—Maria 8DO 202428/11/84

1. A LOT OF OUR FAMILY DON'T REALISE THAT OUR WS UNITS ARE NOT FILLED WITH NEAR-PERFECT PEOPLE WHO ARE ALL EXCELLENT SAMPLES IN EVERY WAY. They think because they're WS Units & they're in contact with us & they work directly for us that we must have always approved their every move & example. But that's not necessarily so, we don't always have control over their actions & their sample, their daily living & their spirituality. But, however, people whose personal sample may not be the best can often be very faithful at their job & good in their work. If we don't have anybody else to do it, then a lot of times He gives them the anointing for the job whether they're the best samples or not or whether they're exactly where they should be spiritually or not.

2. IF THE LORD DOESN'T HAVE ANYBODY ELSE, HE'LL USE WHAT HE HAS!—Just like He used Jethro, Deborah‚ Rachel, & many others. He used them for quite a long time for quite a lot of things. We had the Chain & they as leaders of it had to be used & they accomplished a lot for the Lord. Regardless of what their sample was, the Lord anointed them to get certain things done & to lead the people, even though it wasn't the best & greatest sample in the World. At the time He didn't have anybody else, He had to use them & He did use them in a lot of ways.

3. IF YOU'RE BACKSLIDDEN OR A BAD SAMPLE, IT DOESN'T NECESSARILY MEAN THAT ALL THE WORK YOU DO WILL BE BAD. Sometimes perhaps it will be‚ but if the Lord knows you're the only one to do it, then He won't let His work fail. Just like with Fred Jordan‚ the Lord used him for quite awhile even though he was pretty backslidden & wasn't the sample he should have been. In spite of that, the Lord told Dad to continue working with him, as David with Saul. Well, Saul had lost the anointing too, but he continued in his job for quite awhile‚ & he accomplished the Lord's will in spite of his lack of spirituality & his backslidden state. So you can't always tell from people's work what their spiritual condition is.—Just like you can't always tell just by observing the physical condition of their Home what their spiritual condition is. The Home can be spotless, beautiful & well-decorated, but often you have to dig a little deeper to find out the real condition of the people.

4. WE CAN'T LIVE RIGHT WITH MOST OF OUR WS PERSONNEL, & MOST OF THEM ARE SCATTERED AROUND THE WORLD WITHOUT ANY IMMEDIATE SUPERVISION, except ours by long-distance mail, so there's no way that we can tell what their actions are unless they choose to tell us, or of course unless the Lord warns us specifically of something or He checks us in some way‚ which of course He does sometimes. But even when He does, dealing with personal problems & sorting out complicated situations by correspondence is very difficult. We can give general guidelines‚ but it often requires physical on-the-spot intervention to ferret out deep-seated problems.

5. SOME OF OUR UNITS ARE SELAH UNITS & THEREFORE CAN'T HAVE LOCAL LEADERSHIP GOING IN & fellowshipping with them or advising them what to do. Most of them, therefore, have to be pretty much on their own without outside fellowship or outside activities or even the local people knowing where they live. They're their own leadership & sometimes they have to remain on their own for years, independent, not having anybody other than the Letters telling them what to do‚ &, as a result, sometimes some of them get a little bit off the track! It's a sacrifice they have made for the Work & the Family & you shouldn't condemn them, but you should pray for them instead. However, it's a rather sad fact of human nature that if you don't have somebody standing right over you making you do the right things, some fleshly personage, then you often don't do them.

6. NO MATTER WHAT THE LORD TELLS YOU OR WHAT THE LETTERS SAY, YOU'RE BOUND TO GET OFF THE TRACK IN SOME WAY IF YOU DON'T HAVE SOME KIND OF DIRECT PHYSICAL OVERSIGHT. I'm sure that's why the Lord always gave His people leaders. Because they obviously weren't capable of just following the Lord on their own, He gave them a prophet or king, some fleshly person to instruct them & advise them & counsel them & command them & make them do it! Although the Lord alone can make you do things, it's a bit more difficult on you if He does. He can send lightning bolts from the sky or He can allow you to get in an accident or something to effectively get His point across, so I suppose it is His mercy to give you a human leader who can maybe be a little easier on you to get you to do things. Most people seem to need some kind of human leadership or they stray after awhile. In spite of everything the Letters say & everything they know they should do‚ if people don't have somebody hanging over them, watching over them & making sure that they keep in line, they often go astray.—Just like some of our top leaders like Faith & Magdalene & Juan, who were so long more or less their own bosses because we weren't able to supervise them closely enough.

7. SAD TO SAY, WE HAVE SOMETIMES HAD SOME SMALL UNITS THAT WERE ON THEIR OWN ALSO FALL INTO THAT CATEGORY. They weren't living in large Combo Units where there were a lot of people checking up on each other, so it was easier for the one person in charge to lead all the others astray, & if there was anyone in the Home that disagreed they were afraid to say anything. We've had several smaller Units get pretty much off the track even to the point where we've had to disband a few of them in the past. So if the Family should come in contact with people that are or have been members of WS Units, they should realise that they're not necessarily our personal representatives or good examples of the way we would do things. In the work they do, yes, they send it in by mail, we check it, we advise them by mail specifically what to do & how to do it, so along the work lines they can't get too much off the track, but in their personal examples & lives & marriages & children, they are pretty much on their own because we just don't have much contact with them that way at such great distance & neither does anyone else. So just because it's a WS Unit doesn't necessarily mean that everything they do is approved & authorised by us & the way we would do it. We would hope that it would be & it should be, but it's just one of those things that's not always going to be.

8. NOW WE DO HAVE QUITE A FEW UNITS THAT OPERATE VERY CLOSE TO THE WAY WE DO THINGS & ARE VERY CLOSE TO US IN SPIRIT, & really try their best & are close to the Lord & living for Him in every way. Some people who have joined WS have gone into these Units & have been thrilled with the sample, as they see that things operate exactly the way they have read in the Letters. But unfortunately not every Unit is such a good sample, so people shouldn't be too shocked if they join a WS Unit or meet some WS personnel that aren't such a good sample, because we just don't have control over all our WS people in that respect & we can't make them do what they're supposed to do, especially when we don't even know what they're up to half the time, if they don't tell us their problems themselves. On the other hand, even if we do have close contact with people it doesn't always ensure that they will be obedient & faithful in all respects, since people always have freedom of choice & can get away with quite a few things in their heart sometimes if they don't choose to obey.

9. THERE HAVE BEEN TIMES WHEN WE HAVE HAD TO DISMISS WS PERSONNEL BECAUSE OF THEIR POOR SAMPLE & FOR CAUSING MAJOR PROBLEMS. We dismissed them & sent them to the field, but the Family didn't always know why they were no longer in WS, & they expected them to be good samples & good representatives of WS. But the reason they may have been sent to the field is because they weren't good samples & we did have to let them go. Just because they have once been in WS doesn't mean that they're necessarily up to the standard that they should be or even as spiritual or obedient or faithful as a lot of our field personnel. They did well at their job, in most cases, but once we found out that their personal lives were a wreck & they had bad problems‚ if they couldn't be persuaded to change‚ we usually had to sacrifice the work to get them back to where they were supposed to be, to let them go out on the field & get the training & supervision that they needed, even if it meant having to train someone new to replace them.

10. OF COURSE NOT EVERY ONE THAT USED TO BE IN WS & IS NOW ON THE FIELD IS THERE BECAUSE OF SERIOUS PERSONAL PROBLEMS; we've had to release some of our personnel for financial reasons, because we were combining Units or doubling up on jobs.—Most of the WS people who are now leaving WS for the field are very valuable people who are leaving because of the Wind-down, because their jobs are done & they can now make an important contribution to the field. So just because you see WS people on the field you shouldn't automatically think that they've been fired because of a bad personal sample or because of problems in their lives. Maybe so, maybe no! I guess when you get to know them you'll know!

11. ACTUALLY EVEN THE ONES THAT WE HAVE HAD TO LET GO FROM WS BECAUSE OF PROBLEMS HAVE MADE REAL STRIDES & gained great victories in their lives & learned to have more faith on the field & more trust in the Lord & gotten a real shake–up in their lives & become better for it. They were faithful in their WS work & now they are faithful on the field. God bless them!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family