HomeARC ML 0671
"HAPPY HOUSEKEEPING!"--By Father David 31-1-78 MO DO NO.671
© Copyrighted March 1978 by The Family of Love
(Dad's comments and explanations as he fills out our own Home Checklist with our Family:)
1. IF ANY OFFICIAL COMES AROUND AND FINDS THAT RACHEL'S ADDRESS IS NOT POSTED CONSPICUOUSLY, FIRE THE SERVANT on the spot! Why are we so tough about that? For one thing it's disobedience. But for the second thing, since they didn't obey, it must have been for some reason.--And what's the most likely reason?
2. THEY'VE GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE THAT THEY DON'T WANT PEOPLE WRITING ABOUT. So that's why it's important to get tough about that. He must be afraid of something, so I don't think he deserves to be the Home Servant, do you?
3. THEY CANNOT BE RE-ELECTED.--WHY NOT? Why can't the Home turn around and have mercy on them and re-elect them? They've proven that they're not qualified to be a Servant, proven that they're undeserving.
4. WHAT IF THE GUY JUST GOT THERE and he hadn't heard about the rule? Well, I don't see any reason why he shouldn't have heard about it if he's been in any of the Homes at all.--Unless he's a brand new babe, in which case he can't be the Home Servant.
5. I DON'T THINK THERE'S ANY EXCUSE. But I would say that there might be a rare exceptional case where for some reason the Home Council could have mercy on him.
6. THE HOME WOULD KNOW IF HE WASN'T TO BLAME, if he just got there and the old Home Servant hadn't posted it and therefore it wasn't his Home. They certainly wouldn't blame him for that! So the Home Council can always make exceptions to the rules if it's a reasonable exception.
7. THEY'VE GOT TO MAKE THEIR OWN DECISIONS NOW, and that's part of the training. They'll lean a lot more on the Lord and the Letters if they have to make their own decisions, PTL?
8. ONE OF THE BIGGEST PARTS OF THE JOB OF THESE NEW VSs AND KQSs IS TO TEACH THE HOMES TO MAKE THEIR OWN DECISIONS. When they come around and are asked what to do, say, "Why don't you read the Letters? It's in the Letters. If it's not there why don't you pray about it? That's your job to make the decision, not mine." Now if it's a question about something the Homes don't really know about or haven't heard about or something, well, that's a different story.
9. WHY DO WE SAY THE OLD SERVANT'S GOT TO BE OUT WITHIN A WEEK?--So he won't cause too much trouble! If he has just gotten justifiably fired, he's probably going to be a troublemaker, and we need to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
10. IF THEY LET HIM STAY TOO LONG HE MAY TALK TO THE PEOPLE AND THEY MAY START CHOOSING UP FACTIONS one against another. "I'm for the old one!" "Well, I'm for the new one!" So the faster you get him out the better. If he wants to leave immediately, so much the better, but he must leave within one week.
11. HE OUGHT TO BE ABLE TO FIGURE SOMEPLACE TO GO WITHIN ONE WEEK. He can probably hit the road with lit like he's asked a lot of other people to do. Let him get a taste of his own medicine for a change. Do you think that's too harsh or too severe? I don't.
12. WE NEED TO SPARE THE SHEEP. If you let him stick around too long, even a week could be bad, he can be divisive, contrary, critical. "Look what he's doing! Look how he did it! I did better than that!" The quicker you get him out the better. It would be nice if the Home could suggest some place for him to go real quick and help him on his way.
13. WHY ARE WE GOING TO ACCEPT A MAJORITY INSTEAD OF UNANIMOUS OPINION on each answer? Well, you may have a lot of difference of opinion. Plus, each individual question is not quite as important as signing the Home report and the FF report and setting quotas and that sort of thing.
14. ALL TOGETHER THEY MAKE A PRETTY BIG MAJOR MATTER, but they're mostly minor things so they don't have to have a unanimous vote on each individual answer. They ought to all know one way or the other, but they might not, so all we need is a majority opinion.
15. A LOT OF THIS IS GOING TO BE A MATTER OF OPINION, how people judge things. So we can't start splitting hairs and hold up the proceedings because one stubborn little idiot won't vote yes or no. One or two guys could hold up the whole works. If one stubborn little guy starts ruling the Home with his veto, well then you're either going to have to run him out of the Home or just accept a majority vote.
16. ALLOWING ABSTENTIONS IS A GOOD IDEA. They may not know, so rather than vote against it, they could just not vote. They just abstain rather than hold it up when the whole Home's against them. That certainly would be charitable of them.
17. THERE'S SUPPOSED TO BE UNITY IN OUR HOMES. We're not supposed to have some stubborn little idiot who's contrary on every little thing. Some people just want to know what side you're on so they can take the other side!--Or just to show how powerful they are with their one vote veto!
18. WHY DO THEY HAVE TO MAKE ONE FINAL VOTE OF ACCEPTANCE? That at least is more or less complying with the idea of unanimity, the whole Home Council accepting the report. They may not agree with every single answer, but they accept this as being their Council's work.
19. WHY HAVE THE LITNESS SHINER DETACH THE SLIP AND MAIL IT PERSONALLY? Why doesn't he turn it over to the Home Servant? So the Servant won't make any last minute changes somewhere between there and the Post Office, or forget to mail it at all! Especially if it happens to be real bad, it would be a big temptation for the dear Servant. It's not the good ones that we're worrying about. The law was not made for the righteous, it's made for the sinners.
20. WHY DID WE MAKE IT A MO LETTER? We're a little bit worried about some things like the Davidito series that we didn't make a MO Letter. We've heard about a few places that just didn't pass it on because they thought it was too long and they didn't want to print it.
21. THE KIDS DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THEY WERE IN EXISTENCE! If they don't get their numbered MO Letters and they miss one of those, they howl! If I want to make sure they get it, I give it a MO Letter number.--And I worked hard on the Checklist--I and Maria and Sara!
22. I THINK IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA FOR EACH MEMBER TO FILL ONE OUT FOR THEMSELVES, particularly the answers, so they can see where they need to improve. Each member can keep his copy and see what is wrong with his Home, remember it, and try to do something about it.
23. NO MORE COMBINATION HOMES! That suggestion in the New Revolution Letters of having more than one Home in a house was just as a beginning, so half of them could prepare to take off and pioneer. But three years later some are still sitting there!
24. WE'VE GOT TO GET AWAY FROM THIS IDEA THAT THE CHILDREN CAN'T LITNESS! Do you know that we've found on nearly all reports that the children are not going out litnessing with their parents or their childcare workers?
25. CHILDREN HAVE PROVEN THEY CAN LITNESS! They're some of the best litnessers there are! We also found in the past that the children can help provision.--Even if you take along a babe-in-arms!
26. [DELETED] Whose heart wouldn't be touched by that? Everywhere!--Because they know that you'll have a heart for the poor little kids!
27. CHILDREN ARE ONE OF THE BEST LITNESSING AND PROVISIONING ASSETS YOU'VE GOT! And you have not been using these assets like you should. You seem to have the idea that the childcare worker or the mother or the father or somebody has to stay home with the kids.--Why?
28. I DON'T COUNT CHILDREN AS A LIABILITY!--THEY'RE AN ASSET, OR GOD WOULDN'T HAVE GIVEN THEM! So let's get over that idea that the kids are a drag and a liability. You hear, "Let's ship this family some other place, we want to get rid of them because they can't litness and they're just so many more mouths to feed," and everything else. I don't like that! God has given them, and as Martin Luther said,
29. "WITH EVERY ADDITIONAL MOUTH GOD WILL SUPPLY!" If He doesn't it's because you're not doing your job and getting out and working and teaching your kids how to witness and litness and even provision! We don't have any loafers or slackers in our Homes, or shouldn't have!
30. IF YOU'RE NOT USING YOUR CHILDREN TO HELP YOU ON THE JOB, YOU'RE MISSING THE BOAT! I want to tell you something, that's one thing our dear Mother Eve proved for years. That was her vision, she had the faith for taking those kids out on the street or anywhere.
31. WHEN AARON WAS SIX YEARS OF AGE AND FAITHIE WAS ONLY TWO and the others were in-between, she parked them outside of Woolworth's in Miami Florida one afternoon to sing while she went shopping. By the time she got back their pockets were stuffed with money!
32. SURE WE'RE BEGGARS! WE'RE NOT ASHAMED TO CONFESS IT! But every preacher in the world's a beggar, too, and every priest and nearly every religionist of any kind of religion!
33. THE BIBLE EXHORTS YOU TO BEG! "Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." (Mt.7:7; Lu.11:9.) There's so much in the Bible on prayer, and every time you're talking about prayer you're talking about begging!
34. DON'T GIVE ME THAT OLD BOTTLE STUFF THAT YOUR CHILDREN ARE A DRAG and you can't use the children and there are too many kids and we've got to make exceptions of the Homes with a lot of children! Maybe we ought to give them higher quotas, because they ought to be able to do a better job!
35. LET'S BREAK SOME OF THESE GOD-DAMNED, OLD-GUARD NOTIONS that the kids are such a burden! All you new leaders have to break out of that way of thinking, those old ideas that were drummed and drilled into you. You better go back and read some of the Letters!
36. THE THING WE WANT TO DO IS GET EVERYBODY OUT LITNESSING AND PROVISIONING AND FFing!--And certainly above all soul-winning and persuading people to forsake all and serve the Lord!
37. LET ME TELL YOU, PROVISIONING THROUGH THE MAIL WAS OUR FIRST MEANS OF SUPPORT! People are neglecting the mail ministry. Not one of these Homes that has been inspected here does any provisioning of any kind! Not one! And most of them do no FFing either!
38. THEY PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF THE MAIL MINISTRY because they think, "Why read the old Letters when I've got the new ones to read?" I want to tell you something,
39. THERE ARE THINGS I WROTE CLEAR BACK IN 1970 AND '71 WHICH ARE STILL THE SAME AND SHOULD STILL BE IN EFFECT, about schedules, provisioning and all the rest! There's no excuse for not living up to it, and if you're not living up to it, maybe it's because you haven't read the Letters.
40. YOU NEED TO DIG BACK IN THERE AND READ THINGS ON SCHEDULES. We haven't found a Home yet that had a work schedule or people assigned to definite jobs! The reason they're in such a hell of a mess is because they're totally disregarding and disobeying the Letters!
41. ALL THE SUGGESTIONS I MADE ON HOME AND WORK SCHEDULES ARE JUST AS EFFECTIVE TODAY! It may be varied, it may have to be changed a little here or there, and this is what I said in those Letters. But the same thing holds today and I don't know why they're not doing it!
42. IT'S HARD WORK TO MAKE OUT A WORK SCHEDULE, but it would be a lot less hard work in the long run. I even had to almost beat people over the head here to get together and make out a work schedule. This idea of just letting it slide is ridiculous!--"Well, whoever happens to be available or within reach or within sight, grab them and whisk them into the kitchen to do the dishes."
43. THE MOST WILLING SPIRITED HUMBLE ALWAYS-READY-TO-DO-ANYTHING GUYS ALWAYS GET STUCK with the dishes and sweeping the floors, etc. I believe in spreading it out through the whole Home. Virtually everybody here does dishes or sweeps the floor at some time or other but me, and I have done it!
44. YOU NEED TO REMEMBER THAT THOSE OLD LETTERS WERE WRITTEN FOR A REASON. Go back to them and refer to them on some of these things. Why should we have to write them over again? Just go back and read them! Find the Letter name or subject in the Index and read it! There ought to be at least one set of MO Books in every Home!
45. (DOES A PIONEER TEAM HAVE TO BE SO WELL-EQUIPPED or do they have a year to meet the standard?) That's a good question. I think for a Pioneer Home we wouldn't exercise the teeth at all until at least the end of a year. They'll still have Visiting Servants who'll still checklist them and so on, but I don't think it would be fair to them to put the teeth in it.--Although they shouldn't have any reason not to meet the cleanliness standards.
46. I THINK EVEN IF YOU LIVE IN A TRAILER YOU COULD COMPLY with the List! You'll have a very small home, but nevertheless you can keep it up to the standard. When we did, we had enough sheets and we did our laundry. If you're living in a tent it might be a little bit more difficult, but you're probably a Pioneer Home, which is an exception.
47. YOU VSs LOVE THE LORD, YOU LOVE THE PEOPLE, YOU CAN ALWAYS HAVE MERCY. You can always make exceptions or postpone the day of doom if they're just too awfully poor or it's a terribly poor country or section or whatever it is.--Have mercy.
48. THERE ARE ALWAYS EXCEPTIONS TO EVERY RULE. This is the law--mixed with it we're going to have a lot of grace. But in the meantime we're a little sick of some people who are not working.
49. IF THEY OBEY THE LETTERS, THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE THAT POOR! Certainly they don't have to be dirty! There's no excuse for dirt on the floor and filthy walls and dirty kitchens, and unlaundered sheets. There's no excuse for it! Maybe they can't afford to buy a thermometer, but they can certainly clean house!
50. I'LL TELL YOU IN WHAT AREAS WE HAVE FOUND THE BIGGEST FAILINGS, in analysing the first reports that have come in. One was security, another was provisioning, and last survival.
51. NO SECURITY, NO SURVIVAL, NO PROVISIONING!--DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS? It means if there were a sudden emergency, those Homes are caught absolutely flatfooted with no preparation to survive, not even friends, unless they happened to win a few through FFing or real soul-winning. Just think of it!
52. ALL HOMES VISITED SO FAR ARE TOTALLY UNPREPARED FOR EMERGENCIES! If the war happened tomorrow, except for the mercy of God, they'd starve to death! Or if the water went off and the grocery stores were closed or raided and cleaned out, which has happened plenty of places where there was an emergency, they would be finished!
53. WATER DOESN'T COST MUCH. They could provision a few plastic bottles and fill them up with water. We just took old juice bottles and filled them full of water and we kept sticking them in the basement until we had probably 4 or 500 liters of water stored. No excuse! You can go 30, 40 days not eating much without dying, but you can only go three or four days without drinking!
54. THE LETTERS COVER JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SURVIVE and to have a decent home and happy family--if you'd read them and obey them! That's what's been the problem, and that's why we're working on it now.
55. WE DISCOVERED THAT MOST OF THE FIRST HOMES VISITED HAVE NO DAILY DEVOTIONS, no united MO Letter readings, no united Bible readings, no unity of any kind! All they're doing is pushing people out litnessing, nothing else!
56. THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE REGULAR MEALS, nobody assigned to cook, nobody assigned to clean house, can you imagine? No wonder they were in a mess, no wonder they were dirty, no wonder they're hungry! Can you imagine?
57. WHAT KIND OF LEADERS DID THEY HAVE that never found this out? Apparently they were only good at pushing quotas, adding stats and banking money, and I'm sick and fed up with it!
58. WE ARE EITHER GOING TO TAKE CARE OF THE SHEEP OR WE'RE GOING TO QUIT! We failed! We're not getting the job done. And the job is what?
59. OUR JOB IS TO WITNESS, WIN SOULS AND TAKE CARE OF THE RESULTS! What the hell good is your litnessing if you don't witness enough to win souls, and if once you've won them you don't take care of them! That's what makes me angry!
60. THERE'S NO EXCUSE FOR THIS DIRT AND THIS LACK. "He that shall not work shall not eat!"--Neither is he keeping clean or anything else! We're going to cure this thing no matter who's to blame!
61. IF THERE WAS NOBODY THERE TO COOK THE MEALS, THEN THE HOME SERVANT HIMSELF SHOULD HAVE COOKED IT! If there was nobody there to sweep the floor, he should have swept it! And if there's nobody else to litness, he better get out there and litness!--And provision, and FF, and win souls! There's no excuse for it!
62. I HAVE A LOT OF LOVE AND MERCY and I can be tender-hearted, but when people just simply absolutely do not believe the Letters, don't obey the Letters and are slothful and sloppy and lazy and are not working and not doing what they're supposed to do, then they deserve whatever they get, or whatever they don't get. Amen?
63. DON'T TELL ME THE BIBLE IS NOT TRUE! God promised if you'll obey Him he'll take care of you, and if they're not being properly taken care of, it's because somebody's disobeying!--Disobeying the Letters and not taking care of the sheep!
64. I'M SORRY, I JUST DON'T THINK THERE'S ANY EXCUSE FOR IT! I lived 20 years in trailers and caravans and I never lived in a mess such as has been described in some of these former Homes!
65. I KNOW WHAT GOD WANTS DONE and what He wants to see done. I know He wants to take care of His children, but how the hell is He going to take care of them when they're not even willing to try to take care of themselves!
66. THEY SAY GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES, that's true in a way, but I'll tell you, He even helps those more who can't help themselves! If they can't help themselves I know God's going to help them, that's for sure.
67. BUT IF THEY'RE NOT EVEN TRYING TO HELP THEMSELVES, NEITHER IS GOD GOING TO HELP THEM! Why should He?--If you're disobeying every rule in the book, you're lazy, you're dirty, you're not working, you're not trying!
68. IF YOU LOVE YOURSELF, OTHERS, THE LORD, AND EVEN OUTSIDERS, YOU HAD BETTER GET TO WORK! You better get to work, inside and out! Make your homes shining examples of the way Christians ought to live!
69. IF THE GIRLS DIDN'T SWEEP THE FLOOR, I'D BE SWEEPING IT! Thank God they come into our room and vacuum once in a while or I'd have to do it!
70. I CAN'T STAND TO LIVE IN DIRT! I had a wife who was dirty and filthy--she was a wonderful mother, a wonderful witness, but the house was a mess! And after years of trying to get her to clean up I finally saw that if it was ever going to get cleaned I'd have to do it!
71. I WAS THE ONE WHO WENT AROUND STRAIGHTENING THINGS UP and turning off lights and doing whatever had to be done to try to keep it looking halfway decent.--Especially when we lived in our little campers. It wasn't a very big house, and if she didn't keep it clean, I went to work and did it!
72. IF SWEEPING THE FLOOR AND WASHING DISHES IS BENEATH THE DIGNITY OF THE HOME SERVANT, YOU NEED TO ELECT A NEW ONE! If litnessing is beneath his dignity you need to elect a new one! Or if witnessing or provisioning or FFing is beneath him, you need a new one!
73. THERE OUGHT TO BE SOME CHANGES MADE. I don't think this is unreasonable, especially since we give'm plenty of time to do it.
74. YOU CAN USE YOUR DUAL NATIONALITY TO COUNT YOURSELF NOT A U.S. NATIONAL. If you've got non-U.S. citizenship, it's to your advantage to use it. So if you've got dual citizenship and one of them is U.S., I'd use the other one on this Checklist at least.
75. DON'T FORGET, YOU GET CREDIT FOR YOUR CHILDREN THAT WERE BORN IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. We're going to count the kids as nationals of the country they were born in. I don't care what's on their passport or anything else, we're going to give them credit for being nationals.
76. HAVE YOU LOOKED AT YOUR PASSPORT LATELY TO BE SURE IT'S NOT EXPIRED? We found some people who thought theirs was good and hadn't looked at it for a while. When they looked they were shocked to find it had already expired! So watch out! You better take another look to be sure!
77. EVERY BED SHOULD HAVE A BED PAD, beloved! With all the fucking we guys do, I'd hate to see the mattresses stained!--Better a stained bedpad! Besides, women menstruate, babies wet and men have wet dreams, so everybody ought to have bedpads on your beds. If you haven't got them, get out and get them!
78. IT'S A SANITARY MATTER. You can wash the bedpad if some accident happens, but how are you going to wash a mattress? If you don't have anything but an old blanket to stick under there, that's a bedpad. You don't have to have one of those expensive quilted commercial bedpads.
79. IF THE DOOR IS SHUT AND NO WINDOW OPEN, THAT IS NOT PROPER VENTILATION. If it's too cold outside, then you must leave your room door open slightly, even an inch or two, to get ventilation.--Or your windows cracked open, or your shutter cracked open or something. You need a little tiny bit of fresh air from somewhere!
80. WE'RE NOT ONLY DOING THIS CHECKLIST FOR OUR OWN BENEFIT, but we're teaching people how to clean house and keep house and how to take care of it. It's a rundown on the way you ought to live and how to take care of things.--Amen? HAPPY HOUSEKEEPING!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
