FLO 3 informed us was a raccoon, after the corn in the garden.

Was it an in-depth spiritual experience for me? No, but I still hate sleeping outside and I don't much like raccoons, either.

I remember some guy coming back to Charleston after taking the Advanced Class and sharing at a beach "do" bonfire thing about how "Star Wars" was sooo spiritually devilish. He said that they had been taught that it promoted (gasp!!!) the Holy Trinity; Darth Vader the Father, Luke the Son, Yoda the Holy Spirit. As Mr. Garden snorted sarcastically on the way home, "Gee, and I thought it was just a great science fiction action flick!"

Which of course, is all it really was.

I girl I knew on the WOW field, C**dy Sh**lds, went into the 7th Way Corps. She went home for Christmas break and while her parents were out shopping, she put the barrel of a .45 in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Her parents blamed LCM.

That's all I know. She was a happy enough little camper on the WOW field, though.

A woman I knew in FLO who was also in the 7th WC told me this. She was not known to lie, at least not then.

I just saw this and of course I'm praying too, and I hold you in my prayers as well.

When I was a WOW I ministered to/prayed for a girl with a migraine, who received immediate relief of her pain.

When I lived in Charleston, SC, I was diagnosed with sarcoidosis. I went to the ROA for one day only, flying home as I had a new job and no serious vacation time. I spent most of the day at the House of His Healing Presence and I wrote it one of the books there. Almost a year to the day, my lungs were clear on x-ray. This disease could have progressed to invade my nervous system, brain, etc.

In August, 1994 I was diagnosed with Type I insulin dependent diabetes. I was told that I had committed a sin which had caused God to withdraw His hand of protection from me. No one knew what the sin was. Finally one former friend suggested it was because I didn't believe that LCM was The One Man Of God For This Day And For This Time And For This Hour.

I've prayed and prayed but I'm still diabetic. Does God listen? I'm sure He does. Is there a lack of my faith or believing or whatever? I dunno. Do I blame God? Never!!! Do I blame myself? Not so much any more.

Many churches today teach the above doctrine. It's used as a tool to intimidate members with guilt and self-condemnation, just like TWI uses it.

Chockful, that was awesome!

Driscoll is such a .... dick.

Yep, that about covers it. Leaving a trail of broken hearts and lives in his wake, just like a lot of other bozos.

Much has changed since I added to this thread. Mini will be 9 next month, is happy with his mom and stepdad. Mom is on better terms with us.

Mini has a problem with reading, goes to a fantastic elementary school where he gets to read to a dog. He loves dogs so this is very helpful.

Thanks for your prayers. It was a rough few years, but he is as cheerful as can be, says "please" and "Thank you" and spent the night a couple weekends ago!

God is good.

Now that I think about it (I've heard/seen this video before) he reminds me of a guy who for years has done furniture store commercials in this extremely loud, urgent, high-pitched castrato voice. The tag line is "PRICES ARE GREAT AT AMERICAN FREIGHT!" I always want to remove the vise grips from his externals and tell him to take a nice warm bath.

I went back and listened to the first couple of minutes...UGH! He really does sound like that commercial! He is such a cheap trick, a ham actor, and again, WHY would anyone do anything other than RUN LIKE THE VERY DEVIL in the opposite direction from this screaming little b#st&rd?

The Acts 29 church plant we attended does not have women's Bible studies, fellowships or anything of the sort. Their pastor says women are gossiping, lazy, backbiting busybodies (a Driscoll quote, I believe). One of his most precious doctrines is that no female will be allowed to speak from his stage. He has had strong, intelligent women in that church and two of them (a friend of mine and me) have left. Women are to be squashed into submission by their husbands.

I don't even understand this Biblically. I understand the culture of Jesus' time on earth, but He was decent enough to women, so what's the big deal? If Driscoll thinks he is following in the footsteps of Christ, maybe he should have a peek at the Gospels and see where they lead him.

"According to Andrew, at Mars Hill, the cliche “it takes two to tango” isn’t true. Why? Because Pastor Mark teaches that women are “weaker vessels,” and therefore, when a girl and boy engage in consensual sexual activity, it is always assumed that it’s the man’s fault because he failed to lead the woman (or “weaker vessel”) toward righteousness. (And everybody knows that women can’t find righteousness unless a man leads her there. Ugh."

Is this official church doctrine? If it is, I'd like to see book, chapter and verse.

I would be totally amazed that anyone would put up with this kind of nonsense if I hadn't been a TWI-bot myself. A church discipline contract? Is that even Biblical?

A few years back we attended a Mars Hill Church plant. Their church planting division is called "Acts 29" and Driscoll of course is the present of Acts 29. The young pastor and his wife worshipped the ground "Pastor Mark" walked on, much like our last branch leader and his wife worshipped the ground LCM walked on. I could see it coming from miles away and we left after we studied the statement of beliefs of that outfit.

That church plant is now studying Driscoll's new sex manual, one chapter per Sunday. Wonder how they'll teach the chapter on "positions?"

Re: the sixth corps guy who nodded off: If your blood sugar is high enough, you WILL nod off. I'm surprised that VP, being such a great and might man of God, didn't get revelation that this guy needed some medical help or at least ministered to him for healing of his blood sugar imbalance.

But then that wouldn't have scared the daylights out of the rest of the hapless souls in the room, would it?

Shame on him! Shame!