Thursday 28 August 2014

The Jehovah's Witnesses turned up

yesterday. Those of you who know me at all will know that these people and their proselytising make me see red. I have no time for them.
I have no time for them because, when my parents first moved to this house, the elderly couple next door had a daughter who had converted to the cult. She refused to let her son have a life-saving blood transfusion and he died. Her husband had earlier needed another life-saving blood transfusion. He also refused to have it and died.
The husband was an adult and, while I think his decision was mistaken, he could be said to have the right to make it. The child was given no such right. The law has changed since then and the mother's wishes would almost certainly be ignored in favour of saving the life of the child.
What I do know though is that the grandparents were deeply distressed by what happened. It contributed to the further mental decline of the wife - and that added further stress. As neighbours my parents did what they could to support the old couple but it should not have been necessary.
The daughter actually tried to convert my parents - and then me.
Then, when my mother died, the Jehovah's Witnesses called. I don't know what they do in other parts of the world but here they read the death column in the state newspaper and call on at least some of the grieving families. The daughter of our neighbours admitted as much.
What is more they tried more than once. I wrote a letter. They phoned. I wrote another letter and asked them, firmly but politely, not to bother us.
Last year they called again and I sent yet another letter asking for no contact at all. They were not, I told them, to enter the premises, phone or leave any material for us.
I saw them out and about this morning and, on looking out our window to see if the car which had arrived was someone we were expecting, I saw them grouped at our gate. One of them was consulting a folder. Oh yes, they know our property is private. To enter it is trespass.
They saw me watching - and left hastily.
I went out a little later to greet our visitor and pick up the mail.
In the letter box there was a flier from the Jehovah's Witnesses.
This afternoon I put it in an envelope along with a letter and sent it back to them. No contact means no contact. It does not mean trying to come through the letter box.

4 comments:

jeanfromcornwall said...

Quite right too Cat! but I have to admit to being a great deal less restrained than you. They were regular callers, when we live in a cottage that was half a mile away from any public road, and they always managed to knock on the door and set all the dogs barking when I was at the crucial moment in cooking dinner for the whole family. I lost my cool one day and treated them to some good old-fashioned naval language, and they stopped bothering to call.
I trust they will have forgiven me - they are "Christians", or claim to be!

kristieinbc said...

Back in January of 1991 my husband was in Romania. We were in the process of adopting Alexandra, and I was at home with our other three children. We had a record amount of snow on the ground, I had shovelled for days on end, I was exhausted from taking care of three small children on my own, and well...you get the picture. On one of these long winter days, when I was especially busy and tired, the doorbell rang. I opened it and was greeted by a contingent of JWs. This was at the same moment my three year old daughter came running around the corner, minus her pants. I have no idea why she was naked from the waist down. It was probably a toilet training moment gone wrong. Anyway, I turned and looked at her, then turned back and calmly said to the JWs "I don't have time for you people today." Then I slammed the door on them. I always felt a little bad about slamming the door in their faces, but they try my patience at the best of times, and that was most certainly not one of the "best of times."

Anonymous said...

They are not welcome here either and have become an expert at either ignoring the door if I know they are around, or slamming the door ever so politely.

catdownunder said...

oh Kristie - I wish I had a toddler to greet them like that!
Don't feel guilty though - nobody has the right to impose their beliefs on other people in the way they do.