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In Reply to: Questions for exers posted by Joanna (reposted from Journeys on January 14, 2004 at 18:58:35:
1.)how you join in and get out of childern of god???
I joined because I read about them and met them several times, and I identified with them. Sure they were strange, but in a way that I hoped would be cool. I trusted them, probably because I wanted to. I was young and naive, a former boy scout do-gooder type, and needed to leave home, etc. In those days there wasn't much awareness or information about cults. Home life was a drag. The alternatives to having something useful and active to do with myself (to the point of total dedication, abandonment and immersion) were not found in the churches. I was disillusioned with what the established religions and institutions had to offer. I was burning with energy and enthusiasm. I was like a walking, talking radical, waiting for a cult to happen. So I walked and talked and the Children of God happened.
How did I leave?
with great difficulty. I had no family, no distant relatives to fall back on. I had no education, no marketable skills. I had no home country to fall back on. I had children to feed. I wanted to leave with my partner, and so I had to make sure she was convinced about leaving too. Everywhere we went we went we were accompanied by other members (we had a rule about going 2-by-2), so we had no privacy. Our private mail both ingoing and outgoing was read by our overseers, so we could not easily secretly leave. We could not really handle leaving openly either, because of the confrontations and problems that would happen. We weren't emotionally eqipped to handle that, we just wanted to quietly go our own way, and leave our "brothers and sisters" (fellow cult members) in peace to serve God whatever way they saw fit. We didn't fit anymore. We no longer believed in our leader, Berg. We saw how he lied and twisted everything all the time.
2.)have you experiments with flirty fisching??
Yes, and so did all my partners within the group. Flirty fishing supposedly for winning souls, was quickly turned into a way to win influential friends and make money. In the end (mostly women) were going out to sell their bodies.
3.)what were you typical daylive??
This would differ from home to home, and country to country. This is what happens/happened in the average home:
Waking up and taking care of our children's needs.
Making breakfast
Devotions (reading Mo letters)
Clean up and chores
Cooking Lunch
School time (giving our children home-scholling, usually sub-standard education after a certain level)
chores like yard work, etc
Making dinner
Eating dinner
Cleaning up
Taking care of children again if thier parents were out
Meetings
Reading more of group's literature
Watching approved videos or programs
etc
The above was what happens in the average home. Members would alternate house chores, so that others could go out to collect funds, goods, or pretend to be missionaries.
Sometimes we got up early way before dawn, to go to the markets to "provision" (lie and pretend we were helping homeless children) food.
Sometimes we'd go out in the afternoons to "witness" by going door-to-door, standing on the streets, or wherever. We'd usually be selling some kind of literature, posters, tapes, videos, magazines, etc.
Some of us used to busk (sing on the streets) and for every person that walked by (up to 20,000 a day) we could say we "witnessed" to them all and gave them God's message.
Some of us would go out and do our "system" jobs, usually working as a teacher. Such jobs were usually sanctioned only so we could keep our true activities and identities a secret.
In the FF days, some of us, usually women, would dress up and go out to "win souls" for Jesus with their bodies.
Some of us went out "clowning" at department stores.
Some of us had speical "ministries" such as puppet shows, video production, PR work, music production, holding meetings, etc.
That's it for now. Hope that answers some of your questions.
