As most of you know I was a proud member of the U.S.N. from 1984-1989. Today is the Navy’s 237th birthday (Or, as they call it to this day in San Angelo, Texas, Kent Kraemer Day (you had to be there.)) I hereby submit a video selection about my beloved Canoe Club. I am so blessed to have served when I did and with my fellow sailors and marines. None finer. And friends to the day I die.
I’m a little frustrated by my Facebook list of suggested friends. I live in five worlds (at least) on Facebook – schoolmates, Navy, work, writers, Santa, business associates. And I can’t get to many of them because of the incredible number of guys who are friends of other Santas. Yup, buried under a blizzard of white beards.
I’ve tried to get out from under that heap, but Facebook figures if I’m a friend with someone who is friends with 680 other guys who look like him and we have 15 mutual friends, I should be friends with all 680 of his friends and every single one of their friends who is a Santa. Mind you I like Santa. I know many fine gentlemen who are Santa. But I’m not Santa 24×7. Besides, all of their charming anecdotes are the same as mine. It’s a small universe in many ways and our common experience is mighty common indeed. I hope that any of you who read this and have tried to “friend” me now understand my reluctance to add even one more bearded fat guy to my roster. I live with a bearded fat guy all the time – I need a break!
I pine for Facebook to give me a shot at Boolean limiting of the candidate pool. One simple “not Santa” statement in the engine would make me very happy. Alas, it is not to be seen. (and if it is, leave me the info in a comment. I won’t publish it but you will get a special bonus for sparing me from the deluge of jingling bells.)
In the meantime, I submit another whiny Santa for your enjoyment. But I also leave you with the question: are you Santa for someone?
But I am preparing for one this Winter. And on Friday I shipped off the assorted stuff that two of us put together to support a school in Belize that we’d visited this past winter on our trip.
I think that we sometimes go on a mission and then put it in the drawer with the photos we took. It was a great memory, but on to the next item. My friend Mark (Marcos the Cabana Boy as he’s known in Belize) and I had worked with The Cayo Christian Academy when we were in Belize. The trip was very special in that we worked with Senor Moralez in the computer room and did some work on his systems. We were hampered by the lack of tools that we had back in the states. Being good little techies we made a list of all the goodies we needed to make his students more productive.
As we strolled out of the door, and probably out of his life forever, we promised to round up the supplies and ship them back to Belize. Mark and I got together for lunch and purchased most of the list in the middle of the summer. It was the sort of items you need to network, expand memory on the computers, and do the maintenance that you usually ignore until it costs you a computer. It was all stuff he couldn’t get in Belize, or if it was available it was extremely expensive. I got the rest of it (after several email exchanges with Senor Moralez) and put it all on the shelves in my basement.
After missing the emails from the school’s principal on how to ship things to her I finally remembered that I was awaiting instructions (some days I drool more than others.) I emailed again, found out I’d blown the dates she’d sent and proceeded to pout. Until I read the next paragraph of the email. New dates!
Within 18 hours I’d packed the stuff and shipped it off. It should be in the hands of her stateside contact this week. And, God willing, in the hands of the computer students shortly after that delivery.
What’s the point I’m making? If you do a mission trip, consider making a long-term commitment to the people you work with locally. It’s great to go and speak to people, do a project of some kind, help take care of the sick, and countless other things they don’t always have hands to do in the organizations you deal with. But if you take the time to really find out how to help them grow, how to help them deal with things themselves, how to strengthen them, you will make a much bigger difference.
I’m reading a book right now called When Helping Hurts. I’m not done with it, but they have some excellent points. The biggest one is that we tend, in the West, to focus on material things. But poverty is more spiritual and emotional than material. The biggest part of it, from what I have read and experienced in my own life, is the feeling of powerlessness. It goes back to the whole idea of “If you give a man a fish he’s fed for one day. If you teach him to fish he has a way of life.” You give them the skills to make things go after you leave.
To use a word I hate, you “empower” them with your thoughtful actions. Money can fix most things except poverty. That’s why so many missions (and government welfare is just another misguided mission) fail so miserably. We throw things at the problem, not seek solutions. I think Mark and I have managed to avoid that in our actions. We could have just bought new computers, or sponsored a student for a year. Both would have been cool. But we worked with the man on the spot and found out what he needed to take charge of the environment and empower his students. He just wanted enough technology to do the work himself. That leaves a nice glow in my heart.
My shelves are empty of computer parts. It’s up to Mr. Moralez to do the work and grow his computer lab. He’s got a great start (smart guy with some pretty good basic computers) and just needed a little boost to take it to that next level.
Someday I’ll find out if what we did was the right thing. I want to go back to Belize and continue the work down there that we started last year. I have genuine affection for many of the people we met and want to be a part of their lives. They certainly are a wonderful part of mine.
Clive and Isaac, this means you!
The question for the day is: Where’s your mission trip? Is it in your neighborhood being an Ambassador of Christ to the elderly in the assisted living center? Are you planning on doing a trip to Mexico or Guatemala? And if you don’t have a mission on the books, why not? It’s part of the Christian package that I neglected for far too long. I want you to think about making yours a reality. So, jot down some ideas and pray over them today. Please?
I just got a message from the blogging authorities that my license is in jeopardy unless I get more subscribers. I’m not above blegging (blog-begging) for help here. So, please be so kind as to subscribe. It’s the box on the right just below the pretty picture I use as my header on the blog. And then post a link to this blog on your facebook page. Following that, hit all the like buttons and retweet the stuff you’ve read here this week. When you’ve done that, head on to the right side below the subscribe box and “like” my author’s page on facebook (can’t miss the widget, it’s got my mug on it.)
I’m working on adding content every day. That is not a chore to me, but a pleasant task. Time consuming but fun. My request is that you continue to visit (or, better yet subscribe) and pass it along to your friends and family. In the past week I’ve covered enough different topics to engage all sorts of interest groups.
Yet there is one group I’ve neglected to reach out to this past week – knitters. So, here’s a video of speed knitting in the hope that there’s one great group out there that can push me over the top to 10,000 views a month.
Not carried by actual members of the armed forces.
I solemnly promise not to be a horrible hack writer. I may not be great, but I do promise not to do any of the following:
Have everyone on a Navy S.E.A.L. team armed with .32 Walther Pistols (or, BB guns cause they’re so quiet.)
Pretend to know anything that I haven’t researched or tried on my own.
Have characters recover from a “flesh wound” and bounce right back into the fight. Flesh wounds are bullets going something other than bone. People die from some of them. Getting shot in the gut is a flesh wound. I’ll try to be specific about the wound if people are going to bounce right back.(Goes double for concussions.)
Do teeth-grindingly-stupid things that only the suicidal would do – and make it out of that jam every time.
Have my characters insult the intelligence of the reader.
Defy the laws of physics unless Divine intervention is part of the plot.
Why do I promise these things? Because as a part of my journey as a writer I picked up some “best-selling” Christian fiction that I’d seen advertised. I won’t name the authors involved but the books were really badly done. And that’s a shame because most of the Christian fiction I’ve read is wonderful (see my review of Karl Bacon’s latest book as an example.)
Well, you might say, what have you gotten published? Nothing yet. But if I wrote dreck like the stuff I’ve been reading I’d never expect to get published. Bad fiction is bad fiction. I’d truly prefer to never be published than to have the readers say, “Man… has this guy ever even seen a tank/rpg/squad car/aircraft carrier/fighter jet/candy store, etc.”
And thus I promise to do my homework. Doesn’t mean I’ll never stretch the limits of credibility. Doesn’t mean that I won’t just plain screw up some details on purpose so that readers cannot build weapons that actually work, or disclose police procedural stuff that could get cops killed. I won’t do that. That’s part of the fun of writing fiction. But you have to try to make it work. Change details of places/people/things but stay close enough to the truth that readers can suspend disbelief and enjoy the work. I know, great and sage words from an unpublished wannabe.
But in the great scheme of things, wouldn’t you rather that I get it right or not do it at all? That’s how I feel.
