"The Family Who Missed Meeting, And Their Child Was Hit By A Bus"

        Have you heard this skit, about the family that decided to stay home from meeting.  Instead of attending the T.M.S. and Book Study, they stayed at home to watch the TV.  The urban legend goes on to relate, the weak family's child was playing ball in the street, and was hit by a "Bus, Car, Train" and died.  Sister pioneer, will comment "Oh, If only this family had went to meeting, their child would still be alive!"  There are lots of stories, "Home Invasions on Meeting Night" sister "stay at home" was raped, "She would not have been violated, if she had not cancelled her Field Service part."  What are local legends about "Not missing meetings" in your area?  The sad part, is the brother or sister, who is able to give these comments, with a smile "Don't Miss Meetings, Or Else".

Sorry about the blank post. I meant to say that then you have the other side. 

There were those in the country of Georgia, who if they just would've stayed home from the meeting, would've escaped the multiple beatings delivered by the angry religious mob. 

CoC

       They consider that "Hazing", if it happens at the Kingdom Hall!  Using logic, does not work with people, who think "Georgia" is located near the State of Florida. 

And there was a shooting in the 1960s in the KH where I attended a few years later.  No one killed, but a slight injury.

More tragic was the stabbing death of a Brooklyn Bethelite who was working at night in his assigned job...in the 1970s as I recall.

Of course in these instances it's always 'Satan's attacks' or some such thing, but never 'Don't you wish you hadn't been there so this wouldn't have happened?'

What about the family that missed a boasting session and missed getting involved in the 92 car pile-up on the road in front of the Kingdumb Hell?  Or, they missed field circus, when someone with a gun showed up and shot everyone at that meeting?  Or, they missed a boasting session (in the Middle East) the same evening some Muslims got tired of the witlesses and blew up the Kingdumb Hell to prevent others from falling for the cancer?  Or a Kingdumb Hell fire when everyone was at the REJECT Jesus Party, where there was a major electrical failure and all the exits were simultaneously blocked and no one got out--except the one family that missed it?

And, numerous smaller incidents.  Such as someone getting into an accident while out in field circus because of a drink driver.  Or on their way to the Kingdumb Hell, they hit a tree because they were too tired to drive safely.  Or someone making it to the Kingdumb Hell sick, only to drop dead when they would have survived with a trip to the hospital or without any incident had they stayed home.  And let's not forget the times when someone gets shot at the door, falls down a stairs heading for a door, gets attacked by a dog while going door to door, or catches tuberculosis because they enter the wrong house while in field circus.  You never hear of those stories at the Kingdumb Hell.

Or the Bethelite who was speeding on the way to bookstudy and got into a horrendous accident as the result of his reckless driving.

I really hated those stories even when I was in. I hated how they were so fanciful. It almost sounded like a comic book

I don't know about JW urban legends, but I do know of an incident in the SF Bay Area in which a young woman was out in FS with a group of local JWs.  They were working some territory that had steep roads and hillsides, and the car got too close to the edge.  She was killed in the accident.  I believe that she also had a child.  This all happened in the 1980s, so my memory of it is pretty hazy, but I recall at the time wondering why Jehovah couldn't manage to protect the life of this woman, when he was so quick to provide a nice automobile to use out in field service for the 'sister' who cheated with my husband (or so she claimed--about the car, that is).

In my former hall, there is a sister whose husband was killed in a car accident returning home from an assembly in November 2006.  SHe and another passenger survived (barely), and she still has medical problems related to her injuries.  They weren't assigned to that assembly, but they went in order to see a relative get baptized.

Another girl, a born in who wasn't baptized, skipped the Sunday session of the circuit assembly and died on her way home from work.  It's thought she went into sudden cardiac arrest and crashed her car.  Many people said if she'd been at the circuit assembly instead, she'd have maybe survived because they had AED devices at the assembly facility and it was only a few blocks from a good hospital instead of having to wait for a Lifeflight helicopter. That was in June 2005. 

Scenic- I was in the congregation of the brother of that Bethelite who was stabbed to death, my brother was in Bethel with him. The Society told the parents not to come to Bethel for the funeral, the mother had a nervous breakdown.

Or the family coming home f rom a convention, stopped at a rest stop and were all but one were murdered by a gang........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillelid_murders

http://www.angelfire.com/tn/finagen/web.html

Or the jw woman who had her baby cut out of her....did she miss too many meetings?  I think not.

• Teresa Andrews lived in Ravenna, Ohio. She was twenty-three years old, pregnant, and shopping when she ran into Michelle Bica. Bica was thirty-nine-year-old and was pretending to be pregnant when she ran into Teresa, and the two exchanged addresses. Then Bica started stalking Teresa. Bica invited the woman to her home, then killed her, extracted the fetus she was carrying, and buried the woman in her garage. The baby survived, and Bica claimed he was her son. When Bica was being investigated by the FBI, she became fearful of punishment for her crime and shot herself.^[13][14]

Bubblegum:

I cannot stand these anecdotal stories.

I remember being out in Sunday field service one Spring or summer.  The brother driving was turning around and talking when he should have been looking straight ahead.  If I hadn't yelled out, he would have gotten into a head-on collision.  So, I guess my being there and being a back-seat driver was a 'blessing".  But, what If I were looking down at my magazines, what then?

I remember an old magazine that told how a kingdom hall was bombed during a meeting.  It was about the recovery of one sister that had serious damage to her face.  And in our area, many years ago, a young boy was killed in a car accident while out in service.  I wish those people had skipped meetings---

NC

Sigh. They make me so sick with their bullshit "should have been at the meeting stories." I personally knew a JW family in Ohio where the little girl was crossing the street with the family when she was struck by a passing speeding car and later died in the ER. Yeah they don't tell that story, the one where the little girl would still have been alive if they had skipped that stupid meeting. When bad things happen to JWs when they are doing "theocratic" activities, then it's just "time and unforeseen occurrence."

How about the dear elderly sister (Frances Coughlin) killed while a passenger of a Bethelite who was taking her to the meeting in bad weather conditions?

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/56838/1/WT-pays-1-55-million-24

Bet the WT wishes she had stayed home that night.  Not only was she killed, but it cost them $1.55 MILLION to settle the lawsuit brought by her family.

(But no one ever hears about those experiences.)

Doc

What about the families that didn't miss meeting but wasted their entire lives delivering Washtowel littertray.

What about the one back in Dec 2009 in Southlake, Texas.  A car carrying four JWs out in field service runs off the road, flips upside down in a pond drowning all four.  You'll never hear JWs admit....."had they only been at work or at home or somewhere else doing something else-they'd still be alive."

I thought that these stories of "urban myths" were perhaps exaggerated or had been originally a semi-joke....but get this :

WT '86 5/1 p14

"On a hot Tuesday afternoon, Ki, who operates a clinic in Taechun, Korea, was invited by three co-workers to spend the afternoon at the beach. Though the idea was tempting, Ki knew that if he went, he would not be back in time to be at the Congregation Book Study that evening. So he declined the invitation. Moments later, the three were brought back to the clinic—dead! They had a fatal traffic accident right after leaving the clinic. Ki grieved over the incident but was glad his life had been spared on account of his sticking to the good habit he had formed over the years.—Hebrews 10:24, 25."