The first "semester" as an HDC staffer has come to a close. Christmas break is here and each of us will go home for a few weeks over Christmas. Ryan is now finished as a staffer after serving for over a year (He started the day before I got here last year for training). It is a lot of fun to think back over the last four months, remembering some of the many things that have happened. Thanks for your prayers during this time.
After break, things will look a lot different. A lot of time and effort will be going towards two recruiting trips that are being planned currently. They would be about two weeks long, and at this point we are looking at going to Kansas and Iowa one one trip and Indiana and Ohio on the other (the second is less certain). We would be going to a few colleges and a churches where we have some contacts to recruit people for staff positions, team leaders, YES participants, and other EMM missions related programs. Details other than these are still being worked out, but it has given us as staff a sense of direction for the winter months.
I will also be volunteering at Center For Champions (an after school program) two days a week after Christmas break. This is the same place that I did community outreach during my training last year.
So that's a bit about what we will be doing over the winter months (since I've been asked a lot). Hopefully it gives you a better idea of what will be going on here.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Friday, December 5, 2008
The End
Well, since last time I posted, a lot of things have happened. We wrapped up the final few weeks of training, which offered a great chance to look back and see how far people had come from when they got here. God has done some amazing things here over the last few months, and it has been great to be a part of it. On the last day of training, we had a short wrap up session, using an old Gambian tradition. The tradition is that when you leave you village, you tear off a piece of clothing and hang it on a tree at the entrance to the community. The trees are a measure of the health and vibrancy of the village, because it has people coming and going (an empty tree would indicate that those in the village are old or sick). So we put up a tree branch in the back of the session room and had each participant make a little something that represents themselves to hang there until they return. It will be a good reminder to those of us who stay here to pray for those who have gone.
As of yesterday, we have said goodbye to five of the teams and sent them on their way. The Guatemala team will leave tomorrow, and the China team on Sunday. As the teams left one (or two) at a time and we said goodbye, it took me back to a year ago. The same atmosphere, the same excitement, the same sadness. Change. A large group of people that you had spent almost every day of the last three months with breaking up and spreading out across the globe, everyone awaiting completely different experiences and completely different challenges. I begin to realize that what we've had the past three months will never happen again. Yes, they will be here for re-entry, but it will only be half of them, and even more so, everyone will have changed, molded by their experiences. It will be great, but it will be different. So I have to remind myself that as much as I wish everyone was back to eat a meal in the crowded dining room, to have one more game of flag football, and to crack HDC jokes with, it's time to move on. Yes, to remember and celebrate the past few months, but not to dwell on them and wish things were the way they were then.
Things will certainly be different without a training here. Our roles will change a bit, we will be stretched in different ways, and we will get to do new things. I don't know what that will look like, but I look forward to a change.
As of yesterday, we have said goodbye to five of the teams and sent them on their way. The Guatemala team will leave tomorrow, and the China team on Sunday. As the teams left one (or two) at a time and we said goodbye, it took me back to a year ago. The same atmosphere, the same excitement, the same sadness. Change. A large group of people that you had spent almost every day of the last three months with breaking up and spreading out across the globe, everyone awaiting completely different experiences and completely different challenges. I begin to realize that what we've had the past three months will never happen again. Yes, they will be here for re-entry, but it will only be half of them, and even more so, everyone will have changed, molded by their experiences. It will be great, but it will be different. So I have to remind myself that as much as I wish everyone was back to eat a meal in the crowded dining room, to have one more game of flag football, and to crack HDC jokes with, it's time to move on. Yes, to remember and celebrate the past few months, but not to dwell on them and wish things were the way they were then.
Things will certainly be different without a training here. Our roles will change a bit, we will be stretched in different ways, and we will get to do new things. I don't know what that will look like, but I look forward to a change.
Monday, December 1, 2008
quick note
Just making note that to the left, I have added links to the team blogs from this fall's training. There are a few that havn't started one yet, but I'll put them up as soon as I get them.
I know, I'm long overdue for an update. I don't like breaking promises, so I won't promise, but I will try hard to have one by the end of the week.
I know, I'm long overdue for an update. I don't like breaking promises, so I won't promise, but I will try hard to have one by the end of the week.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Madagascar 2
We take a break from the typical HDC related events to share a short review of the new movie Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. A lot of people in the HDC world has read this (since I wrote it Monday night after we as staff went to see it for staff cell, a very spiritual evening, I know) My review has gotten a very good review, so I thought I'd share it with you.
A brief disclaimer: the author acknowledges that some of the views expressed in this review are potentially somewhat politically incorrect. The author does not necessarily agree with all of the opions expressed, it is merely an attempt at pin pointing what the director was really getting at behind the mask of cute animals.
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa by Ben Herr
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, displays a new approach at educating kids in today’s issues. It combines great digital animation and catchy humor to spice up an illustration of the situation our country is in.
The beginning of the movie was especially spot on as it depicted the main characters being launched in a plane that is just one more drop of bad luck away from crashing. One can’t help but see how this scene is mirrored by the declining state of our economy. We have built our nation in such a way that it balances on the ever weakening thread of economics. We walked blindly into such a fragile situation, so wholly immersed in soaking up admiration from neighboring countries and friends that we failed to see the disaster waiting to happen.
It is also important to note that the quartet of penguins controlling the plane have an astoundingly small knowledge of their craft and simply make decisions as situations arise, a style that may look good at first, but is flirting with, and eventually will collide with, utter catastrophe.
These four lovable flightless birds draw up a striking simile to those sitting in pretty little offices in New York (another location eluded to many times in the film as being a place a little…shall we say, atypical?) controlling our countries economy by tapping away at their cute little lap top’s.
As the plane takes off out of a giant tree, it immediately spins in a hopeless spiral down, and out of sight behind branches. All hope is lost. The feeling of, “Well it serves them right for going about their job so recklessly” is a quite natural reaction. Then, without any explanation whatsoever, it suddenly emerges from the branches, flying in tip top shape. Can anyone say, “Mega million dollars buy out?” A very controversial issue, many hard workers across the lower forty-eight, as well as Hawaii and Alaska, had to wonder, “We do our jobs better than anyone else, we put countless drops of sweat into our five figure salaries, and when they completely botch their job, a hand comes out of no where to pull them out of their tail spin and land millions of dollars in their lap.
The story progresses as Alex the Lion meets up with his dad; the alpha lion of the herd, and after a few minor events, Alex is given the task of completing a sort of initiation trial. Alex is a bit uninformed of the procedure, thinking it is a sort of dance off, when it is, in reality, a fight. After it goes horribly for Alex, there is a conversation between him and his dad in which Alex angrily says, “You could have told me!”
It is at this point that one realizes the director is making a daring comparison to the Bush clan. Looking back at George W. Bush’s early debates, it is quite easy to wonder if he really knew what he was there for. We have to wonder whether there was a brief confrontation between W. and Sr. in which W. said, “Why didn’t you tell me it was a debate! I thought we were just going to go out there, give our scripted answers and look pretty!”
Without going into the details (and therefore spoiling the movie), it is quite clear that the director is making a bold prediction. When a new alpha lion takes over the herd and everything goes wrong, Alex and his father join together and save the herd from certain doom. This is obviously implying that when our countries new president realizes he lacks the experience and know how, and things start going poorly, George W. and George Sr. will team up and split Sr.’s four years of eligibility for base a two year incumbency that will save the nation from all of it’s problems (all, that is, except for the economy which the people who wrecked it are still trying to fix, relying heavily on foreign labor to get things up and running, which will eventually lead to some major miscommunication and another almost catastrophe).
While these are the main points the director was trying to make, there are some other underlying parallels drawn. An old peppy lady with a nasty left hook leads a group of lost and confused tourists in an attempt to over throw the lions and the established way of life. She obtains followers by a combination of two methods: 1) appearing to look like she knows what she is doing (though she admits that it is not so) and doing it with a smile on her face, and 2) by finding followers so hopeless and confused that they blindly obey her every command. The old lady puts up a nasty fight and almost comes out on top, but in the end is left down, but not out.
In this way, the director points at how Hillary Clinton obtained countless supporters who were so unhappy and hopeless due to the current regime that they blindly became followers due to the fact that she was a woman and has some charisma. Just like the movie, she is currently down, but not out.
The film is stashed with tons of other illustrations, but to save some time and just name a few, some of the most obvious are:
1) The scene where Alex’s mother turns out the light by squishing the lightning bug shows how the people in high places love to use the little people for their own benefit, but once they are no longer of use to them, they will squish them and move on to new servants.
2) The giraffe is told that he is going to die in a few days, so he begins to make a series of rash decisions that almost get him killed, based on the assumption that he is going to die anyway. This is strikingly similar to the predicament that Harold Kamping, the horrifically off base radio evangelist, has put many of his followers in by predicting that Christ will return in 2011.
3) And lastly, the director offers our country’s leaders a piece of advice for foreign affairs. Alex and his father get caught in the middle of a camp of angry humans who want to eat them for supper. Alex’s father tries to intimidating them with his power and his roar. But it doesn’t work. Alex then saves the two of them by putting on an impressive dance show that wows the audience. This is a plea to the USA government to stop trying to maintain foreign relations by flexing our powerful military. It needs to get down on a personal level and do things that actually impress people, not frighten them. Things like dumping a couple million dollars in order to provide villages with clean water instead of adding another fighter jet to the air force.
All in all, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa shows some deep insight into our current political situation and brings it down to level even kids will understand and enjoy. This movie is the pinnacle of where politics meets family entertainment.
A brief disclaimer: the author acknowledges that some of the views expressed in this review are potentially somewhat politically incorrect. The author does not necessarily agree with all of the opions expressed, it is merely an attempt at pin pointing what the director was really getting at behind the mask of cute animals.
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa by Ben Herr
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, displays a new approach at educating kids in today’s issues. It combines great digital animation and catchy humor to spice up an illustration of the situation our country is in.
The beginning of the movie was especially spot on as it depicted the main characters being launched in a plane that is just one more drop of bad luck away from crashing. One can’t help but see how this scene is mirrored by the declining state of our economy. We have built our nation in such a way that it balances on the ever weakening thread of economics. We walked blindly into such a fragile situation, so wholly immersed in soaking up admiration from neighboring countries and friends that we failed to see the disaster waiting to happen.
It is also important to note that the quartet of penguins controlling the plane have an astoundingly small knowledge of their craft and simply make decisions as situations arise, a style that may look good at first, but is flirting with, and eventually will collide with, utter catastrophe.
These four lovable flightless birds draw up a striking simile to those sitting in pretty little offices in New York (another location eluded to many times in the film as being a place a little…shall we say, atypical?) controlling our countries economy by tapping away at their cute little lap top’s.
As the plane takes off out of a giant tree, it immediately spins in a hopeless spiral down, and out of sight behind branches. All hope is lost. The feeling of, “Well it serves them right for going about their job so recklessly” is a quite natural reaction. Then, without any explanation whatsoever, it suddenly emerges from the branches, flying in tip top shape. Can anyone say, “Mega million dollars buy out?” A very controversial issue, many hard workers across the lower forty-eight, as well as Hawaii and Alaska, had to wonder, “We do our jobs better than anyone else, we put countless drops of sweat into our five figure salaries, and when they completely botch their job, a hand comes out of no where to pull them out of their tail spin and land millions of dollars in their lap.
The story progresses as Alex the Lion meets up with his dad; the alpha lion of the herd, and after a few minor events, Alex is given the task of completing a sort of initiation trial. Alex is a bit uninformed of the procedure, thinking it is a sort of dance off, when it is, in reality, a fight. After it goes horribly for Alex, there is a conversation between him and his dad in which Alex angrily says, “You could have told me!”
It is at this point that one realizes the director is making a daring comparison to the Bush clan. Looking back at George W. Bush’s early debates, it is quite easy to wonder if he really knew what he was there for. We have to wonder whether there was a brief confrontation between W. and Sr. in which W. said, “Why didn’t you tell me it was a debate! I thought we were just going to go out there, give our scripted answers and look pretty!”
Without going into the details (and therefore spoiling the movie), it is quite clear that the director is making a bold prediction. When a new alpha lion takes over the herd and everything goes wrong, Alex and his father join together and save the herd from certain doom. This is obviously implying that when our countries new president realizes he lacks the experience and know how, and things start going poorly, George W. and George Sr. will team up and split Sr.’s four years of eligibility for base a two year incumbency that will save the nation from all of it’s problems (all, that is, except for the economy which the people who wrecked it are still trying to fix, relying heavily on foreign labor to get things up and running, which will eventually lead to some major miscommunication and another almost catastrophe).
While these are the main points the director was trying to make, there are some other underlying parallels drawn. An old peppy lady with a nasty left hook leads a group of lost and confused tourists in an attempt to over throw the lions and the established way of life. She obtains followers by a combination of two methods: 1) appearing to look like she knows what she is doing (though she admits that it is not so) and doing it with a smile on her face, and 2) by finding followers so hopeless and confused that they blindly obey her every command. The old lady puts up a nasty fight and almost comes out on top, but in the end is left down, but not out.
In this way, the director points at how Hillary Clinton obtained countless supporters who were so unhappy and hopeless due to the current regime that they blindly became followers due to the fact that she was a woman and has some charisma. Just like the movie, she is currently down, but not out.
The film is stashed with tons of other illustrations, but to save some time and just name a few, some of the most obvious are:
1) The scene where Alex’s mother turns out the light by squishing the lightning bug shows how the people in high places love to use the little people for their own benefit, but once they are no longer of use to them, they will squish them and move on to new servants.
2) The giraffe is told that he is going to die in a few days, so he begins to make a series of rash decisions that almost get him killed, based on the assumption that he is going to die anyway. This is strikingly similar to the predicament that Harold Kamping, the horrifically off base radio evangelist, has put many of his followers in by predicting that Christ will return in 2011.
3) And lastly, the director offers our country’s leaders a piece of advice for foreign affairs. Alex and his father get caught in the middle of a camp of angry humans who want to eat them for supper. Alex’s father tries to intimidating them with his power and his roar. But it doesn’t work. Alex then saves the two of them by putting on an impressive dance show that wows the audience. This is a plea to the USA government to stop trying to maintain foreign relations by flexing our powerful military. It needs to get down on a personal level and do things that actually impress people, not frighten them. Things like dumping a couple million dollars in order to provide villages with clean water instead of adding another fighter jet to the air force.
All in all, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa shows some deep insight into our current political situation and brings it down to level even kids will understand and enjoy. This movie is the pinnacle of where politics meets family entertainment.
Monday, November 10, 2008
World Awareness Week
This past week (Tuesday through Friday) we organized a "World Awareness Week" designed to help participants (and ourselves) understand what a majority of the world lives like. There was a lot of things we did, from turning off all of the water except for a little bit in the early morning and afternoon, giving participants a chance to fill our big water barrel outside and refill buckets in bathrooms, to having them sit on some narrow, wobbly benches (that Ryan and I built from the old fence) during a session one day.
However, the one thing that impacted me the most was the "World Awareness Meal" he did on tuesday. You may be familiar with these, I'd done one before, but the basic concept is that everyone pulls a piece of paper that puts them in categories: The rich, the typical westerner, the not so rich yet not entirely poor (rice and beans), the poor (just rice, with "dirty" water), and the beggars. As you may be able to guess, these categories get fed very different meals. The rich got something, I don't even know what, but it was really nice. The westerners had hamburgers, chips, and fries, followed by brownies and ice cream. The rest were already explained, with the one condition being that you couldn't beg from the rich.
After the meal, we had a short processing time, and I realized there were several things I could learn from it.
1. Whenever I read stories about people who go from rags to riches and are now living a high class life with ten cars, blah, blah, blah, I've always been confused. Did they forget where they came from? Don't they remember all the people they grew up with that are most likely in the same situation the were born into?
Last year, during my training, we did a world awareness meal. I was one of the rice people. We had eaten rice for breakfast and lunch that day, and despite liking rice and liking the way it was made, I certainly wasn't extremely excited about rice again.
This year, I got a lucky draw and was a westerner. After I pulled my slip of paper and saw I was at the westerner's table, I immediately started thinking some things that I'm almost embarrassed, well, I am embarrassed to share. My first thoughts were, "Okay, I'm looking forward to this meal. But what if the beggars don't give me a little space? What if they overstep their boundaries as beggars and become thieves? How will I keep them away and be able to enjoy the meal as well?" Yup, that's pretty embarrassing.
So back to my first thought on rags to riches. Maybe they remember their past all too well. Maybe, the only way to forget (or try to forget) those bad memories is to distance yourself from that situation. I knew all too well what it was like to be a "ricer" and I didn't want anything to do with it again.
2. There were enough hamburgers for each westerner to have two hamburgers each. As the meal progressed, I remember all of us westerners feeling quite generous after giving the beggars (I think there were five of them) a whole burger as well as bits of some people's second burger that was unwanted. I mean, they're just beggars and they got a whole burger! (boy oh boy, this is getting really embarrassing) Then the mathematical venue in my head started to kick in (it didn't really need to work a whole lot) and it calculated: 2 burgers per capita VS 1/4 burgers per capita. Hmmm.
So I thought a little bit. I've always considered myself a generous person. I hope and believe that if God ever asked me to give someone something I had, that I'd be willing to do it. But am I really doing justice to how generous I could be? Am I tearing off a corner of my second burger to give to someone, and puffing myself up for doing so? It's certainly food for thought, pun intended.
However, the one thing that impacted me the most was the "World Awareness Meal" he did on tuesday. You may be familiar with these, I'd done one before, but the basic concept is that everyone pulls a piece of paper that puts them in categories: The rich, the typical westerner, the not so rich yet not entirely poor (rice and beans), the poor (just rice, with "dirty" water), and the beggars. As you may be able to guess, these categories get fed very different meals. The rich got something, I don't even know what, but it was really nice. The westerners had hamburgers, chips, and fries, followed by brownies and ice cream. The rest were already explained, with the one condition being that you couldn't beg from the rich.
After the meal, we had a short processing time, and I realized there were several things I could learn from it.
1. Whenever I read stories about people who go from rags to riches and are now living a high class life with ten cars, blah, blah, blah, I've always been confused. Did they forget where they came from? Don't they remember all the people they grew up with that are most likely in the same situation the were born into?
Last year, during my training, we did a world awareness meal. I was one of the rice people. We had eaten rice for breakfast and lunch that day, and despite liking rice and liking the way it was made, I certainly wasn't extremely excited about rice again.
This year, I got a lucky draw and was a westerner. After I pulled my slip of paper and saw I was at the westerner's table, I immediately started thinking some things that I'm almost embarrassed, well, I am embarrassed to share. My first thoughts were, "Okay, I'm looking forward to this meal. But what if the beggars don't give me a little space? What if they overstep their boundaries as beggars and become thieves? How will I keep them away and be able to enjoy the meal as well?" Yup, that's pretty embarrassing.
So back to my first thought on rags to riches. Maybe they remember their past all too well. Maybe, the only way to forget (or try to forget) those bad memories is to distance yourself from that situation. I knew all too well what it was like to be a "ricer" and I didn't want anything to do with it again.
2. There were enough hamburgers for each westerner to have two hamburgers each. As the meal progressed, I remember all of us westerners feeling quite generous after giving the beggars (I think there were five of them) a whole burger as well as bits of some people's second burger that was unwanted. I mean, they're just beggars and they got a whole burger! (boy oh boy, this is getting really embarrassing) Then the mathematical venue in my head started to kick in (it didn't really need to work a whole lot) and it calculated: 2 burgers per capita VS 1/4 burgers per capita. Hmmm.
So I thought a little bit. I've always considered myself a generous person. I hope and believe that if God ever asked me to give someone something I had, that I'd be willing to do it. But am I really doing justice to how generous I could be? Am I tearing off a corner of my second burger to give to someone, and puffing myself up for doing so? It's certainly food for thought, pun intended.
The HDC Olympics
Here is a clip from our HDC Olympic video. Continue to check this post in the future as I will continue to post clips.
The first event: Short Track Van Racing- Contestants advance through heats and semi finals in a 5 lap race. (not every race is shown, just highlights and the finals)
Saturday, November 8, 2008
The Catapult
Here is a short video showing the product of Ryan and I being a bit bored during our day off. Enjoy. I think this is working now, so if it wasn't before, try again
I don't know if this is working or not. I apologize if it isn't (or rather blogger should apologize for its many mishaps during my attempts to upload videos)
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