Homepage of Mogens Grøndrup


Getting married the truth

The love of my life

Anette.

 Fortunate as I ever will be.
Without common sense and relying fully on my intuition I fell in love just nineteen years old, and with a girl I thought to be at least seventeen. How could I resist this young beatiful girl within the congregation. If I had an experience of a fifty year old man I probably would have acted differently but on the other hand she is still my wife after almost 29 years of marriage.

Our wedding

 August 14th 1971
As almost all of Jehovah's Witnesses do we also did. We got married in a kingdom hall.

I was 23 and my wife 18. We do not have a big family but still more than two hundred were present in the hall and our worldly family were very much impressed to see that we had so many friends already.

In Denmark marriages can be performed by certain appointed elders from the congregation and after my brother-in-law had given a talk brother Jørgen Larsen, the Danish branch coordinator, performed the legal part of the wedding ceremony. We had recently been authorised to perform marriages so it was his first job and he always tells us that all his marriages still last.

Waiting for the event.

Keeping my integrity and going to prison in our "cottage".
Aside from being a pioner at that time I also had to stand up for the truth because of compulsary drafting. I was sentensed to one year in prison which means only nine months with the probation. We were 12 brothers together in a socalled open prison which meant that there were no walls around the prison and we were only behind bars after ten at night. We could visit the local congregation in Ikast once a month and a local brother would also visit us once a month..

The State Prison and our integrity.

9 months to stand firm for Jehovah.
The staff was used to have brothers here so no guard was looking after us. We lived all by ourselves in a small "cottage" several hundred meters from the main building. Sleeping twelve brothers together in just one bedroom could give some "noice" but rarely we had any problems at all. Three brothers were appointed by the branch to be a comittee and in that way all the meetings as well as other theocratic activities were upheld. One time we even held a tiny circuit assembly with a full programme.

Worldly inmates however succeded in tempting a few of our brothers to leave our "cottage" to get more "freedom" because better accommodation could be obtained by moving into the main building. We felt protected somewhat from living by ourselves and without worldly influence, and we also had more privacy to study and have upbuilding conversations.