ATI stuff and bad photos of myself

[Avalondaughter]

Thank you for sharing. The tapestry vest is forgivable, it reminded me of owning this in the mid-90's. http://www.etsy.com/listing/85934652/ca ... hing-large

I had a tapestry vest in the 80s. I LOVED it. I was always into "fancy" fabrics like that. Granted, I wore mine with tight jeans and short skirts.

[donks]

Thank you for sharing. The tapestry vest is forgivable, it reminded me of owning this in the mid-90's. http://www.etsy.com/listing/85934652/ca ... hing-large

I had a very similar vest that was part of a horse show outfit! Mine had vintage cars and license plates on it. It was rust brown and black, worn with a black tux shirt, black jeans and chaps, black boots hat and snood.

It looked very smart on my sorrel mare. /rambling thoughts

[fakepigtails73]

I like your 2 in joyfullness vs self-pity!! :twisted: I wonder what they considered self-pity? Probably silly stuff that we don't even usually think about...

[kaetrin]

I'm jealous the staff got to eat on Sundays! What was it like being on staff? Were the Bells nice? They kind of ignored me the whole time. I don't know if it was my lack of shining eyes or long flowing hair, but I don't think they ever spoke to me. I kind of felt sorry for Lauren because she was older and still stuck there teaching EXCEL girls how to sing. Do you know if she ever got married or at least left?

Staff was more fun than EXCEL, although still a lot of work and highly supervised. We played parlor games like three-on-a-couch and watched movies in the evenings: lots of stuff from Bob Jones and some old movies like Mr Smith Goes to Washington or Sergeant York. Although once we were lounging around in the staff area being silly and, I don't know, making elaborate paper cup sculptures, and Mr. Daniel decided we were being too frivolous and clearly had too much time on our hands, so we had to spend our free time watching Jim Sammons' Financial Freedom Seminar. I think he picked the most boring and irrelevant thing he could think of. (We certainly didn't have any money!) Another time I got "talked to" for talking to staff boys too much -- and I was a super non-flirtatious introvert! It was really just a conversation, but they deemed the subject matter too substantial or something ridiculous like that.

I was 17/18 or so and I enjoyed getting to be away from home and working with my peers. The Bells were pretty nice although I didn't know them well. They were in charge of the conferences, I think, and the Daniels were more directly in charge of supervising staff. I don't remember anything about Lauren; sorry.

Actually, when I was home last Christmas, my mom gave me a box of stuff, mostly pictures, that included my journal from my second time on staff. I haven't read it yet because looking at my old journals makes me cringe :-) but maybe this weekend I'll take a look and see if there's anything juicy for FJ.

[MamaJunebug]

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing. When I first developed my fundie obssession, I was able to find a vocabulary list from Gothard online. I do not remember the link. Just lke your weekly assessment list, I was struck by the way Gothard gave very narrow meanings to words. He also gave the antonyms to each word. It is intersting how his teachings narrow a person's vocabulary to the point where nuanced communication becomes nearly impossible. The coices for vocabulary words were also a bit skewed as well. The choices were most often the sorts of words that can be used in an emotion charged/moralistic way.

I was struck then and I am struck now with these shares, with the way words are used to control your thoughts. Chidlren raised n Gothardism are not given the tools to express themselves with the general public. It is sort of a fail safe so that even if a child is exposed to wordly people and ideas, they have have an inadequate fund of language and a poorly/undeveloped ability to understand nuance. It parially explains why these young people appear to be so mindless as adults.

Florence Hamilton, something like this:???

ati.iblp.org/ati/family/curriculum/wbla/documents/wbla1a.pdf?show=true

I have to say the ATI/IBLP folks are becoming my primary interest in this wackadoo field. Gothard is such a repulsive-looking man, and yet whole famillies are led to flock after him. Well, the parents seem to have the heart for him, anyway.

The study guide [sic] linked above isn't bad in that it includes lessons in primary spelling and grammar rules, like an "e" on the end of the word producing a long vowel in the word(in many cases). I didn't look very closely at the actual lessons WRT what they're supposed to teach from scripture. (Pretty sure it isn't very much about the love of Jesus, quelle grande surprise.)

[Didi]

yeah, i don't get the fasting all day on sundays thing. fasting is a pretty personal thing and shouldn't be forced.

was their reasoning in order to feed everyone they would have to work on the sabbath?

[formergothardite]

I think it was the working on Sabbath thing. And probably because they wanted to save money.

[Didi]

still totally dumb and wrong, but I get it. Amish and Mennonite people just serve stuff like sandwiches and stuff that don't require prep :)

[2xx1xy1JD]

I think it was the working on Sabbath thing. And probably because they wanted to save money.

I shouldn't be surprised, because it's clear that this movement is more about Gothard than genuine religion, but that's a completely messed up practice that directly contradicts Biblical teaching.

Exodus 16:22 talks about how there was a double portion of manna for the Israelites to collect in the desert on Fridays, so that they would have enough for food on the Sabbath as well.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=NIV

[i'm posting as a food-obsessed Jew, not a fundie. Sure, we don't technically cook on the Sabbath - but we use slow cookers set beforehand and cook up a storm on Fridays, so that we actually eat insane quantities of food on the Sabbath. Treating it as a fast day provokes a visceral horror in me, on top of the horror of underfeeding people.]

[kaetrin]

I shouldn't be surprised, because it's clear that this movement is more about Gothard than genuine religion, but that's a completely messed up practice that directly contradicts Biblical teaching.

Exodus 16:22 talks about how there was a double portion of manna for the Israelites to collect in the desert on Fridays, so that they would have enough for food on the Sabbath as well.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=NIV

[i'm posting as a food-obsessed Jew, not a fundie. Sure, we don't technically cook on the Sabbath - but we use slow cookers set beforehand and cook up a storm on Fridays, so that we actually eat insane quantities of food on the Sabbath. Treating it as a fast day provokes a visceral horror in me, on top of the horror of underfeeding people.]

Yes, I think you are right, about it being non-biblical for Jews AND Christians. He did try to spin it in terms of it being spiritually beneficial. But I'm an Orthodox Christian now and we take fasting very seriously (usually not a total fast, though) and we never ever fast on Sundays. (well, except in the morning before taking communion. But that's basically just skipping breakfast, and then we have lunch early. :-) )

[emmiedahl]

Anyone who fasts on the Sabbath has clearly not discovered the magic of cholent. We are not shomer shabbos, but I still make it because it is fabulous.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Anyone who fasts on the Sabbath has clearly not discovered the magic of cholent. We are not shomer shabbos, but I still make it because it is fabulous.

The Iraqi chicken-and-rice version is even better!

http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-th ... en-and-ri/

Since I'm a busy working mom and am not about to spend hours cooking like my hubby's grandmother used to do, I found a far simpler method that takes all of five minutes:

Put crockpot liner in crockpot.

Slice an onion, put on bottom of crockpot.

Put 1 whole chicken or 4 chicken leg quarters in the crockpot. Add 1 cup canned chickpeas, rinsed. Add 1.5 cups of basmati rice. Add turmeric, cinnamon, ground cardamon, salt and pepper. Add a can of tomato sauce. Add 3 cups water. Add 6 cubes of frozen garlic and a cube of frozen chili pepper. Set slow cooker on high for an hour or two, reduce to low and let it cook until lunch the next day. Smells divine and tastes even better, and there's enough food to feed a crowd.

[shesinsane]

Thank you for sharing.

I noticed you got an average for Virtue vs. Impurity. If you spent all your time in group meetings or in a room with a roommate, when could you possibly be impure? I think your group leader was lazy and that's why she gave you almost all 3s.

[nokidsmom]

It was an actual thick tapestry material and it was on the front and back of the vest. It was based on some verse where a virtuous woman clothes herself in tapestry or something like that. We had to sit through a long lecture on making sure we didn't position the flowers so they brought attention to our boobs. Having never really sewn, it was a hard project for me. I wish I had a picture of the quilt we also had to make. Mine never got finished and all my squares were crooked.

Thick tapestry fabric (and on both sides to boot) would not be an easy project for a first time sewer, so you can cut yourself some slack there. :)

Not surprised about the lectures on the flower placement, tho. It is something to watch out for (or strive for) when cutting out fabric with large prints. I had one sewing friend deliberately make a blouse with what we called "bullseyes" just to see if people would notice, lol.

[defrauding]

Thank you for sharing these. I'm glad you're out -- and glad you're here at Free Jinger.

[AudreyE]

Thank you for sharing this, FG, and to those who've shared other memories. I am struck by the comment about how many people pick up ATI as a whim. I hadn't considered that before, but I can't imagine spending 2 months at Excel (or at Jesus Camp or some other fundy nightmare training camp) the coming home and finding out mom & dad aren't feeling so fundy after all.

I, too, wonder how they could score virtue? It makes me laugh just thinking about it.

[formergothardite]

At least I got to go home after this. One of the women(she was 21) had been shipped from training center to training center pretty much non-stop since she was 16. She left EXCEL and immediatly flew to Mexico to do a Children's Institute. From there she went home for about a week and half, then she flew to the Headquarters to work for couple of months. Then she flew back home for three weeks and I think was sent to Russia for a year to work in the training center there. After that she came home for a month and I think was sent to Australia to work in that training center for a couple of months. Back home for a couple of weeks. Then to the Indianapolis training center where she met a guy who wanted to court her. She was sent home so that they could have a long-distance courtship heavily supervised by her father and they were married in less than a year.

They ended up getting divorced later and she is now remarried and happy.

[apple1]

I (myself, husband and kids) attended a mainline Christian denomination church for 5 years in which (we didn't know at the time) the pastor had gotten involved hook, line, and sinker in Gothardism. It was all quite cleverly hidden under other language (just like Gothardism doesn't reveal the depth of their teachings, or what they really believe, until people are very deeply committed). The name Gothard was never mentioned. "Home school convention" was the most common euphemism. "Character programs" occasionally.

It ended for us quite painfully. Without going in to specifics, husband and I were pretty much informed that we were no longer welcome there unless we chose to toe their line (we didn't). They manipulated and hung on to my 17 and 19 year old kids for an additional 4 months or so before we got them out (the kids were essentially adults and had driver's licenses and the older one had a car), telling them how awful their parents were.

There was a lot of pain and family dynamic that I was very upset about at the time.

Hindsight is 20/20, and now we are all relieved. (It's obvious now that it was going to end that way, because none of us have the personality or belief system to buy into the spiel). It's distressing (and revealing) that this was hidden in a mainline Christian church.

Today, about 11 years later, that church still exists, but there are hardly any members except the pastor's relatives. Most of the other (and there were many, many) members are gone in manner similar to us.

Only after we were out of that church, and I started researching Gothard, did I find out the extent of Gothard's teachings.

(I continue to self-identify as a mainline, not fundy, Christian).