When we got to Kearney we were, quite frankly, worn out, and were looking to August, when we would be done with this commitment, and with each other. One bright spot was that Kearney, being a college town, lacked the small town antipathy to "outsiders" that we encountered in Sidney. We got jobs where no one knew who we were, or that we were in a supposed cult, and no one cared what we were doing.
One of the things that WOWs supposed to be doing to "move The Word" was running Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) classes. During our time in Sidney we had convinced two people to take this class, Randy, a young man with a mysterious background and Tom, a forty-ish man who we found out later hung around because he was having sex with Rosemarie! Both of these men followed us to Kearney. There were also several Kearney people who had been signed up for "The Class" by two Way women who had been assigned to Kearney before us, but were moving to Lincoln. At first we were pretty excited about running a class. Getting a class together was viewed in Way-world as prima facie evidence that you were "believing". WOWs, or even Way people in general, were viewed as spiritual slackers if they couldn't convince seven people to plunk down $100 to take PFAL. (My memory is a bit fuzzy, but a one point the "donation" was reduced to $40 - it may have been during that year) The pressure was really on WOWs, since that was our primary job: witness for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. If you couldn't run a class, surely the problem wasn't God, surely the problem wasn't God's Word, surely the problem wasn't The Class - this left one suspect as the source of the lack of outreach success: you! This was a central tenet in The Way's circular reasoning, lack of results was never due to the plan, or the leadership being wrong, the problem was that you weren't believing. In a world where people ask questions, one might have asked why the leaders who assigned us to small town Nebraska, who supposedly made these assignments based on divine revelation, didn't know that these towns weren't interested in what we had to offer, but that kind of honest inquiry was discouraged in The Way. Five of the seven people in our PFAL class were witnessed to by others, but we got to run the class, so the spiritual pressure was off.
Once we were done with the class, we kind of sleep-walked through the rest of the year. I've mentioned before how obeying "leadership" was a central plank in The Way's platform. Out on the WOW field, our leader, who were supposed to believe was inspired by God to lead us properly, was a twenty year old who was overly impressed with his own position as leader and more concerned with seducing Way women than actually leading. One series of events that spotlighted his incompetence, dishonesty and manipulation as a leader involved finances. One of the things that was required of a WOW was working a part-time job. Everyone was to contribute to the "family fund" was used for common expenses, with the details to be worked out by each "family". Three of us got jobs around town in restaurants. Steve got a "job" doing work around our rental unit, including putting in a new lawn. Steve was paid via a decrease in our rent equal to what he and the landlord agreed would be his monthly wages. Since Steve wasn't actually receiving any money directly from the landlord, he was given money from our "family fund" equal to his wages, less whatever his contribution to the common expenses would be. The problem was that Steve never did any of the work that he was contracted to do. He slept in, or hung out with some of the local Way women. Eventually our landlord realized that no work was being done and demanded that we pay back the rent credit that ostensibly covered Steve's wages. Of course we no longer had the money. To avoid being evicted Steve convinced his father to lend us the money, to be paid back before our term was up in August. I can't recall if Steve got a real job after that, or how close to the end of the year this was, but just before we left Kearney for good, we had amassed enough surplus in our common funds to pay Steve's father back. However, Steve's dad allegedly gave the money to Steve. We weren't able to confirm this since we did not have his father's contact information. The three of us had ended up subsidizing Steve's months-long indolence. So much for leadership.
Continuing my pattern of ignoring red flags and subsequently doubling down, towards the end of this year, instead of cutting my losses and leaving The Way, I decided to apply to enter The Way Corps, The Way's alleged leadership training program. In the meantime I would participate in a "WOW Vet" outreach program in Lincoln.
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