In many ways, I’ve been pretty lucky when it came to the whole Advanced Training Institute (ATI) experience. I always thought that the double standard that my parents had was weird: we could wear jeans on the farm or to work with my dad, but not to town or where anyone would see us.

I had done the whole program, growing up in Children’s Institute, graduating to Basic and Advanced seminars, and serving as staff at several Children’s Institutes, and then going to REFINE at the Indianapolis Training Center (ITC) at the age of 14.

REFINE was, by itself, the best and worst thing that could have happened, now that I look back on it. We had to do all the usual stuff like Bible memorization, classroom time with all the seminars, and all the chores for upkeep around the training center. This was the “best” part.

The “worst” part started when ITC hosted a health conference, which began during my fifth week at ITC. The attendees were all on the healthy, “eat certain portions and nothing more” kick, and there was a sample plate showing how much of each thing everyone was supposed to get. Of course, they paid no attention to the sample plate. They all took what they wanted. Those of us who were working the serving lines were not allowed to reserve any food for ourselves, and we were not allowed to eat until everyone else had gone through the line. Usually, nothing was left for us but a  few lettuce leaves in the salad bowls and some health chips. Things got so bad that we all started bruising at the slightest touch. A couple of girls even passed out.

It never occurred to me that this was worth mentioning to my father. I figured that he sent me there so he must be okay with whatever they did. They told us that our class was the worst they had ever had (a few girls were in the “prayer room” a lot of the time), so it was our fault that we had to stay at ITC and couldn’t go to other training centers as previous classes had done.

Eventually, one of my older sisters, who was a team leader in the program, told my dad what was going on. He called the leadership and told them they had better feed me more or he was going to be on the next plane up there and they wouldn’t like what happened. So they did just that: they fed me (and only me) one bowl of granola — I felt guilty that I got to eat and no one else did, and then the leadership made me feel even more guilty because “I” had complained.

We were thrilled to go to the mission that week so that we could eat with them and have a decent meal. We pooled our money and bought a whole box of Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips from the fundraiser they were having. And that’s what we lived on.

My oldest sister was part of the leadership for the program and, even though she saw what was happening, she did nothing to stop it. I was deeply hurt by this inaction on her part, and we have problems with our relationship to this day.

It was the leadership’s total lack of caring  for our welfare that started to open my parents’ eyes to the hypocrisy of ATI.