u/Conscious_Ad1199

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I sometimes hesitate to post, because frankly, I feel like a "cancer impostor." I know I'm not, like most of us, the body I'm living in, and the life I am living in it, bear no resemblance to the me of the before times.

But ya'll. I just got the results of my latest set of scans and, for the 5th consecutive time, NED. TWO AND A HALF YEARS!!

I was so sure this was the visit where my oncologist would hold my hand and say, I'm sorry, we knew it would come back and now it has." But no. Some of my smallest bone mets are now indistinguishable from the healthy bone around it.

So now I'm laughing and crying while I smoke a fat joint. I haven't called anyone yet with the news, it seemed more important to tell all of you; people who know this isn't just a "wow that's great" moment.

I read so many heartbreaking posts on this sub, and, like all of us, I feel your pain because I have felt it in myself. And now I am praying that every one of you gets a chance to feel what I am feeling now.

I am holding each one of you in the light.

Disclaimer:  All of the information in this post is second and third hand information.  I know the people I know, but not the people they have spoken to. 

I have said on other posts that I have spent the majority of my life surrounded by fundies.  I attended a mildly fundy church from birth until college. My parents were openly quite liberal, but this was excused because they were rich (out loud, in front of us). Other than a decade in NYC, I have lived the rest of my life in the south, so yeah, fundies everywhere.

I've posted a couple of comments I made on another post, but there are some things about the Rods that is "different" than the majority of other missionaries.

When a person feels "called" as a missionary, they are to approach their pastor and their pastor assesses their character and calling.  If the pastor agrees, the person then attends a Bible College or Seminary (even though most fundies are independent of an association, they are loosely associated with other churches and Bible colleges).  The future missionary attends Bible College; either for a degree in missions, or if they already have a degree, they just take the mission classes.  LBUglobal (Shrek's "college") is bottom of the barrel "distance" learning.

Once the person finishes their "education," their church (typically the church where they received their "call,") becomes their "sending" church and they join whatever missionary agency their church supports.

Missionary agencies handle visas, taxes, a schedule of churches to visit to raise their support (debutation) and ongoing supervision.

Now, here's where it gets interesting with regards to the Rods.  The Rods belong (belonged because read below) to a missionary clearinghouse.  A clearinghouse handles the money only.  The missionary receives their money (tax free) under the clearinghouse's 501b non profit umbrella.  The clearinghouse provides no other services or oversight as they clearly state that the "sending church" assumes that responsibility.  The Rods clearinghouse does have some vague language regarding conduct.

Missionaries who use clearinghouse do so for many reasons.  I took a look at their list of missionaries and of the people I recognized, two are in technically "closed countries," two have divorced previously, and one is a motherfucking idiot.

Here's the thing though. The Rods have no sending church.  The church they list as attending, People's Baptist Church, is not their sending church and did not assume that responsibility when they changed churches. 

The fundraising trips are arranged directly by the Rods and if the church agrees to sponsor them they do so through the clearinghouse.  Again, no oversight.

Interlude for the comments I made on another post, (the new info is below that).

*I have a friend who is a doctor and a medical missionary. She has encountered the Rods a number of times over the past 20 years, (she is a completely different denomination, but the mission world is rather small).

*According to her, at least four other missionaries ( all men) have called CPS about abuse they have witnessed. So if we are writing a narrative it's the same narrative being written by people in their world as well.

*Abuse by Shrek and the monster against the children. Apparently Jill was seen slapping one of the girls (she was told it was "one of the pretty ones," so she thinks Kaylee or Tessa). Then something involving Shrek and a couple of the boys. She said several calls were also made about the baby cages in the RV. She also said when they were all traveling full time in the RV, two different families offered them tents, so the boys could have more sleeping space and they said it "wasn't allowed."

*She said that their arrival at various mission conference type things is considered quite the circus.

*This really is all I know. The only other Jill lore I know is as follows (I just went back and read 15 years of emails):

*My friend, we'll call her Ann, introduced me to the Rodiverse. In 2010, I received a card in the mail. Inside was a picture Ann had taken of the Rods at a mission conference. Hannah was a baby; this was during Jill's "Season of miscarriages."(tm) Written on the back were their names and the words, "I know you love this shit. There's a blog!!!" (There was a short-lived blog before the one they have now. Also a very early Facebook account.  This was even pre-freejinger, they weren't known by anyone.  They were just weird). Ann had taken their picture with an actual camera, had it developed and sent it halfway around the world. That's how much I love this shit.

*Jill enjoys talking to people in bathrooms regardless of what that person is doing in the stall.

*Ann has seen fundy missionary moms literally pull their sons away from the Rod girls.  (New info on this: Ann's friend, very gossipy, said that the Rod girls are a united front (minus Nurie but including the younger ones) in slipping off).

*And in an email written in 2019. Just the words, "That Nurie is a right cunt." No other info on that.

Since making that post I have spoken with Ann and with a high school friend who has been a fundy missionary for almost 50 years and is very highly placed in the fundy missionary world.

The missionary world is spinning wildly with the Rod news.  They ALL know, they are all talking about it, and according to Ann and "John Smith," the Rods have been reported to CPS many, many times, in many, many states by people who not only know them, but witnessed what they reported.  There is a rumor that neither can locate the source source of, that the Rod's RV was stopped and boarded by the police and CPS during Jill's Season of Babycages.(tm)

From what my friends can find, they have been quietly dropped by their clearing house (no more tax free $).

Additionally, we snarkers are correct in that, the Rods grift churches are drying up.  Smaller, more extreme, more isolated churches with an aging/dying population are the only churches they are invited to and often they haven't been invited, they just show up.

Anyway, this is horrifically long, but I think this could be curtains for the smiley face tract (hoisted by the petard of Jill's and Shrek's abuse).