HomeARC ML 0311A
"LOVEST THOU ME?" --MO's Worldwide Family Letter No.4--MO July, 1974 NO.311A--DFO
Copyright © July 1974 by The Children of God
P.O. Box 31, London WC2E 7LX, England or GPO Box 3141, San Juan Puerto Rico 00936
1. Dear Family: Greetings in Jesus' dear name! Thank you again for all your good reports, letters, notes, etc. Thank you for so faithfully caring for our needs as well as your many other duties. So glad you like "Que Sera' Sera'!" So, hurrah, hurrah! Thanks to the Lord! It's all His Word! (Thank God Maria's typing again!)
2. WE'VE SENT YOU SOME NEW LETTERS LATELY: These include three of Mom's: "The Sex Revolution", "In the Beginning--Sex!" and "Learning a Language"; plus three of mine, including: "Love Poems", "Sex Works" and "Love Light"--also "Royal Family Letter No.1," which we edited slightly for DFO publication. With "Beauty and the Beasts," which you should be receiving in a day or two, this will make eight letters which are now in the works and soon in your hands. Is that computer monster chewing them up and failing to spew them out again? I'll take our dear MO-Letter typist any day in preference to that computer!--In fact, she'd probably be a lot more fun! I prefer injecting girls to computers! Once she's been injected we get to see the baby and we know where it's at! God knows what this computer has done with all those letters it's gobbled up! Maybe it'll turn out to be the god Moloch who devoured all the babies! Give me back my typists!
3. WHICH REMINDS ME, GIRLS--THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT CUTE LITTLE FATHER'S DAY CARD you sent me! Yessirreee! That's the kind of Daddy I am! Your Sugar Daddy, and you're my babies!--And how I love you! Thanks for the card and gifts all the rest of you sent too! GBY! Which also reminds me, how come you let 'em steal away my secretaries from our MO-Letter Department? You tell the dear RF to find their own secretaries and quit stealing mine! You get those gals back in my Department now and let the RF find somebody else! If you wanna survive in this outfit, you gotta learn how to fight for your own, or some of these other guys will jerk the rug right out from under you, the covers off your bed and the coat off your back, particularly the Royal Family members, if you don't watch out!
4. SO WHENEVER YOU SEE A MEMBER OF THE ROYAL FAMILY COMING, BE SURE YOU LOCK ALL THE DOORS AND NAIL EVERYTHING DOWN, INCLUDING YOUR SHOES TO THE FLOOR! Most of them really believe in sharing--what's yours! Hang onto your briefcases and toothbrushes, too! I've had 'em walk out with my tape recorders, radios, clocks, toothbrushes, pictures, books, the socks off my feet and the pants off my bottom!--And they'd a taken my shirts, too, if they'd a fit 'em!--In fact, anything that's not under actual lock and key, and they've even broken into a few of those! With them there's nothing sacred, so watch out for your gold teeth and your glass eye!
5. THEY REALLY BELIEVE IN FORSAKING ALL-OF YOURS FOR YOU!--ESPECIALLY YOUR WORKERS! They are adept labour pirates: They stole you from the System and now they're even trying to steal you from me! So, as the old song says (you can get one of them to sing it for you, as it used to be their theme song and they still practice it!):
"When you see me comin',
Shut your windows and bar the door
And nail your shoes to the kitchen floor!"
A word of warning to the wise should be sufficient!
6. I LOVE THAT LITTLE CARD, GIRLS, and I have it sitting on my desk where I can kiss your dear little bare [ALERT! CHECK FOR SANITIZATION: bottoms ] and pray for you every day! It also inspires me to frequently inspire our dear little Maria, the first in line! I love you!--Why don't more of you send me pictures like that? A few have--why not you--I'll love and kiss it daily!--Thanks!
7. YOU'D BETTER HANG ONTO OUR ARTISTS, TOO, or you're gonna find some member of the Royal Family has carted them off to Timbuktu to do their own letters! Our London artists shouldn't have to do anything else but the Letters I authorise with the illustrations I authorise, and there are gonna be plenty of 'em from now on, including adding more illustrations even to the old Letters in their spare time, if they have any which they shouldn't!--At least not for anybody else's work! God bless you, Boys! You're doing a great job! Keep up the good work! You're doing a great work and you can't come down!--Read our Letter on Nehemiah's wall-building! I love all you Artists around the world! Your pics are great! Keep it up!
8. EACH OF YOUR PICTURES IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS-and that's just about how many we want: one for every thousand words!--At least one every page or two, so you can't open a MO Letter anywhere without seeing an illustration to liven up the copy and give 'em the message loud and clear! Amen? Period! Don't let anybody sidetrack you on anything else! Stick to your guns--those Colt-45 illustrations pack a powerful wallop that knocks 'em for a loop and they can't help but get the point! Keep at it! Keep shootin'!--And don't let anybody else grab your guns!--They're mine! God bless you, Boys! We really love you and appreciate you!--And so does your public! You're famous! You gotta million readers a week!
9. WHICH REMINDS ME, AS I'VE BEEN SAYING FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS, THAT LITTLE KIDS' MAGAZINE COULD BE ONE OF OUR BIGGEST HITS, and it already is! I see it's been No. 1 on our top ten! Which shows what it can do, especially with New bottles! So please stick to it and don't let anyone else distract you! It could be a full-time job for you just working on that alone if you do it right and give it all you've got! You oughtta come out with it at least once every quarter as a real good quarterly production, and it's so good, each edition should be able to sell for that long until it's pretty well sold out before each new one comes out.
10. I'VE BEEN AGITATING FOR SUCH A COMIC BOOK, AS YOU WELL KNOW, EVER SINCE I SAW SOME OF YOUR FIRST HANDIWORK AT TSC! We must have gotten slightly distracted somehow, didn't we? Now that at last we're rollin', let's keep it goin'! Don't let anybody stop you! I think it could be one of our biggest publication hits, a real best-seller, and best of all, a real pitcher for filling New Bottles! Hallelujah! Are you with me, kids? Sock it to 'em! That little mag can go further than your music ever did!--And your music used to be so loud they could hear you in Mingus! Belt it out, Man!--But now with that little mag, the {\b \i PKM}! God bless you! It's terrific!
11. I BELIEVE WE SHOULD GET ALL THESE LETTERS TOGETHER IN A BOOK, OR MAYBE SEVERAL BOOKS on different subjects, and they're gonna be some of the hottest things going! This was our original idea in getting them all into print in this form so we could eventually combine them into books. The Letters we now have could be bound into books much easier and cheaper than your idea of putting them into notebooks, which would be very expensive as we already know, as that's the way most of us keep our own, and these plastic page notebooks are more expensive than an ordinary paperback--even without the Letters!
12. YOU'RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK, AND WE CERTAINLY NEED TO GET THE LETTERS NOW INTO BOOK FORM, now that we have nearly all of them in print, because, as several of you kids have written me recently, it's awfully hard to keep track of them when they're all lying around loose or even in loose leaf notebooks. It would be much cheaper for us to reprint them all in paperback form. For what you were going to pay for notebooks, plus what some are talking about paying for completely redoing all the Letters by computer, we could print 50,000 brand new paperbacks, enough for all our kids and friends and readers, plus a good start on the general public!
13. WE'VE ALREADY GOT THE LETTERS IN PRINT, illustrated, titled and all, and all virtually in the same form with the same size pages, and it wouldn't take much to put 'em together into books, even if we had to do it ourselves like the LT Books. At least we could bind up a few samples this way, like we did for the book fair, or like the LT Books. Why don't you get one together and then see what we can do in the way of a price from the System for our first 50,000 or 100,000 Even 10,000 would do for a start for our own kids and friends and our own use. We sure need 'em--now! That was our original idea in getting the Letters printed up in this form.--Why not go through with it?
14. NOW WE HAVE ENOUGH OF THEM READY TO START PUTTING THEM INTO BOOKS! Let me see your first sample mock-up by the end of this month, please. God bless you! Yes, a book of Letters is a great idea!--We've been working on it for two years! Thanks!
15. AND DEAR EDS, THAT NEW {\b \i NNN} MAG AND THE NEW {\b \i NNN} NEWSLETTER ARE SMASH HITS with our kids I'm sure! We love it and read the whole thing the minute we get it!--We just can't stop! It's so fascinating what our kids are doing around the world! It should make a good impression on the System, too, to see how big and active and widespread we are and what a great work we're doing throughout the whole world! It's fantastic! Keep it rollin'!--weekly! Amen?
16. SPEAKING OF PRODUCTIONS, I'M REALLY KEEN ON THIS IDEA OF PRODUCING ALL KINDS OF LITTLE ITEMS FOR THE KIDS, like some are interested in and some of you are capable of designing and probably capable of producing at some factory: Like yokes, buttons, rings, seals, insignias, paper weights, scrolls, tee-shirts, records and all kinds of plaques with inscriptions, MO quotes, pictures, posters and a thousand other things that kids like to clutter up their rooms with and wear, and we might as well make them things that have a message and meaning and inspiration and that will be a testimony and witness to their family and friends! I wish you would get together on this project and discuss these products which we should have been producing yesterday, when it's already tomorrow, but, thank God, not yet too late, I hope!
17. I BELIEVE THESE COULD BE ONE OF OUR BIGGEST FIELDS OF WITNESSING AS WELL AS A GOOD SOURCE OF NEEDED INCOME IF WE'LL HURRY UP AND GET IT GOING now, tee-shirts and all! They could still be Wild Wind Productions along with the records--And whatever happened to that idea we had about printing our music on those paper-thin plastic discs for selling to the kids on the streets for only a few pence? We had the info--where'd it go? We're always having great ideas but so seldom seem to be able to get 'em going.--What's the holdup? Is it again going to be too little and too late?--Or are we going to meet this great need now? Get with it! I hope we don't let somebody else steal our crown on these, like we did our music!--Will we?
18. THANK YOU FOR YOUR LATEST REPORTS, YOU'RE DOING A GREAT JOB, and I agree with most of what you write. Thanks for the regular gifts which some of you're sending us! That's a real missionary gift! This should be a continuing item from all of you! We need it here both for the coming expenses and, possible emergencies and other necessities, as well as to prove our financial responsibility to this government in order to stay here beyond the normal tourist visa period--what little we have left after paying our expenses of getting here and our first expenses while here!--OK?--Thanks! GBY for your love gifts! They really help!
19. JUST PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO REMEMBER THAT NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE IF IT HAD NOT BEEN FOR MY LABOURS AND MARIA'S, SO MAYBE YOU'D BETTER JUST COUNT 'EM AS GIFTS TO YOUR ROVING MISSIONARIES--US! You spent more on one team in one month in a frustrated attempt to kick open a closed door than all of the funds that I have put together, so why don't we just chalk it up as beneficial benefactions to something far more worthwhile?!--Amen? Thanks!
20. SINCE EACH OF OUR COLONIES ARE FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT, WHY SHOULD LONDON HAVE TO RENDER A FINANCIAL STATEMENT for them to any auditors of Commissions or anyone?
21. AND THAT N.Y. D.A. HAS NO RIGHT TO DEMAND ANY RECORDS from any Colony anywhere outside his own State of N.Y. unless he has a Federal Warrant for them from a Federal Judge!--Don't let him bluff you, Kids! His personal or even official letters don't mean a damn thing outside the State of New York! Nor even inside without a Warrant from a State Judge!--So you don't even have to answer him unless he gets a warrant and sends the FBI or shows a valid warrant!--He's a bitter enemy just trying to cause trouble! [ALERT! CHECK FOR SANITIZATION: "
"]
22. AND I ALREADY TOLD YOU I THOUGHT THE MUSIC KINGS WERE ROOKING US out of our just desserts! I'd also like to know how a promotion agency can promote us any better than we can ourselves, especially when we have our own little agents everywhere? I wouldn't exactly call the Birmingham show a success with only 300 paid seats, especially with a star like Jeremy!--I think you rushed that one! What was the big hurry?--It sounds more like a flop to us!--There shoulda been 3,000!--But glad Jeremy's happy, and agree he has a future!
23. ABOUT THE PROBLEM CASES: WHY DO YOU ALWAYS BRING THE HAS-BEENS AND THE PROBLEM CASES AND REWARD THEM FOR THEIR FAILURES BY PROMOTING THEM TO GHQ where they can jeopardise the very Head itself with dead and contrary spirits, murmurings and discord? You guys are always doing this and wasting so much time trying to rehabilitate some of these cases by bringing them, of all places, to GHQ, when they should be sent out further into the field to renew their vision for the lost and to give them something to cry about!--I don't believe in rewarding failures with promotions!
24. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE FRONT LINE? THEY WERE PIONEERS-WHY NOT LET THEM PIONEER AGAIN? They were doing great for awhile-what happened? Maybe they just stayed there too long and lost interest, or their supervisors seemed to be disinterested in them or their field! Poor kids, I feel sorry for them! They've got a lot of talent and have been very faithful and I'd like to see them well used somewhere but I don't believe the place is GHQ!
25. I'VE BEEN PLEADING FOR TWO YEARS FOR SOME MEMBER OF THE ROYAL FAMILY TO TAKE AN INTEREST IN AMSTERDAM, one of our greatest and most productive pioneer fields, which should really be swinging this Summer and packed with kids from all over the world as always! We've already got too many cooks spoiling the broth in Paris, so why don't we send a few of 'em to Amsterdam to pioneer its new disco and recoup the work there and reap a bountiful harvest of its youth? And get the other RFs out of poor Deb's hair and give her one last chance to salvage those poor Paris kings, if possible!--If we haven't already lost them, which we always do, of course!
26. I WAS HOPING THERE WAS SOME WAY WE COULD GET OUT OF THAT FIRST TOUR without ourselves being to blame for breaking the contract, for I was afraid it was going to be a flop, like your Birmingham rally, because that kind of road show business is a real grind and requires a lot of preparation and lots of hard work and tremendous advertising and lots of time and lots of personal sacrifice, which I don't think either the kings or the kids were quite ready for! I oughtta know!--I used to be in that kind of work, you know, and it's not easy!--Long trips to nowhere!
27. I THINK THAT MUSIC KING WAS SMART: WHEN HE SAW THE TOUR MIGHT BE A FAILURE, HE DECIDED TO QUIT while he was ahead, and he saved us the trouble of breaking the contract ourselves! That tour could have nearly killed the kids, if not the kings! They probably would have lost more on it than they gained! Worldly artists love the glamour of those personal appearances, and it feeds their gloating egos to view their worshippers and hear their praises, but we don't need it! All we need is the publicity!
28. I BELIEVE WE'VE GOTTEN MORE AND BETTER PUBLICITY OUT OF THE TV SHOW AND OUR HIT SINGLE ON RADIO than we would have ever gained from that road tour! I was only afraid we were going to have to go through with it, having given our word and signed contracts and "vowed vows to our own hurt"! Thank God He's delivered us from it! I believe it would have cost far more than it would have made or was worth! Thank God for delivering us! Of course, this may be the end of our kings there, especially if they refuse to work with us or our GHQ and our Business Manager!
29. AS WITH ALL KINGS, WE EVENTUALLY REACH THE END OF THE ROAD WITH THEM SOONER OR LATER WHEN THEY FIND OUT WHO'S REALLY BOSS AND THAT THEY CAN'T STEAL THE KIDS FROM US! So it's not a matter of how far we can go with them--it's how far are they willing to go with us, because it's us that God's blessing and promoting, not just them! He blesses their kingdoms for our sake! But when they refuse to go any further with us or go along with God and His way, they always run into trouble and lose both us and the blessing.
30. SO WE'RE GOING RIGHT AHEAD, IF WE HAVE TO ROLL ON OVER THEM, and we will, because God is with us and not with them, unless they're with us also! So we may have already gotten all the publicity we need out of that association in order to crack the door to showbiz. We've cracked the house and squatted the country, and original managers or introducers or the original occupants may just have to split for all we care, if they no longer care about us, as their treatment has sometimes proven!
31. I STILL BELIEVE YOU SHOULD SEND OUR LAWYER TO HAVE A CHAT WITH THEM ABOUT WHERE THE RECORD MONEY WENT!--They certainly haven't been spending much on us, even on our expenses, much less our royalties! You may have to even threaten to take them to court to collect in order to get them to pay up or at least cough up some of it!--Maybe just a little scare is all they need. I'd even be willing to let them keep what they've got if they'd return our copyrights without any further trouble or court cases, but I think it'll take a lawyer to dicker with them, since they won't pay any attention to us. See what your lawyer has to say about this and follow his counsel if you feel so led. Sometimes you gotta "defend the faith!"
32. IF THEY'VE ALREADY GOT THOSE POSTERS FOR THE TOUR PRINTED, USE 'EM TO PROMOTE A DISCO IN TOWN, which would do you more good than the tour! [ALERT! CHECK FOR SANITIZATION: "
"] Thanks for you good logs and for your reports! Keep it up! And Happy Birthday everybody! God bless you!
Love, Dad
P.S.: Glad your last tour was a big success!
July 29, 1974
Dear Family: Greetings in Jesus' Precious Name!
33. THANK YOU AGAIN FOR ALL YOUR GOOD REPORTS AND EVEN THE BAD ONES! Some of you have certainly been the most faithful in reporting and are doing a tremendous job and we really thank God for you! I'm sorry I hurt your feelings by what I said about the computer, but even in your own very carefully prepared and documented paper-power defense of your case, I could only find one statement in all previous reports which gave the slightest hint you were planning to re-do all the MO Letters, both past and present, on the computer!
34. HOWEVER, IF THE COUNCIL STILL THINK THIS IS BEST--AND IT SOUNDS LIKE IT IS FOR THE SAKE OF FUTURE PRODUCTIONS--YOU ARE CERTAINLY WELCOME TO GO AHEAD with it if you want to and we'll see what happens--as long as it does not delay current productions of current Letters as it did that first time. They tell me the new ones are taking no longer now than usual, so that's good, as the project seems to be getting in the groove, and we rejoice with you that the Lord is blessing along this line.
35. THIS CERTAINLY SEEMS TO HAVE HELPED THE STATISTIC REPORTING AND THE MAILING LISTS, and I really enjoyed going over in detail the new statistical readouts, which I'd like to analyse for you a bit and possibly make some suggestions for a better graphic interpretation of these comparative figures which would be more helpful to those of us who need to be able to get the whole picture at a glance and not have to dig it out with pick and shovel! Perhaps the following will help you see what I mean.
36. IT'S INTERESTING TO NOTE that these latest statistical computer sheets show that 4/5 of our population are now outside North America! That's what I call a real missionary movement! Most American churches have 97 percent of their population still in the States and only 3 percent on the field! We have only 20 percent still in North America, and doing a good job, too, while a phenomenal 80 percent of us are now in so-called foreign fields!
37. IT WAS ALSO INTERESTING TO NOTE THAT ABOUT 10 PERCENT OF US ARE CHILDREN, and this is one classification in which the number of girls at last nearly equals the number of boys, whereas in our adult population we run about two men for every woman!--The girls should be having quite a ball! That almost makes philandry necessary!--Every girl with two husbands!--Ha! Gotta keep those boys happy, Girls!--You oughtta marry at least one of them!
38. I ALSO SEE WE CAN STILL SAY WE HAVE "HUNDREDS OF COLONIES AND THOUSANDS OF DISCIPLES AROUND THE WORLD, as we do manage to squeeze into both those categories! But since 714 of us are married, and some for several years, but we still average only about one child per couple, I think some of you couples better get a little bit busier and obey the First Commandment (Gen.1:28) to be "fruitful and multiply"!--Amen? However, since we have almost the same number of single women as we have children, it makes it kinda nice for the mothers who need baby-sitters!
39 BUT WHEN I SEE THAT 3/5 OF US ARE CLASSIFIED AS LEADERS--OR NEARLY 4/5 OF US INCLUDING LTs, WITH THE LAST FIFTH OF US HALF CHILDREN AND ONLY HALF NEW DISCIPLES OR BABES, I'M WONDERING WHERE ALL THE NEW DISCIPLES HAVE GONE! It looks like we've put so much emphasis on leadership, we've almost become top heavy with it, so that we're nearly all chiefs with very few Indians!--Where are the Babes? We have oodles of reported potentials, but very few of them ever seem to make it in!--Or are you just tried of taking them in because they're so much trouble, like parents who tire of having children?
40. WHY DON'T WE INCLUDE THE "MEDIA WITNESS" IN WITH THE "TOTAL WITNESSED"?--Wouldn't this be little more logical and accurate and vastly improve our TOTAL WITNESS figures? What we're trying to drive at here is how many people are we actually reaching with our witness each week, whether it be mass, personal or media--we want to know the total of all three!--Why should the media total be divided from the grand total of our total witness? I want to see that Media Witness included in our total Witness, which it should be, and I want our Total Witness reported this way in the NNN each week--Amen!--Thanks!
41. CONGRATULATIONS TO NORTH AMERICA!--I NOTICE BY OUR COMPUTER THAT OF OUR USUAL APPROXIMATELY ONE MILLION PIECES OF LITERATURE DISTRIBUTED WORLDWIDE EACH WEEK, NORTH AMERICA GETS CREDIT FOR NEARLY HALF OF IT! Even though they still only contain a fifth of our population! God bless 'em! This means they are carrying four times their weight of the distribution compared to the rest of us! Of course, North America is richer and people on the street are better able to pay, but could this account for all of this phenomenal record of our North American comrades in distribution? They must really be getting desperate to get out the Word there before it's too late! God bless 'em!
42. HOWEVER, FROM WHAT I HAVE HEARD OF THEIR COMPARATIVELY SMALL DONATIONS TO THE CENTRAL OFFICE IN LONDON, NORTH AMERICA NEEDS TO SHARE A LITTLE MORE of its phenomenal income with the rest of the world, including our Central Office which carries such a heavy burden of the expense of worldwide administration, communication and original publications! Come on, North America!--You're sharing the know how about sharing the dough! I think this idea of only 25 cents from each North American disciple for each new Letter is ridiculous!--They're priceless!--Ha!
43. WE SHOULD DO AS THE JEWS, THE MORMONS, SEVENTH DAY ADVENTISTS AND MANY OTHERS AND ASK YOU FOR A TITHE OF AT LEAST TEN-PERCENT OF YOUR TOTAL TAKE, besides your gifts and offerings! How's that for a shocker! But I don't think it's too much, because this is the way some of these organisations, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, have made such phenomenal progress with their publications and world-wide growth: Every individual church or chapter is expected to tithe 10-percent of its total income to their national or international headquarters to further the spreading of their "gospels" on other fronts and in other lands with more missionaries and more literature.
44. I'M NOT ASKING FOR MYSELF, OR I WOULDN'T ASK IT, AS WE PERSONALLY RECEIVE AN INFINITESIMAL FRACTION ONLY FOR OUR LIVING EXPENSES, a month of which a mere dozen of your babes could earn in one afternoon! But I'm asking for the overall work of God and its welfare and its desperately needed progress. I'm asking for the needs of others, those who labour so hard for you in administration, communications and publications, as well as financing new missionary projects, "the elders who rule well and are worthy of double honour," those hard workers of the Central Office and their multitudinous projects.
45. WE ARE ENTERING NEW FIELDS AND STARTING NEW PROJECTS AS WELL AS PUBLISHING NEW LETTERS NEARLY EVERY DAY, AND WE NEED YOUR HELP! How about it, North America?--You're carrying four times the load of distribution but the rest of the much poorer world is carrying four times as much of the load of financial support of the Central Offices as you are!--Is this fair?--NO! The rest of the world even averages higher donations per Letter than you! Come on!--Get with it!--Amen?
46. YOU REALLY SHOULD DO MORE THAN YOU'RE DOING TO SUPPORT THE CENTRAL OFFICE AND ITS LABOURERS, INCLUDING ME AND MARIA, and we really need your help!--How about it?--Thanks! We knew you would! You just needed to know, and so we're telling you! Let's hear from you soon!--OK?--God bless you!
47. OUR COLONIES SEEM TO BE AVERAGING OUT AT ABOUT A NICE SCRIPTURAL DOZEN EACH, as we suggested so long ago, and are working much more effectively this way, witnessing to an average of about 30,000 per Colony each week and distributing an average of nearly 5,000 pieces of lit each week.
48. COMMENDABLE COLONIES OR AREAS WHICH ARE DOING BETTER THAN THIS WORLD AVERAGE are the Eastern U.S. and Canada who are running around 12,000 and North America in general, which is running over 7,000 pieces of lit per Colony per week--if I'm reading these figures right.
49. THE WORLD ADULT AVERAGE SEEMS TO BE ABOUT 500 PIECES OF LIT PER PERSON PER WEEK, WHICH ISN'T VERY HIGH, so some of you must really be falling down on the job! But it's certainly not Spain and Portugal nor Eastern U.S. and Canada, both of which areas are distributing more than double the world average per capita, and Far East Asia is coming in a close third with nearly double the world average per person! North and South America are both running neck and neck at 50 percent above the world average per person! These are real mission fields and real missionaries, and you can tell they must really be inspired!
50. BUT SOME OF YOU ARE FAR BELOW THE WORLD AVERAGE of copies distributed per person per week, if these statistics are correct! Even some of our newest fields are doing much better than some of the old established ones, Are you an old bottle sitting on your butt, or are you a new one out necking with the new wine?
51. WE'VE ALSO GOTTA GIVE CREDIT TO THE EASTERN U.S. AND CANADA AND MEXICO FOR THE HIGHEST RATE OF CONVERTS per person per week, with our Associates running a close third but most of the rest of you are way down the line of this score! Get it on, Kids!--This Body can't survive without a weekly transfusion of new blood from new bottles! When did you have your latest bottle?
52. OUR TOTAL WORLD INCOME OF ALL COLONIES FROM LITERATURE SALES ALONE IS RUNNING ABOUT ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS A WEEK, NEARLY HALF A MILLION A MONTH! That's about six million a year, Brother! And I'd call that big business! And why not?--It's God's business and it oughtta be a big business! Amen? Hallelujah! I suppose you know of course, that all this money does not go to London nor to me!--In fact, a very, very small fraction of it--not even enough!--ever finally reaches London for more lit.
53. MOST OF IT GOES RIGHT BACK INTO YOUR OWN COLONIES FOR YOUR OWN EXPENSES AND MORE PRINTING OR MORE LIT FOR MORE SALES! However, God did bless Europe with the highest total income, with North America running a close second, of which Northern Europe scored highest along with Eastern U.S. and Canada, and the Southern U.S. running a close third.
54. MOST OF YOU SEEM TO BE SPENDING ABOUT 2/5 OF THIS INCOME ON THE ACTUAL COSTS OF PRINTING for literature, but the Southern U.S., Pacific, Central and South America, West Indies, Mexico, Western U.S. and Canada, Asia, Africa, the Mideast, Spain and Portugal and Scandinavia seem to be getting the best deals on printing as their average literature expense is running far below the average of most of the rest of you, in many cases as little as 1/4 or less of their total income!
55. GET WITH IT, YOU PROVISIONERS!--SCROUNGE IT! IT CAN BE DONE! YOU JUST HAVE TO WORK AT IT! Amen? God bless you! However, it makes the rest of the world look pretty sick when you see by these statistics that North America is printing more lit each week than all the rest of the world combined! God bless 'em! No wonder they're distributing so much!--They've got it to distribute! Get with it, World! You can do better!
56. I'M GREATLY CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR MAIL-ANSWERING DEPARTMENTS: I'm wondering if each of these individual letters and orders are getting the individual attention and answers they need? Not all of these can by any means be answered with a form letter. Many of them will require special individual answers to their needs, and I hope these are being supplied, as when they write to us for these answers, we are personally responsible for their souls and whether they are fed properly or not!
57. HOW THESE ARE HANDLED MAY DETERMINE THEIR ETERNAL FATE AT THE MOST, AND THEIR FRIENDSHIP AT THE LEAST! In reading the mail rundowns and responses, I gather that most of their questions could be answered wisely with a form letter enclosing the appropriate MO Letter or Letters which will answer them, and the form letter could state they will find the answer to their questions if they will read them.
58. BUT THIS WILL TAKE A WISE MAN OR GIRL LED BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD AND WITH A REAL BURDEN FOR SOULS and who really knows the letters and their contents, and which Letter would be best to answer which question. This would be fairly easy in most cases if given individual attention, as I myself have been itching to send some of these people certain Letters to answer their questions, and am wondering if someone did send them these Letters? What is being done about this?
59. I HAVE THE FEELING THAT SOME OF YOU ARE NOT AS BURDENED ABOUT THIS DEPARTMENT AS YOU SHOULD BE. It is vital to both us and them that each of these Letters be answered properly as well as their orders filled!--Are you? I surely hope so!--They need us!
60. SO FROM NOW ON I'M GOING TO REQUEST THAT YOU ATTACH TO EACH ANSWERED LETTER THE NAME OR NAMES OF THE MO LETTERS WHICH WERE SENT to this particular party in answer to their request or question after the letter has been answered or order filled. Then these can be passed on with the letters to the typist who is going to type up the condensed "mail response" lists, so that under each response she can use a line to type the names or the numbers of the MO Letters which were sent in reply to this particular respondee for us to see.
61. WE WANT TO KNOW THAT THE PITIFULLY PLEADING CRIES OF THESE LITTLE SHEEP FOR FOOD IS BEING ANSWERED PROPERLY WITH THE RIGHT NOURISHMENT! As I have said before, I consider this mail follow-up one of the most vital, responsible and essential parts of our whole worldwide ministry, and I hope that every mail centre feels the same and is taking care of these little babes and potentials and needy souls with the greatest of faithfulness and diligence!--Are you?
62. FROM WHAT I CAN SEE OF THE SKIMPY RESULTS WE ARE NOT PROPERLY PUMPING THIS WELL OF PEOPLE-POWER! It either needs more priming or better pumpers or a more efficient pump or needs to be dug deeper! There's no need for us to try to reach the world if we don't answer when they call in response to our literature! If we neglect this correspondence follow-up to their pitiful appeals for help, we'll be like a shepherd who is calling for his lost sheep, but is so deaf he cannot hear nor heed their replies. and so blind he cannot understand their plight, and so slothful he makes no move to really help them!
63. DO YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT WE'RE GIVING A MILLION LITERATURE CALLS A WEEK AND ONLY GETTING A FEW HUNDRED MAIL RESPONSES!--And after several years we still only have a few hundred of them on our mailing list? This seems ridiculous! Something must be wrong somewhere! Why aren't they writing or continuing to write once they have written? Is it because we have not followed them up by mail as we should have?
64. ARE YOU SO SHORTHANDED FOR LACK OF LABOURERS THAT THIS HARVEST IS GOING TO ROT IN THE FIELD BEFORE IT CAN BE REAPED? Are you so lacking in equipment or know-how as to be unable to quickly and efficiently harvest it? I want to know the answers to these questions now! Tomorrow's too late! Please help them!
65. YOU MAY WISH TOMORROW YOU HAD THESE GOOD FRIENDS ON YOUR MAILING LISTS, SOLD AND SUPPORTING OUR WORK, WHEN OTHER MEANS OF SUPPORT MAY HAVE VANISHED OR BEEN DENIED US! Do it now! Amen?--And worst yet: You're going to have to face these souls in Eternity some day and give them an answer then! Is your conscience going to be clear? Did you deliver your soul!--Or is their blood going to be on your hands? I cannot do this job myself--I would if I could and I used to when I was able and present with you.
66. BUT IT'S NOW YOUR RESPONSIBILITY, AND GOD IS GOING TO HOLD YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE LITTLE. LOST SHEEP WHO BLEAT TO YOU FOR HELP! HELP THEM NOW! Their pitiful cries in the mail responses that we read nearly break our hearts!--And we agonise in prayer that these pitiful pleas for help are being diligently answered by your offices!--Are they? May God help you to take care of and feed His little sheep! With love, Dad.
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family}
