| Author | Message | ||
| Chris (Chris) |
Sabra, "Social" you apparently know :-) ......"Free Labor" was what we had to do when we got caught doing something we wern't supposed to do. The most common form of free labor at Sunnydale was digging stumps out by hand. Sometimes kids were sent to the berry patch to work though. I once attended a rock concert, in another state, on a home leave, with my parents' permission and received free labor once the school found out what I had done while at home. I was suspended from class for two days and had to work full days in the oxygen tent factory. The school kept all my pay for those days. My other friends that went with me (and who didn't have factory jobs that made the school money) were shipped off to the denominational camp for a few days to clear brush.......all for something we did while school was out. Chris | ||
| Susan_2 (Susan_2) |
Where is Sunnydale? What is backmasking tape? My best friend was in 11th grade and I was in 12th. She was seen downtown by an old bitty smoking cigerettes. The bitty called the school and my friend was exteremly punished. Her dad told the school it was none of thir business what his kids did while in his care and not at school but he was told that an Adventist is to have excellent behavior at all times so as to be a wittness to The Truth so they maintained their stance on punishing the wayword students while not on school time. Yet, this same year the associate pastors daughter who was also in 11th grade announced to everyone that she was pregnant. A school board meeting was held and it was decided that she was to stay in the SDA academy throughout high school because if she had a child she needed to know the truth now more than ever so she could raise her kid in it. I don't know if she was not ever really pregnant, if she miscarried or if she had an elective abortion (that was the rumor) but she did not have a baby. But, still it didn't seem fair that my friend was suverely punished for cigerette smoking and only blessings went to the girl who thought she was pregnant. Again, this is planet earth, made up of imperfect people and poor judgements will always happen. In that same 11th grade class over half the students have been in state prison. It was just a class gone bad. While at Monterey Bay Academy we had to go to chapel every day in the dorm. There were two sisters that went to the school that year. One of the sisters got very sick and had to leave school. The next thing we knew the other sister had to leave for her sisters funeral. When the sister that was still alive came back to school the dorm mother told her one day to come to the front and tell all the girls what her sister had died from. The poor girl just broke down crying and said she didn't weant to talk about it. The dorm mother was ruthless and the girl got to the front and told us girls that her sister had died from syphillis, that it had caused a brain infection and dispite all the medical interventions the girl couldn't be saved. Then the dorm mother had the girl go back to her seat and we got a lecture of what would happen to us if we had sex before we got married. That really is the meanest thing that I ever personally wittnessed at a sda school and I have always kept that girl in my prayers because I just hope and pray that the unkindness of that dorm mother at what was billed a Christian school did not turn her away from a real Christ centered adulthood. Frankly, for the most part I really had a good time at MBA. It was at the sda day school that I had a bunch of goofs who were the adults in charge of the kids. BTW, how come sda schools are called academies? | ||
| Melissa (Melissa) |
In the circles I've been in, backmasking is where songs are played backwards to 'reveal' a "satanic" message. That message is supposedly unrecognizable to the conscious mind, but the subconscious can be influenced by its message. I don't know that anything has ever been proven or if it's just a bunch of hype. It's kindof like if you take the letters of "santa" and rearrange them, you get "satan". Or 'claus' and you can get 'lucas', which is a form of lucifer. So, Santa Claus makes people like Satan....Or so they say. But I'm really curious...what is 'social'?? | ||
| Dennis (Dennis) |
Susan, The supposed difference is that SDA schools are much better in every way (smile). I came from a public high school. I also had never heard of nor seen a oweije (spelled wrong) board until I attended the Academy. Then I heard about the Daniel 7 game of putting a room key in that chapter of the Bible and asking the devil to do certain things to get even with people at exactly midnight (i.e., automatically, without human assistance, ramming your roller skates into the boy's dean apartment door, etc). This created alot of fear in the dorm around midnight. It was akin to the investigative judgment, one would never know when his name would come up. The local Conference president's son was the chief advocate of that evil game. I told him one day, "The devil is tempting you enough without inviting him." I understand he later became a drug addict and committed suicide. Telling Adventist apologists these wild stories will usually get a response like, "Well, you know, the devil works the hardest in our schools." If the foregoing statement is true, why encourage SDA parents to send their children to an institution where the devil is visibly more active than elsewhere? Dennis J. Fischer | ||
| Terryk (Terryk) |
Welcome Greg can not wiat to hear your story. I hope you will share with us how you got here. Our prayers are with you. | ||
| Loneviking (Loneviking) |
Melissa, 'social' is the punishment you get for 'PDA'--which is 'Public Display of Affection', things like holding hands. You'll have to ask some of the MBA grads about some of the punishments. Susan--when were you at MBA? My wife graduated in '79, and I had a very unhappy summer there in '77. The place was too much like a concentration camp---there was also quite a bit of drug use and dabbling around with Ouija boards and the like. My mom cornered Harvey Voth about all of this and his exact reply was 'if you don't like the school, why don't you go somewhere else?'. I went to a day academy instead and had two of the best years of my life. Yea, they tried to punish us for stuff done after school but every parent told them to stuff it and that when school was out, the school rules ended! | ||
| Sabra (Sabra) |
Chris, I can't belive the school punished you for something you did at home, and a concert? Didn't your parents think that a little unacceptable? I never had free labor or remember that. I went to Pisgah and it sounds like it wasn't as strict as where you went. The ironic thing about it is that there was an SDA school 3 miles from my house in FL and I went 500 miles away and it was fine with everyone. I can't even imagine letting my kids do something like that! Weird. Can we just say "weird"? | ||
| Cindy (Cindy) |
Sabra, yes, weird! I was a "village" student at boarding academy and lived quite near the school. A teacher drove by my house and saw me holding hands with a boy on my front porch; we were both put "on social" for 2 or 3 weeks! In remembering back to this, I'm not sure how this guy was even allowed out of the school area to my house; perhaps it was because my dad was a "conference" official and they thought he would be safe! :-) I remember taking my two (now 28 and 24year old daughter and son) off to "boarding" school 2 hours away. It was very traumatic for me, but I thought there was no other choice. I get sick wishing I could do it over. I'm surprised my daughter still speaks to me! My son did better socially there, but for both of them, to me now..., it is more than weird to do this and miss so much of your children's teenage years. My 3rd, a 15 year old boy, is in (God forbid!) High School. He went last year, now a Sophomore... I tell him each morning I pray the Holy Spirit will be with him everywhere! grace always, cindy | ||
| Chris (Chris) |
In response to a couple of questions and comments: Sunnydale Academy is the boarding academy for the Iowa-Missourri conference. It is located exactly in the middle of nowhere (apparently the favored spot for SDA boarding acedemies). The nearest "town" is about 5-7 miles away called Centralia, MO. The nearest city is Columbia, 45+ min. away. Social has already been explained. In our school I believe you had to stay at least 10 feet away from that person for a certain period of weeks. This was difficult when you were always in the same classrooms and normally always ate with the same group of friends. Backward masking was also a big deal at our school and our Bible teacher played us may samples, most of which took a lot of imagination to hear the "Satanic message". However, this only served to highten our interest at this age and instead of staying away from rock music we instead figured out how to fold over (flip over) the tape inside of our cassettes so we too could listen to Satanic messages. The tales about how to summon the devil at midnight were also prevalent in our dorm. I've heard the one Dennis mentioned as well as a couple of other methods, but never participated. The schools reasoning for punishing me for something that happened when school was out was that the handbook states that you will live by SDA principles at all times and apparently I signed something stating I would comply with handbook. During my Admin Team trial I was told that the same punishment would apply if they found out I had been to a movie theater, even if it was with a parent (for the same reasons). someone asked how my parents felt about this, and all I can tell you is that they weren't very engaged and my homelife was quite a mess at that time. So even with all the bull, I'm still thankful that I had somewhere to go during those years. I probably shouldn't complain so much. I made some very good friends during those years as well.......Too bad most of them think I'm an apostate now :-) | ||
| Susan_2 (Susan_2) |
I went to Monterey Bay Academy the year of 1967-1968. Then I graduated from my country hick school in 1969. I never got into trouble while there. Maybe beause at the ages of 15 and 16 I would still rather have played with my Barbies than get involved with a real live boy. One time though it was a Friday night service in the nain audortium. They were holding communion and the minister said that communion should be from the heart and no one should partake in it who wasn't sincere about it so anyone who didn't want to do communiom could feel free to leave and go to the beach until the service was over. Silly me! I actually thought he ment we could go to the beach unsupervised on a Friday night and have a good time so me and my friend, Rita were the only students that left chapel to go to the beach. No sooner had we got down to the beach than we were acosted by four ministers/teachers who clung to us every second and her and me couldn't even have a private conversation. After that I never believed the staff when we were made an offer that seemed too good to be true. Another time I got called in for smoking and honestly at that time I'd never even tried to smoke. I had a friend who I went off campus with her and her family smoked so I came back smelling icky. I was threatened with expellsion if I didn't tell the truth about smoking so I told the goon squad to go ahead and expell me because it would be on them as I really had not smoked. Finilly they gave up and let me go. I think it was a money thing because the tuition is a lot. Harvey Voth I think was kin to my aunts husband. A long time ago deceased. At a later date I had a cousin-in-law who was on the MBA schoolboard. He was caught in a local porn store/XXX movie theater several times. For some reason he stayed on the school board and he stayed a decon at the local SDA church where him abd his family attended. He died several years ago. My child went to MBA in 1986. He had a totally horrible experence abd he only liked working at the dairy. I told you, we are country hicks and my children grew up around dairies so even at MBA that's where he gravatated to. (the dairy) Fortunatelly he hated it at MBA so much that he only stayed four months and then went back to the same hick high school that I had gone to. What I don't understand though is how come he's now sending my wonderful little five year old granddaughter to a SDA school. Have any of you been up to MBA recently? When I went there they had a student body of 400+ kids. Now it's around 200 and many are non-sda Asian immagrants whose families send them over to get an American education and to learn English. There's basically no traditional sda rules at all. The kids blast their rock and rap music from their stereo's real loud, they skateboard all over campus, etc. In my opinion it's gotten too leinyent. There were some wonderful people there. There were some crumbballs. Most were inbetween those extremes and this is true everywhere. The really annoying thing is when my mother found out that I'd actually joined a Lutheran church and I am very involved wth the goings on over at theLutheran church that I attend she ade a point of telling me it cost her and Daddy a lot of money to send me to Adventist schools so I'm obligated to be an Adventist because of their investmnent. I try to be respectful to my mother as she is in her 80's now but that was too much for me and I just came home. Now the subject is not ever mentioned that I attend the Lutheran church and she is very dependent on me for transportation so I take her to curch every Saturday and, oh, never mind, you have all gone through the same cultic thinking and behaviors with your loved ones. I'm weary of the entire sda mindset, their way of thinking. As someone said above, it's weird. | ||
| Dennis (Dennis) |
Sabra, I was one of the traffic directors at the Carolina Conference Campmeeting (early 1970s) held each year at Mount Pisgah Academy. Wow, I really worked hard to help get the place ready for Campmeeting. I remember handling those heavy wooden floors that went into every family tent. When Campmeeting actually started, all the Conference personnel were supposed to leave the dormitories and live in a tent for the duration of the encampment. They correctly felt that this would look better to the laymen. Fortunately, my wife was usually pregnant in those days, so we got to stay in the dormitory anyway. During the Campmeeting time, all ministers were required to wear suits and always keep their coats on despite the hot weather. This strict policy created alot of needless drycleaning bills (smile). In the publishing department, we went a step further with our wearing matching sport jackets. As one of the Campmeeting traffic directors, I never ceased to be amazed at the poor health of Adventists (smile). It seemed that every other car had an invalid passenger that needed to be delivered to the front door of the auditorium. After getting our okay to unload "unhealthy" passengers, they would usually park near the auditorium anyway--creating a serious traffic congestion problem. Oh yes, one more thing, I wish I had the money in my pocket now that I donated to Mount Pisgah Academy. Well, anyway, the Conference President wrote me a special letter to thank me for my generosity. Actually, as a Conference worker, I was pressured into giving at a fundraising dinner. They took special note of what every worker gave. Politically, I wanted the publishing department to be well represented and visibly supportive. A former Pharisee, Dennis J. Fischer | ||
| Colleentinker (Colleentinker) |
Dennis, your campmeeting memories are making me laugh. The invalid faithful who need the special help--it's all so ironic and would be downright funny if it weren't so pathetic. I've pondered that phenomenon many times; the people I know who are the most faithful to the "blueprint" diet (although lands knows EGW vacillated a lot on establishing what the "blueprint diet" really was) are the people who often have the most sensitive systems. They tend to have chronic bad health or fragile health, and conditions including auto-immune diseases and circulatory problems, etc, run rampant in many of their lives. But these same people literally scoff at the idea of venturing beyond their limited, natural, whole-grain, vegan intake and have pretty strong judgments about those who do. The dietary faithful do not always have health that recommends their diets to others--at least not to me! Colleen | ||
| Colleentinker (Colleentinker) |
By the way, Welcome, Greg! We're really happy that you've joined us. I just read many of the archived discussions on this thread from the past week, and I have to say that I'm really glad we are finally able to share our memories of experiencing the hidden side of Adventism. I've been convinced for a long time that the deception at the core of Adventism ferments more than just unbibilical doctrines. SO MANY prominent SDAs have hidden lives, and SO MANY SDA young people have had their lives damaged by the damaged adults who've hidden their vices and perpetrated acts of aggression or manipulation or abuse or neglect on the youth under their authority. That includes parents, teachers, and clergy. After teaching five years at a boarding academy, I remember thinking (in my still very Adventist and naive, twenty-something mind) that in order to last long-term at a boarding academy as a faculty member, a person had to have something a little "off" in his or her personality. I also remember one of my students asking me to give her a ride to the county health office one day because she thought she might have some sort of "disease". She told me years later that she was pregnant. I realize that I probably missed a lot of cues in those days (no doubt the result of an enormous case of denial in my own life), but I knew that things were terribly wrong under the surface. Praise God for revealing what is hidden in darkness and for the healing light of truth! Colleen | ||
| Terryk (Terryk) |
I still am amazed that no matter where we came from we can all share such similar experiences. How is that possible? I remember the same campmeeting here in Chesapeake Conference. Here is a story I used to have a very young looking and active older like in her 70's just fit as could be well her cousin was much younger then her and was SDA health message you know the drill. Well that woman was so heavy she had to have a scooter and was in very poor health. What an example she was for her cousin who she wanted to join the truth. Well thats all folks. | ||
| Melissa (Melissa) |
I love these stories, they reveal such a side you can't read in books. Can I ask what the purpose of the "campmeeting" is? In a small town south of Kansas City, the area where I live, there was a sign that said something about a campmeeting, but nothing else (no name of who was sponsoring). That sounded a little SDA to me, but wasn't sure if the campmeetings had the same objective as the revelation seminars. Thanks for sharing your stories. I know B has not said much about his time except that it was better than living at home. | ||
| Colleentinker (Colleentinker) |
Campmeeting is primarily for the faithful, not the non-member. Campmeetings began in the early days of the church, and they used to be common among many denominations about the time Adventism started. When I was a kid, Campmeeting began on a Friday night and ran until Saturday night of the following weekend. The truly devout got tents or cabins and spent the week at the camp ground. (In some conferences, the "campground" was the conference boarding academy grounds, as Dennis mentioned. In others, such as the Oregon Conference, the church owned or long-term leased a huge campground which they used every year.) The week featured various guest speakers--usually big names; I remember hearing HMS Richards, SR, one summer in the mid-70's--and programs for the kids as well. There were a Book and Bible house, a cafeteria, a vegeburger/ice cream stand, etc. Crowds swelled hugely on the weekend when those who couldn't leave their jobs during the week came and participated on Friday night and Sabbath. Camp meeting was THE social event of the Adventist year--probably something like Passover in Jerusalem. You saw everyone, including those you rarely otherwise saw. The point was to inspire the members, to renew a sense of loyalty, and to renew the sense of needing to be ready for the second coming. The most tangible benefits usually were the social connections one made. Underlying everything, at least for the teens and young adults, was the ever-present Adventist wish/agenda that one might stumble upon a love connection--or at least the hope or promise of one. Amazingly, while there were times of acute guilt and conviction during the calls at the ends of the weekend meetings (I can't remember how many campmeetings I "went forward" because I feared my last commitment might not be enough), I don't remember any times of trulyt being aware of or experiencing the presence of the Holy Spirit at those meetings. I am so grateful that Jesus calls us to himself! Colleen | ||
| Chris (Chris) |
These were big events! I remember seeing HMS Richards Sr. as well. However, I was much more excited about seeing the King's Heralds and Del Delker. We had many LPs of both these artists and later on 8 tracks....... Isnít reminiscing fun? :-) | ||
| Sabra (Sabra) |
Dennis, Sounds like a lot of fun sweating in the heat getting campmeeting ready. My first campmeeting we took my fish "Cindy" I had gotten her at the fair 3 years earlier and she was my only pet.......she boiled in her bowl because it was like 100' in the FL tent we were in. I was SO sad. Some little old lady in the next tent helped me bury her. I still remember the bathroom down the road and the veggie food and the classes and those fans that they passed out at the door. Well the kids had field trips and swimming so it wasn't so bad. But poor Cindy! | ||
| Colleentinker (Colleentinker) |
Sabra--that's sad!! Chris--I remember the scandal of having the Wedgwood Trio at the youth tent. They were endorsed by the Kings' Heralds, I believe, but the parents were none-to-happy at the new low standard in Adventist sacred music! How funny--now that they've done their reunion tours (early-mid 90's), I realize how folksy they really were. Wow, all their instruments were acoustic! There wasn't an amplifier among them! (At least, I don't remember one from back then.) Colleen | ||
| Terryk (Terryk) |
Once again the stories are the same names different. We live on East coast and it was the same. It was not for the weadk of heart it was the true blue SDA that went for the whole ten days. I took both the kids from babies on up by myself in a tent what a woman I was. I have to say when I was there I did enjoy it. We saw friends from all over who only saw you then. It is just so funny we had the same ice cream shop and veggie bugers. The grand book sale with the nasty people trying to kill you for a stupid book. Oh well Talk to you all later. |
