Watered Garden

Rottie, I just saw this this morning and had to cry. Never met Nico but I felt like I knew her through your wonderful stories. I'm glad you have a new friend to care for, and I know Nico will never leave your heart, just as Sophie will never leave mine.

God bless you.

I was a medical secretary/transcriptionist from before the earth cooled until 2007, when I retired. I can tell you that they come in all sizes, shapes, temperaments and attitudes. I can remember a chief resident who strutted around like he had a hemorrhoid problem, thought he was God's gift to women and everyone else. I can remember doctors who stayed up all night with a sick patient in hospital. I can remember those who took the Hippocratic oath seriously and those who were in it for the money, and who earned no respect at all from me. Some of them were geniuses and some didn't know beans from barium.

The last doctor I worked for was one of the bravest souls I ever knew, someone whose deep faith in God gave her strength to treat dying children with love and compassion beyond belief.

If you don't connect with your physician(s) you simply need to find one you do connect with. And if someone spoke to me as that fool ophthalmologist did to Krys, I would tell him/her to take a flying leap at a rolling doughnut. That's inexcusable.

We flew to southern Florida and back last Memorial Day weekend. Out of Columbus, my husband flunked the full body scan and got the full body patdown, being touched where no man has ever touched him before. Turned out he had a dime and a nickel in one pants pocket no one had discovered. Apparently coins don't show up on the scanner. I on the other hand mentioned and displayed my insulin pump and breezed right through. They took a disk of cloth or paper, had me rub my hands on the pump, then rubbed the disk over my hands and took it to a machine, which told them it did not contain explosives.

On the return trip, it was I who set off major alarms, repeatedly. Suddenly remembered the pump, so they went through the same routine and I passed. Looking down as I gathered my belongings I saw what I had forgotten to remove and not one of the moderately alarmed officials had noticed. I was wearing a nice wristwatch, and that, not my pump, was what was setting off the alarm.

Brilliant, just brilliant.

What was most disconcerting to me was friends suddenly disappearing as if swallowed by quicksand, only faster. No explanation, no "Joe Schmo decided to pack up and leave." Or, "Suzy Smith wasn't listening and obeying, taught something the MOG says is not to be taught, questioned the color Mr. Limb Leader wants his kitchen painted," whatever, and we had to kick them out.

It was just as if they'd suddenly died, only no body and no funeral.

Scary.

I would just like to add a footnote to Chockfull's excellent post. When Chockfull discussed people being "cast out, fired, slandered" that means exactly what it says. Most of the people he mentioned or referred to had been faithful followers of TWI for decades, and overnight, they were gone, baby, gone. Then, whoever was the prez at that time would throw a screaming conniption fit about their "lack of salt, unfaithfulness to The Word, slothfulness, stupidity, disloyalty to the leader", whatever came to the twisted mind of the screaming slanderer. Afterward, no one who wished to avoid the same fate would dare to acknowledge that hapless soul's existence, would snub them, hang up on their phone calls, cross the street to avoid walking on the same side as the outcast. This was called "marking out and avoiding" that person. It was total ostracizing. It broke up marriages and families.

The trickle-down effect was also in play. Some of the folks here, through no fault of their own other than to ask their home fellowship coordinator or branch coordinator an innocent question, were given the bum's rush, and NOT ONE PERSON FROM TWI, WHERE THEY HAD SPENT COUNTLESS HOURS OF SERVICE AND TO WHOM THEY HAD GIVEN THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF ABUNDANT SHARING, WOULD ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR EXISTENCE ON THIS EARTH. NEVER! People who had done anything and everything to benefit their friends, their brothers and sisters in Christ, found the same "brothers and sisters" never speaking to them, no Happy Household Holiday card, no answering the phone or reading their mail. They were considered dead by the ministry and the faithful followers of The Way. Probably the main reason was fear of suffering the same fate, and the paragraph below should explain why:

Our last branch leader, a young man who worshipped the second president of TWI and emulated him a lot, once taught that "at the moment you leave the Household of The Way, whether of your own volition or whether WE decide you are unworthy of the privilege of fellowshipping with us, at that very moment the Spirit within you dies; and shortly thereafter, your physical body shall die also, because it is impossible to exist outside of the household of faith."

So, that's why I say RUN LIKE HELL IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.

PS: I've been accused of the sin of harboring bitterness against the leadership of TWI. Not so. I've forgiven them. I've forgiven my former friends. But, to paraphrase The Who: I WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN!

It was a twig coordinator who suggested we take our son up into the mountains and take turns hitting him over the head with a 2 x 4 until he either learned to obey or died of his injuries.

It was a branch coordinator who told us to "get rid of him" either by abandonment or by other means, as he could not in that particular state get the "men of God" to stone him to death."

I'm glad glad for Galen, that he is once again in the fold, one of the chosen few who have crossed the bridge of believing into the promised land of the prevailing word. My personal suggestion is to run like hell in the opposite direction. There are lots of churches which teach Bible and better than those hapless souls teach and without demanding unquestioning obedience to leadership or putting legalistic, unreasonable burdens of their members.

Don't know about names, but I wanted to find if anyone had researched the type of prayer called "prosukemi" and found it via Google - it was a post I'd written about someone needing prayer in the prayer forum here. Scared the stuffing outta me.

One of my last branch meetings the little bug who ran the place stated that "if you leave The Way International, whether of your own volition or whether we decide you are unworthy of the privilege of fellowshipping with us, AT THAT VERY MOMENT the spirit within you dies, and shortly thereafter your physical body shall die also, because it is impossible to exist outside of the household of God."

Uh, that was about 1995 or 1996. Guess what moron? I'M STILL HERE!

The pictures of Rome City made me very nauseated. I had to stop looking at them.

In one way it was sad to see it in such disrepair. In another way, it really was an evil place, especially for children.

I actually remember seeing this live and in color and I think it was sometime in the very late 1980's or very early 1990's. I only watched the first couple of minutes, but trust me, it was just as boring in the original!

One of the last teaching tapes we received in the mail, after we had left TWI but I had not had time to write and tell them to quit sending their propaganda to me, LCM, in that portentous, "it's the Lord, Noah" voice stated: "It is impossible to obey God without first obeying your leadership!"

"Huh?" thought I. What about Acts 4:19 where Peter and John tell the Sanhedrin "whether it is better to obey you than to obey God, you be the judge."

I am very sorry for your loss. As you may recall, I lost Maxx and Sophie within a year of each other. I still talk to Sophie sometimes. I called Nellie Sophie the other day.

Bless you, dear.

If you say "no thank you" no explanation should be expected. I don't think that's rude. If you turned and walked away, or said some nasty that would be rude. But we were trained (dare I say brainwashed) to think we had to respond in the affirmative.

When Mr. Garden was in college, we shared a house with another couple who had a baby. Then the WC BL decided to bless us with her presence. She liked to run in the afternoon, and she felt it important that everyone she was around agree with that and accompany her. So she requested the mother of the baby go for a nice, invigorating, refreshing run with her, reasoning that the baby was asleep and wouldn't wake up for another half hour or so.

The mother indignantly refused; what if the baby did wake up and cry and she wasn't there? (this was a very small baby, less than one year.

Was the mother rude to refuse? He11 no she was prudent and she was right.

Was the BL an idiot or a great woman of God with perfect believing?

Do I really have to answer that?

I suspect that may have happened already.

I think this carried over into other areas of life. For example, if you felt sick that was a negative attitude/believing and if you acted and confessed "I FEEL GRRREEEAAATTT!" eventually you would start feeling better physically.

One time in FLO, I was slated to accompany some other FLO's to Columbus and teach a twig there. I had the mother of all migraines that evening and informed my superiors that I was out of commission and would not be accompanying anyone to Columbus; there were better teachers than I involved anyway so they would have to figure it out.

Next thing I knew, the women's coordinator and the house leader held me down in my bed and ministered to me! Did I ask for prayer? No I asked for a couple of aspirin and peace and quiet.

I was told to confess positives, such as "I did not have a headache, I felt wonderful, I was healed".

Needless to say, I went to Columbus and taught the twig. Wish I could confess a positive that my headache disappeared, but alas, while it did abate after a while, I still felt like crap the entire evening.

I think from time to time we all did. I can definitely remember during my three months of he11 at Rome City having to pretend I didn't hate every single minute of it. In both programs (like Waysider, I was FLO) there were meaningless tasks repeated over and over and over.

I still fail to see the greatness of washing that long staircase in the main building at RC with Murphy's Oil Soap then waxing and polishing it every single day, sometimes twice a day.

As far as teachings go, some of the basic tenets of TWI were never explained to my complete satisfaction. Nor has it helped that I've gone to many churches and heard some of the same scriptures taught with equal conviction and a very different interpretation.

Geisha I'm so sorry for your ordeal.

Exxie - 1973, July and August to be exact.

I think that scripture was used as a bludgeon over the heads of many. It was quoted to dissuade their victims from "making the Ministry" look bad.

I figure, and this is my own thought, unhindered by wayisms, that if someone does something illegal against me, they are not acting like a Christian and if they don't accept being set aright by me or someone they respect in the church, I will sue them or if a felony has been committed, call 911.

To make a short story long, I don't know exactly what it means, either, but this is my thinkin' on the subject.

Yeah, I know, Linda, I was just being emotional.

My husband's grandparents used to go there for the health treatments when the sisters ran it. Maybe I should just say I'd like to smack the daylights out of some folks who used to live there.

Living well is the best revenge.

If I had the money, I'd buy the damn place and burn every building to the ground.

I worked for the physician at Indiana University Medical Center where HA was treated. I was not a PFAL grad and was not interested in their mumbo-jumbo. He did in fact have some kind of dread and loathsome disease, and they did give him blackstrap molasses and various raw juices, spun out by a centrifugal or some exotic kind of juicer by the Lynns. I think raw beet juice is good for building up hemoglobin, as beets have iron in them.

I don't know what else; I was certainly not privy to his medical records as dictation on the Powers That Be never crossed my desk, nor would I repeat anything if it did as even then I had a little integrity.

It probably was a miracle the man survived. TWI and the molasses and beet juice got all the glory. And that brings me to a point: How come when someone got well, God didn't get the glory, TWI did? And if that ill person died, someone else, the family, the devil, whoever, got blamed.

People die. It's unfortunate, but it's true.

Didn't someone post this before? Or maybe someone sent me a link to the video.

Pretty good, huh? Dog clearly enjoys it. Knows all the moves. Positions both front and back legs appropriately.

Dances a heck of a lot better than some people I know!!!!

Oops sorry about that.

Anyways, that dog reminds me of our "first child" who was half lab and half Irish setter. Except he didn't dance, don't ask him.

You might contact the English Department of a college of university near you. Remember the King James is roughly a contemporary of Shakespeare and some of the archaic language used in one is found also in the other. ("Anon" comes to mind).

You might possibly be able to find a dictionary with archaic usages and words somewhere. I saw one of those once, which is where I discovered that "throughly" is just another form of "thoroughly." But I think I must have been in a library as I never owned one that throughly explained the meaning.