Sherry Jansma

I was raised as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and began pioneering right out of high school.  I married a pioneer, my husband Nils, and soon after our marriage, we were invited to serve at Brooklyn Bethel, where we remained for five years.  After returning to San Diego, we lived through the failed prophecy of 1975 and later read the book Crisis of Conscience.  The Bible left us no choice but to recognize that the Watchtower Society was a false prophet (Deut. 18:20-22), so we left the organization in 1987 and soon began attending a Christian church.

We have experienced the trauma of leaving our friends and family and starting our lives over again in a new and often scary environment.  We also know how it feels to have our entire world view collapse like a house of cards.  Because we have found a way to cope with these changes, we believe we could offer comfort and support to others who are contemplating or just beginning their pilgrimage out of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

We invite you to join us and other former Witnesses at the following place and time.  You will find us to be non-judgmental and empathetic.  See:  Sherry's Blogs --  Nils & Sherry's Testimony

Nils Jansma

I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness and started publishing when I was 4 years old and, until we left, had never been an irregular publisher.  That regularity did not prevent me from developing a “bad attitude” regarding the Organization, which began about as far back as I can remember.  My father was a “Company Servant,” appointed in 1943, or 5 years after I was born, a position he kept through a series of name changes until he was in his late 70ties. 

At that time, Circuit Servants were, according to the in-the-know group’s opinion, referred to as “Circuit Serpents,” which was a testimony to the relationship that the “Companies” (Congregations) had with the Society at that time.  Because I was a “Company Servant’s” brat, I saw firsthand the petty politics that drove what were normally good people to do all sorts of unloving things to preserve the WT-Society’s control over the publishers along with the Circuit Servant’s control over those who supported him with money and gifts.  The only thing that kept my family and me from becoming “apostate,” was that there was nowhere else to go, a sentiment that stayed with me throughout my tenure as a Witness.  I remember telling people at the door that, “If I find out that the Watchtower Society is not telling the truth, I will leave in a heartbeat.” 

Of course, I never thought I would really have to make good on that decision because the idea of not being a Witness was truly a frightening prospect to me at the time.   However, after spending five years at Bethel, I lost all fear of the Society and realized that what I had perceived as being the Organization’s “spiritual giants,” were nothing more that struggling survivors who probably cared more for their Bethel seniority benefits and being politically correct according to the Society or whoever was in charge, than dispensing love among the Congregations.  For that reason and many more, after attending one of “Babylon the Great’s churches," I discovered that the Society had it all wrong, the people were not the hypocrites they had been made out to be, and I had found another place “to go away to,” just as I had promised years earlier.  That was when my wife Sherry, Ariane our 8-year old daughter, and I made a big leap of faith and left Jehovah’s Witnesses, a leap we have never been given any reason to regret.  Therefore, it is our hope and prayer that this Website can assist others in likewise taking such a grand leap which we trust will prove as rewarding for them as it has been for us.