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Mark Scheiderer
Seeking-

He told me he does work. Can't remember where.

He's told me that he is self-employed and runs his own painting business, painting houses and such. He says that this accounts for why he always posts at such odd hours. Apparently he lives with his family, because he's written about having to get off of the computer for the sake of the other members of his household.

He's gotta be a real guy though, and not some amalgam that TFI invented.
One time (on the 10th of October last, specifically) he sent me a mass email and among the other addresses he sent the message to were a
karmstrong10@*******.ca and nickarmstrong77@*********.com.

I assume these other Armstrongs are related to him somehow.
Also, he mailed the Duncans a money order from Canada once.

Hmm, I am gonna keep cruising my Inbox for clues.

He's 25 years of age....

December 13 NathanA wrote me and said:

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I have a small painting business. It is very enjoyable for the most part.

Hey Nathan, do you realize that you sent me the email addresses of a lot of people you know? I wonder if they'd mind if I write and asked about you...

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zeuszor
Ole's a curmudgeony old man and half the time he can't even get out of bed. He's sure not Mr. Rogers, but is he a paranoid, megalomaniacal "cult leader" and are all of us puppets kidnapped mentally into participating in his fantasy world? That idea is totally ludicrous. I myself have only been part of this community for a few months now; I've have never felt manipulated, controlled, and certainly not abused in any sense of the word here. I'm shocked that we could be percieved as Ole's "cult". No, as of now I have not read the book, but it's on the way. I'll post more of my comments after I read the book.
For anyone who's curious, please visit us if you're in the Dallas area; our address and other information about us can be found at www.trinityfi.org We gather for Bible studies and fellowship freqently, so please call or write for more information. Goodbye for now.

Wow. It's been a whole year since I found this board and began a new chapter in my life. It's been quite an odyssey, really. I consider the period of time between somebody first telling me about the book during the Seder and the time I left TFI (right after the [i:fc6a3c6d2f]Observer[/i:fc6a3c6d2f] piece was published) a real testimony, a manifestation of the presence of God in my life. It was scary as hell at the time, and it was unbelievable at first. I remember the first time I met with Douglas and Wendy for Mexican food and how incredulous I felt, hearing somebody call TFI a cult and OA a psychopath. I remember reading the [i:fc6a3c6d2f]Observer[/i:fc6a3c6d2f] piece in my room above the Lair for the first time and how I literally felt nauseated afterwards. Shoot, I remember seeing the front cover of the [i:fc6a3c6d2f]Observer[/i:fc6a3c6d2f] that day and saying to myself, "oh damn." I remember reading the book up there too and also how I didn't see Ole at all, whatsoever for about a month before I left. I can't tell you how spooky it was, reading a book about people I knew and lived with at the time...dang.
I also remember OA telling me he'd never heard of Wendy Duncan.

If one reads this thread from the beginning it is interesting to watch Zeuszor go through the transformation from Trinity defender to former member. He read the book and was intellectually honest about the issues we raised.

I would like nothing better than for some of the remaining members of Trinity to read the book with that kind of openness and honesty. Not that I expect them to leave, but rather to take some responsibility for the ways in which they have hurt people and do what they can to try to make amends. So far, all they have done is try to justify themselves and discredit Wendy and me, which shows me that they still don't get it.

Remember, about four months before I landed at TFI I was in Iraq, and was fresh out of the Army at the time. Also, I lived and worked with JPUSA for a couple of months before going back to Dallas and TFI. Point is, I was accustomed at the time to living in a collective, and it this infringement upon my privacy and boundaries did not seem odd at the time. I was used to having little privacy and it took me the better part of a year to relearn an appropriate sense of others' boundaries too.
I remember that Ole used to make me take an escort (Frank Bono) to my psychiatrist appointments at the VA, and kept track of what meds I was taking and the doses. I remember him taking notes as I told him about my medical history. As uncomfortable as it makes me to admit it, I must say that it simply did not seem inappropriate at the time. In fact, at the time I felt grateful about what I interpreted as Ole's concern for my well-being. When we got back from the VA, Ole would debrief Frank and myself together and then separately about the appointment, what was said in the room with my VA psychiatrist, what we talked about, what issues I might be going through, stuff like that. After I got back from the psychiatrist, I had to go and have a session with Ole that was basically a rehash of what we'd talked about in the office. I'm talking about my personal issues, insecurities, fears, personal habits, etc. Real personal stuff. I was still coping with returning to civilian life, and life outside of a war zone, and I let this guy get into my head and control my behavior by buying into his stuff about being totally transparent before one another. I had been habituated to blind obedience more than I realized at the time, and came home with PTSD, and once Ole knew my weak spots he'd hone in on them to make me feel like an a**hole during Big Group and in the Lair. But at the time it seemed normal, as odd as that may sound. I always thought that OA was kind of a jerk over it, and certainly felt put down and abused by him at the time, but rationalized it and said to myself, "It's all for the best, and he means well. It is finished, enter the rest, don't let Ole take you off of the mercy seat." I think that that stuff about my being the Antichrist probably seeped into my mentality more than I realized. I had been conditioned to pretty much respond automatically to authority figures and Ole recognized and exploited that. And at the time I felt [i:24b7022467]grateful[/i:24b7022467] that Ole was "telling me like it is." I was trained in the Army not to trust my own judgement that much. Like they used to tell us,
"If the Army wanted you to have an opinion, it would have issued you one."
In the end, I got expelled from TFI for much the same reason that I got expelled from the Army (with an Honorable Discharge though): a constitutional inability to blindly conform, to turn off my mind and bury my head in the sand. I joined TFI out of a zeal to expose the bad guys of the Christian world, and that curiosity and zeal is what compelled me to read Wendy's book. That I would wind up helping to expose[i:24b7022467] TFI [/i:24b7022467]was the last scenario I could have imagined. Would I have stayed with TFI indefinitely were it not for the book? What would have happened? Probably, I think, I would have taught my own Bible study eventually. But there's no way to tell now...all I know is that everything was fine until I made it known that I met Doug and Wendy and had read the book. I liked it there and was planning on being involved for a long time. The first time I met the Duncans, I did it without the knowledge of anybody on the Block. In out conversation over Mexican food, Douglas told me that a cult was [i:24b7022467]exactly [/i:24b7022467] what I was involved in. And deep down, I knew that it was true, that life on the Block was not what it was so widely reported to be and that Ole was a big fat liar and just as phony as any of the TBN people I watched all day. Hell, the biggest fraud of all turned out to be [i:24b7022467]OA himself![/i:24b7022467]
When I read the [i:24b7022467]Observer[/i:24b7022467] piece, that was the final blow to the wall of denial that I'd constructed and I knew that I had to leave NOW. The fortifications gave way and I saw the bigger picture with frightening clarity. So I did, I just left, went into freefall, and within a week of its publication, I was in Southern Alabama staying with some Christian friends who applauded my decision to leave and wondering what the hell I was going to do.
It's been an uphill battle for sure. A trial. But things are great now. I am in classes, am very close with my family again (my Mama is a saint. Hi Mom!) and have good friends and a good church with a minister of great integrity.
So what I'm saying is, the same zeal for finding Truth and shedding light in the darkness that made me want to be a part of TFI ironically enough is the same zeal that drove me to leave. It was my job in TFI to be intellectually honest and analytical, so it behooved me to apply those princliples to the very ministry that I was a part of.
Glenna Whitley was like Toto pulling the curtain back. the book was like realizing that there was like realizing that there was a curtain at all, but I was too scared of what I might see to want to peek behind it. Just the knowledge that OA was hiding something from me, when I was expected to hold nothing back from him, was disturbing enough.
My last week on the Block was a paranoid one. I never saw anybody except Frank Bono and locked myslef in my room mostly. I couldn't bear to face Pete especially, or any of them for that matter. One time in private conversation Bono so much as told me that he knew what OA was up to, and that he knew that he was involved with a cult, but that he would'nt let Doug ,Wendy, Glenna, or anybody else to remove him from The Rest. He's still there, too. What else is the guy going to do now?

I remember emailing Bono while he was in Ohio on business and telling him about the publication of the [i:faa1258ec5]Observer[/i:faa1258ec5] piece. He wrote me back and said that he was "shocked" (his word) by what came out; in fact, he told me that he'd seen that old High School yearbook picture of a nerdy-looking OA long before the [i:faa1258ec5]Observer[/i:faa1258ec5] printed it. I never asked him exactly when or under what circumstances he saw that photo, but the thrust of our conversation was that Bono told me that he knew that OA was a liar and that TFI was a cult (he even told me he felt sorry for Pete, because as he put it, "There is no more Pete.") He told me that they try to keep visitors to the Block from meeting Pete, because he gave so many people the creeps, "and we don't to get a reputation as a cult." You can talk to Pete for just a few minutes and discern pretty quickly that he's a hollow shell of who how could have been, before he got caught up in trying to BE Ole Anthony. He has no opinions other than the ones that OA tells him are his opinions. So sad. I hope you're reading this John. It's not too late. You and your wife would be happier away from that place. God knows I am.