In Reply to: Re: Great Spirit posted by anovagrrl on March 17, 2004 at 06:23:52:
The 60's and much of the 70's was rife with magical thinking and search for meaning and spirituality. At the time it appeared as if it were a renaissance of spirituality when in actuality it was a dark ages where drugs opened doors and then slammed them shut, taking lives, and peace became violence.
So you joined in 71? I can remember in 71 that the family had rapidly began to spread out and pioneer many places, incl. Europe. Before that, in 1970 a letter was written where Berg said that it was time for people to get mated that had been in the family for a year. That scared me really bad. I did not want that to happen. I knew that many couples that did not care for each other had been put together by "God"(Berg). And some leaders followed suit with trying to matchmake who they thought would be a proper match. I had been a driven person before the family who spoke out but was terrified of authority, kinda like the guy in "Breakfast Club" that was the trouble maker. Except that I was politically interested.
In the family, those beliefs got turned inside out and upside down as male dominance was stressed. There were a number of guys who said to me that either they were going to marry me because the "Lord" told them I was for them, or might be and they were going to get clearance from leadership. At that time I knew a provisioner who I liked but did not really know. He liked me too, but leadership did not like the match. They tried to put me together with others but M.Eve intervened when she came thru to Zion one night to have a "bethroval". I did not even know it was going to be me and I was not interested in getting "mated" with this "brother". But we were put together that night. After we were put together, he went back to Houston to continue his provisioning and I stayed at Zion and when he came in he would drop off provisions and then have sex, but there was no feeling at all in it for me. I felt like an object once again. Wham bam, goodbye ma'am. And he was back to Houston. Then the owner of "Zion", a psychotic, probably multiple personality as well, elderly woman progressed in her madness which the family worked around as we used her southern style plantation like house. We were eventually evicted from "Zion" and many of us went to a park in the Houston area that was infested with mosquitoes. We slept in tents and covered ourselves with Citronella oil. Leadership (Cephas the wife beater, and Shiloh his wife) slept at one of their parents houses. We at the park were getting eaten alive, bites on top of bites, even on lips. It was torture. And we all got a mosquito borne illness that made us extremely sick with a very high fever, uncontrollable shaking and many hallucinated with it. After that passed, there was severe diarrhea that lasted about two weeks. A few people were hospitalized but that was "selah"
I then went to a house in Houston on McGregor St. The plumbing was not working so we used a big can. Imagine that and then know that it was much much grosser!
Finally after being so sick, we were herded to a provisioners apt. to take timed showers by twos. That was 5 minutes which included undressing, showering, dressing and getting out. I showered with "Glory" and we went a few mins. over. Someone at the door, the timer guy was banging and shouting "Get out of there!" This was followed by a stiff rebuke from Hepsibah who was a real hard ass. But we were too sick and weak and it was well worth the reaming. Don't even remember what she said.
Then it was back to Mc House. Cephas was always saying humiliating things to me about my being tall (5'9") and having "big feet" and ridiculing me in one way or another. I found out I was pregnant with my first child. I wanted to leave so bad but felt trapped with no place to go and a belief that God could kill me and my child if I did.
I began to seriously regret the sex with my "mate" as I hated it, I had been bleeding a bit and he wanted it all the time. I was sick with morning sickness now, too. He reported me to Cephas who later took me aside in his bedroom and pinned me onto the bed and French kissed me, and warned me that more would happen if I did not submit. This was followed by prayer, tongues and some prophecy from him that I would always be a sheep. (Maybe this is one reason I like wolves so much?) I continued to have problems and was forced to sleep with my "mate" in our small trailer room in the back. The leaders took the bed and we had the floor. This was to observe the resistance. I don't remember much of what happened after that, but we were then sent to Austin to be Shepherds. We weren't there long and were sent to Dallas to the bldg. that we had a loooong lease on for a dollar a month. I don't remember where we stayed while there. Adria was there and doing here typical guilt tripping for people that did not choose to use their one "free day" to go out on the sts. and witness.
My mate had a wreck and was severely dealt with. Then M.Eve intervened (he had been one of her purse carriers at times) and we were sent to pioneer N.O. with just a van and one other person.
It was determined that we were meant to be "pioneers" and get places going and then move on to the next frontier.
In leadership trainee fashion, the girl that was with us slept on the floor in the kitchen while we slept on the only bed in the br where there was one floor heater. I told my mate that she was sick and should be sleeping in the br, but he rebuked me and then demanded his usual.
Around this time, a "sister" who was real pretty had been in Burlington and she told us about some of the sexual sharing with leaders there, but they got in trouble from "Mo" and were blamed for taking liberties as an occasion to the flesh. Actually, they were doing what "Mo" was doing, but extending it outside of leadership circles. Around this time is when we realized Berg had more than two wives, but did not realize there were more than that. That would be "Martha", "Maria" and "Eve". That we realized but was still "selah"
Eventually there were people leaving and a second 60 minutes was made where we were all watching expecting something good but it was bad. There were some exers asserting sexual abuses and other things and Faithy came on stating that those were "absolute dirty filthy lies". But were were trained that the family lies to protect itself from what the system would not understand. And some things, because they occured on a selah basis, were believed to be lies by many.
Still, there was a lot of personal witnessing. At this time I was in Daytona Beach waiting to have a baby. Fam members were supposed to have faith to have home births by poorly trained midwives.
I watched three births before mine and realized I might die. One was breech and the midwife was on the phone with Rachael asking what to do. I would say she was pretty nice (Ruthie) but this shows the negligence of the family head. The baby was delivered safely.
I had mine and he weighed 9 lbs 10 1/2 ozs. and I tore very badly. I bled and continued to bleed alot. I had to lie still in bed with my legs together. After three days I got up to go to the bathroom that ws just across the hall, I began to black out and another "sister", also a very nice person, helped me to the toilet and told me to hold my head between my legs and breath deep and slow. I greyed out but did not lose consciousness. I am lucky that I did not die.
After having a child it seemed I was no good for anything but to be a care taker for my own newborn and others kids. At the same time the "Great Escape" letters were coming out. I was very depressed as I believed I just had a baby and any day we might be nuked and all die.
Shortly after we got clearance to leave to Europe from our regional leaders and we sold our possessions etc, and one team went to Pensacola, one took a donated van and small printing press and were wanting to go to Mexico and Latin America, and the rest of us headed to Europe with open ended tickets.
We went to Zurich and stayed at Petrus Bear's mothers house there breifly, then my "mate" was sent to a farm and I was sent to Essen which was a sort of WS center before anything was called WS.
It was rather pleasant for a short while and then letters came out like "Monster on The Move" where "Mo" was rebuking everyone for leaving the states without proper clearance. So that meant we and many other couples were under investigation. And Essen became a center where some were batted back to America or passed the investigation. It was here that Ruthie was sent as well. We told the leaders their that we had received clearance from them and that they said that clearance came from the top. I don't know what happened then, but people were really pitted against each other for survival's sake. I was busted to babes status after again being reported for not wanting to have sex with my mate. He was made shepherd over the physical colony. Sort of a head maintenance man. There were purging sessions (which I thought had been suspended, but nope, they were alive and kicking ass in Europe) and loads of humiliation and being dealt with. I was in the nursery but was not allowed a mothers diet (now pg with 2nd child) because I was not showing yet. I had severe breast infections with the first and could not nurse. While in the nursery there, I got cabin fever with all the babies and drudgery. I was washing big pails of doo doo and pee- pee diapers out in toilets by hand (no gloves folks). I also had another leader do something similar that Cephas did and warn me to get over it.
Then one night around 2 or 3 in the morning I was awakened by a leader and told to come into the nursery main area. There was a panel of "Woe-Prophet-we-are-seriously-dealing-with-you" "elders" staring at me while I was literally up against a wall. I did not even know what for as it occurred at a time that things were pretty quiet. After pacing, staring and then screaming at me, I found out what my huge sin was that deserved this. I asked my "mate" who wanted to have so much sex to hold the baby because he was ignoring our child. I got raked over the coals and felt like I would drop dead on the spot then more breakings, purgings and seemingly endless humiliations, then I was told one day that we were being sent to Scandinavia.