Dear Randy:

 

I learned the “truth” while in high school in Puerto Rico in the early seventies during the 1975 “Armageddon or Bust” hype. Honestly, I never believed the story. I found it too unsubstantiated. The perceived intellectual approach to the scriptures was the reason why I hung on to the organization for as long as I did. As my circle of friends narrowed to exclude the rest of the world, my advancing in the organization became more evident. 

By age 20 I was a ministerial servant and by 26 an elder in the local congregation. There were always things that I did not totally agree with, but you learn to live with these doubts waiting for the famous “new light” that will bring the satisfying answers. The business of the “generation” was something that I never accepted. I thought extrapolation was beyond the limits of the Bible’s elasticity. I commented these things to my wife and the close friend who gave me studies. 

Because I felt this way, I was not a very good Witness by WT standards. My preaching was limited to the things that I believed in directly from the  Bible. I dreaded placing magazines featuring articles emphasizing Armageddon, the last days, the generation, etc. The thing that bothered me most was the fact that they led the reader to nothing! They were a collection of the “six o’clock news” ending with the words “soon,” “in a few years,” “this generation,” “act now,” “tomorrow may be too late,” etc. Yet I always managed to find something of value to point at.

During the 16 years that I served as an elder, I saw how the organization could crush anybody that stands in the way or that becomes a perceived threat. I also saw the hypocrisy associated with the “special privileges” in the congregation. I always felt that there was no other group of people on earth more dedicated to the truth and the welfare of mankind than the Governing Body. Because of this belief, I always excused the “imperfections” of these less than sincere members of the flock.

I always treated people as fairly as I was able to. Many brothers and sisters came to me in times of trouble and that made me very unpopular with some elders in various congregations. I tried pioneering and lasted about eight months in this work. I saw it as a waste of time. Our congregation had a territory so small that it was preached twice a week, without counting the visits by the English congregation. I found the house-to-house activity invasive especially here in the USA. In Puerto Rico, as it is true of other countries in Latin America, people are not so sensitive to “privacy” and therefore do not mind someone dropping by. Here is a different story and many immigrants have adopted the American mentality. Not that I think it is bad, but it definitely makes more difficult the task and, in my case, embarrassing when people asked: “Who invited you over?”

Despite my poor record as a Witness I was invited to go to Bethel to work temporally in the engineering dept. There I worked with Ray Rose with whom I established a close friendship until my disassociation in March 1999. I had the “privilege” of being assigned to a GB table and met on a regular basis all the members of this body with the exception of Fred Franz who, at the time, was too frail to move around. This encounter with “Christ’s brothers” was very disappointing for the most part. Some of these characters barely resembled Christ in their way of treating “mere mortals” like my wife and myself.

Upon our return to Florida after a year in Bethel, I received the cold shoulder from former friends and associates who concluded “there had to be something wrong with us since we were not in Bethel anymore or had applied for pioneer service.” My wife was devastated.  I fared a little better. Eventually I regained old status and continued serving as an elder, becoming presiding overseer of a congregation in 1992.

During these years I had some serious “fights” with circuit overseers and became rather unpopular in the circuit among the “heavies.” I disagreed with certain methods typical of this breed and argued in favor of recommending brothers that had less than the prescribed field report hour average but that were exemplary otherwise. I argued that if the Society had eliminated the price on literature, we the elders, had nothing to do with the money sent to the Society. If the brothers did not contribute for the books as the Society felt they should, then bring back the price list. Needless to say, the circuit overseer was not happy.

When a Watchtower article on suffering for having followed the dictates of your own conscience came out in print, I’d had it. I began an investigation on the internet with a question that had lingered in my head since 1981. Around that time there was the big wave of “apostasy” in N.Y. I knew some of the individuals personally, like Rene Vasquez and Cristobal Sanchez. Ray Franz was a personal friend of an elder in my congregation and the news about his removal and subsequent expulsion came to all of us as a shock.  Some time later I read the short interview article in TIME magazine and my curiosity was aroused. Unfortunately the article did not do justice to the real story behind Ray and I never had the courage to inquire further.

I decided to start where I had left off in 1981, went to my computer and simply typed “Raymond Franz” in the search engine slot and hit “go.” I was amazed at all the sites containing info about the man. I ordered the two books by Ray. I had them delivered to my place of work fearing how my wife would react. When they arrived I devoured them. I could not put them down. I cried, I experienced anger and even laughed. Many of the things I had suspected were confirmed and the missing pieces of my spiritual puzzle began to emerge. I will be forever grateful to Ray for coming forth with his story and the balance that he instills in his readers.

I finally presented the information to my wife and, although fearful, she was receptive to the information and had a very explosive reaction. She wanted to stop going to the meetings after reading just a couple of chapters. I was less emotional about it and began to plan a way to “escape” while leaving the minimum number of casualties behind. The first thing I did was step down from being presiding overseer citing “poor health” on the part of my wife, which was true at the time. Two months later, still reading more books and information from the web, I resigned as an elder. This took many by surprise. This time I simply stated that my decision was not open for discussion. The book study at my home was transferred to another house and I started composing a letter of resignation.

Although I knew that I needed to go to Christ, how to go about it was totally obscure to me. I felt completely alone. Deep in my heart I knew I had made the right decision. We turned in the letter of resignation along with approximately 35 personal letters to our closest friends. The resignation was to be  effective March 1, 1999. We heard back from a couple of friends, mainly insults and expressions of disappointment. One month later a man who had studied the Bible with me for years put me in contact with a person attending an evangelical Pentecostal church. After attending a meeting and being initially shocked by the things I saw and heard, I later decided to continue going. Something inside told me that these strange people were closer to God than I had ever been.

A year has passed and a lot of questions have been answered. Many are still in my head. For now, these are the more salient points of what happened to me in the past 30 years. Perhaps one day we can speak “face to face” and share some more details of my experience.

May the Lord Jesus continue blessing your effort to bring light to those who think are walking in the light.

Alfonso Orellana

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