Big Thank You

To all of you who wrote a little something to Trina, you're allstars. Trina loved it. We had some Burundian Drummers on the beach, and ate some fish and beef Brochets. Trina really enjoyed her birthday, and now she's back to work just as intense as ever, only now she's thirty. I hope you all are enjoying the season, it's been so hot here that I've been sweating with the fan on. I'm hoping for some sweet thunderstorms, and rain to cool thinks off. It's not looking very likely.

Banctification: The art of backwards sanctification.

Banctification: The art of backwards sanctification.

This one is for Doug, the champion among friends here in the heart of Africa. I’ve not been that graceful these past weeks in my attitude, and work. At times I feel like there’s nothing good in me. My patience seems to be at an all time low... daily trials, defeating me. I ended up mentioning to my buddy Doug... that I don’t think I’m being “sanctified,” and if I am, I’m being sanctified backwards. Doug, like me is tired of his faults lately. But, he can turn his stuff into a sweet song, on the guitar, and somehow he always takes the higher road. I told him maybe I’ll write a song, or make a video on the art of “backwards sanctification.” Well, I already have more than enough video work, and I’m horrible at writing songs. Although, my covenant friend Jonathan and I both enjoy the song “it’s just me, and the 3 of you” which is a 3 chord banger I wrote almost a year ago, (you can actually see the music video of the song here:

http://www.sermonspice.com/search?fpage=1&q=small%20group%20music%20video just click on the little icon with me and my guitar, which reminds me, the video features my sweet martin guitar and a pitcher of milk!)

its about a guy, Clay Fitz who starts his own “small group.” Aside from that song/music video, which really is kind of a joke, I can’t do music. So here is a little diddy, for Doug.

Am I getting better, Or am I getting worse?
I feel a lot more selfish now, than I did at first.
Though I’m getting older, my inner man’s renewed.
But then I think unto myself “where is this inner dude?”
All I feel is anger, depressiveness, and doubt.
Where is this mighty inner man, and what is he about?
Why won’t this inner man respond to my daily trials,
Forward seems one step I take, then backtrack several miles.
It’s me who fights police, when they stop me for no reason.
Inner man should then come out and start some people pleasin’.
But alas, he never does, he just leaves me to myself,
And takes with him those saintly acts, I’ve only read about.
Daily is the grind I work, and hourly the sinning.
The race I run against this man, I everyday am winning.

The sin of self within my being is worse than rush-hour traffic,
The inner man seems weak and small when faced with Sethly tactics.
Too much Seth doeth fill my life, and man does it sure suck.
The crap I fight and feel each day could pack a semi truck.
So then I have to ask myself: Am I being sanctified?
The things about myself I hate, are lavishly applied;
seasoning my words and deeds and, woe my daily life.
It doesn’t ever seem to me, I’m “fighting the good fight.”
I know the one, who when he lies will speak “his native tongue,”
My daily life can often seem, like some sweet song he’s sung.
Though the songs I weekly sing are to his enemy,
I think this liar’s found some sweet and mighty friend in me.
One day I hope and I do pray to meet this inner man.
If he has daily won in life, I’ll gladly shake his hand.
Until that day should I believe, I’m inwardly renewed…
Grace, and, Faith the fight I live until my flesh subdued.



So there it is Doug. Banctification. Possibly a video to come if something comes to mind.

Trina's Birthday

It's that time of year. Trina is super excited about her birthday (Dec 19th). Of course I didn't plan well, so I'll be doing my shopping in Burundi. I hope to find something... yet this is a bit of a challenge, I'm open to suggestions. One of those birthdays that is five days before christmas... tragic! I've met, I think, two people with these types of "birthdays close to Christmas," they had a venting empathy session in front of me, which really caused me to ponder the importance of family planning. I decided after listening to these Christmas babies talk about their hardships, that nobody should give birth during the month of December. It seems like that is the best solution to the situation. I hope everyone is having a great holiday season thus far, and hopefully you're not giving birth. Tangent. I have yet to do any Christmas shopping myself, but I don't expect there will be any sales or last minute shopping rushes to deal with this year. The only Christmas music I hear is Sara's new Bebo Christmas CD, and some mixed Christmas CD that Trina has. Somehow, Trina found a fake christmas tree (I don't know how she does stuff like that), which the new cat keeps destroying. Cat's cannot resist Christmas Trees, which brings up another situation: cat's should not celebrate Christmas. They simply don't "get it" as it were. If you happen to have a cat, and you want to get a Christmas tree, you have a critical decision to make. You can either send the cat away, on some sort of "holiday away from Christmas," or simply refuse to put up a Christmas tree. But the two cannot coexist. It's a recipe for disaster. Fact: More cats break their legs on Christmas than any other holiday. Have you ever seen a cat in a cast? I have. They look ridiculous. A co-worker brought her cat to work last year after the cat broke it's leg messing around on the Christmas tree. If there is such thing as a "cat heaven" I bet the place would be full of Christmas trees, and cats could play in the trees freely without fear of injury. Also, there would probably be lots of catnip, and milk... and mice. Wow. That's a weird place. So back to Trina, if Pat and Rakel, have any suggestions on what to do about Trina's birthday, I'm listening. What did you guys do? I always imagined that you didn't celebrate birthdays. I've never been much of a birthday celebrator. If you happen to be one of those december birthday folk, feel free to leave angry comments. Or possibly you like having your birthday in December... I don't know. I suppose it's possible.

AIDS AWARENESS DAY

Another strange awakening… I have been aware of the disease since seventh grade. I know, a little late. But I remember a kid in my English class doing a report on AIDS, and I was a bit nervous thinking it was going to wipe out the human race. He was a dramatic kid and he told the class that likely one or more of us in the class had the disease and didn't know it. I looked at the teacher after he said that, and she looked at all of us, as if trying to guess which one of us had AIDS. I’ve remained fairly distant from learning or doing much in the way of "making myself privy" to global AIDS crisis, I'm no Bono. AIDS was a part of the world, but not part of my world. Now, again... I come to Africa, and all the sudden it’s AIDS day, and I completely forgot about the fact that I was supposed to shoot a sort of commercial/promo for Burundians. I get a call four days before reminding me of the commitment I made a month ago at a get together type soiree at our house. No problem, four days, is plenty of time to plan. First time making a video completely in a foreign language though… I didn’t work that out. Just decided to start videoing. I brought a assistant with me, and we were scheduled to attend three events. Two conferences. The first ever conferences in Burundi of a Network of Churches that all decided they were going to encourage their congregations and communities to get tested, as well as work alongside anyone who tested positive. I was also going to get tested, and so was my Burundian camera assistant… and all the pastors who are a part of this network to encourage testing… they were also supposed to get tested (though first they laughed at the idea of themselves getting tested, the kid in my seventh grade class would have reported it as "nervous laughter"). Initially they agreed to make their results public (which I thought was cool) then they took a vote at the conference and decided that they would not go public with their results (which I thought was normal and lame, but the kid in my seventh grade class would of called it "telling"). I don’t have to tell you AIDS is one thing. But getting tested… it’s a whole other situation with pride, and well, life on the line. Today, the president of Burundi was supposed to get tested, and I was supposed to video the whole process. I show up two hours early... Lame, but I did get a great position. Only to find all the rules would be broken. There was a red carpet from the street to the clinic (which I remember thinking was really weird, thematic maybe as blood is red, but I kept thinking, red carpet affairs I always associated with award ceremonies). I figured, nobody but the star of the show… the major players... are going to be on this carpet. The Carpet forked to two separate entrances to the clinic. And there was a guy who was constantly sweeping the red carpet.I set up my camera right at the fork, getting a perfect view of the Presidents entrance into the facility and the sweeper guy. I do remember thinking “it’s not gonna be this easy… this probably won’t work.” I was right: 4 other tv journalist, cut off my shot completely along with 5 photo journalists, and then an entourage of Presidential people. The wall of journalist blocked any hope of a decent shot then literally crashed into my camera set up. I released my camera from the tripod and jumped into the chaos of following the president. It was super lame. I was getting elboed, grabbed, pushed against walls, two journalist had no problem hitting me, not super hard... but there was no love. One journalist crawled on all fours to get in front of me then stood up knocking my camera away, and then he blatantly stole the shot that should have been mine. I was officially ticked. I’m bigger than all the journalist. I start shouldering them out of the way. I cut them off, and box them out. Only, I stop shooting just to accomplish my football like moves. I miss two video opportunities. I see the President duck into the testing room, I follow, I’m the first camera man in, the others I’m blocking behind me in a small hallway, one of them is pulling my shirt preventing me from going forward, and this shirt was my favorite shirt so I didn't want to rip it, I just swung my free arm back at him in vain… they’re hissing at me grabbing my belt, one of them is trying the crawl move on me. I check him perfectly, yet concerned enough not to destroy his camera, I still had some class. Then all the sudden, a security guy grabs me and pins me against the wall, allowing all the other journalists to get their shots. President walks right by me, he even smiles at me. All the journalist follow him. I miss every conceivable shot. The president chose not to get tested (which didn’t surprise me at all) then he gave a speech about how Burundi needs tons of money. The president video plan, didn’t work out at all. Not even closePlus, it was going to take too long for me to get tested because, about 100 people signed up before me, and I didn’t feel like waiting a few hours. I did end up going back in to video some people getting tested if only to get some footage of something, and I think I might be able to put a little diddy together… but my experience of AIDS AWARENESS DAY… even though I’m in Africa in a Country dealing with an AIDS crisis… had virtually nothing to do with AIDS. It was like an M. Night Shyamalan film: “Signs” for example, "Signs" has aliens in it, and most people thought it was a bad alien movie. Actually the movie is about faith, and everything happening for a reason… and Aliens are the backdrop for telling the faith vs chance story. AIDS Awareness day happened to be the backdrop for the real drama, the fight of the 5 journalist, who chased down a President of a small no name African Country who was supposed to set an example by getting tested for AIDS. Well he didn’t, and I wasted 30 minutes of tape and two and a half hours of time in the Burundian sun brawling with a couple a journalist I hope I’ll never see again (one of them asked me for a job as I was leaving...I wanted to punch him, instead I said "no, you can't have a job with me, buddy). I still plan on getting tested, maybe sometime next week. I’ll video it, and make my results public, setting a good example for… I don’t really know, maybe Trina. Not sure.