Cry of the Gecko

Rock Bottom

2011-07-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. - J.K. Rowling

I just ran into this quote today on FB and it just jumped off the page and into my face. Although I can’t confirm that it actually comes from J.K. Rowling, it immediately resonated with me, causing me to pause and do some deep musing. Impulsively, I wanted to comment immediately to the person who posted it on FB because it evoked such emotion in me but I hesitated because I didn’t know if I disagreed or agreed with it. Granted the quote is more of statement on Rowling’s own experience and perspective, than anything else, but I was fascinated in just how much meaning this quote had packed away in it for me, but….. at the same time I feared that those who don’t think a “bottom” experience or something similar will ever happen to them just might skim over the great insight of this extremely short but poignant quote. In terms of my own recent experience, this quote is quite relevant and loaded as well, because it talks about hitting bottom and rebuilding from that bottom. I do thank God that my “rock bottom” isn’t as deep as many have experienced, but I am not too far off, having hit the biggest bottom of my entire life: a divorce thereby losing a wife, a household, social standing in the Christian Community, and a vocation (hopefully temporarily). I am very grateful to God that he cared enough to make sure I got the point of what he was trying to teach me, which was about foundations.

The quote begs the question, what is your foundation built upon? Both Bangkok and Phnom Penh are built on swamps. Bangkok is sinking slowly but Phnom Penh seems to have been given a reprieve, probably because it is smaller and they cannot build as many huge sky scrapers. My family used to stay at the Christian Guesthouse in BKK near the Sirkhumvit line in the mid-nineties and during each visit we would notice the markings on the foundation signifying how much the guesthouse sank that year as construction on nearby skyscrapers jarred the earth, causing surrounding buildings to sink. Many of the buildings in BKK have solid foundations but they are sinking and heading toward some sort of bottom. And for many of us, all sorts of circumstances, both within and outside of our control, are constantly jarring our foundations so our foundations are always in some form of being twisting, turned, maligned, and bent out of shape as they sink under the stress of life. Can our foundation survive all the onslaughts?

It has been my observation that most of us who profess the name Jesus think that the day we ‘accepted’ Christ was the day that we instantly had a new foundation poured for our lives. I was once a surveyor and saw firsthand that no foundation for any structure was built in a day. The design and execution took consideration, effort and time. Even before houses were approved to built on a plot of land, the ground had to be tested for percolation, and proper soil structure. But with human lives, our foundations are already well established when we commit ourselves to following Jesus. Not many of us have the option to plan out our foundations from scratch like engineers. Our social soil has already been prepared. And God being God does not remove our existing foundation all at once like pulling the bottom card from a house of cards—causing it all to come down in one big crash. So what we tend to do is enter a slow process of trying to replace the bad parts of a foundation with good parts. I have met people who have bought old log cabins that were built upon four rotten wood pilings holding up the structure on each of the four corners of the cabin. They had to carefully replace each rotting wood piling at a time with concrete pilings so the house did not collapse. Then, they naturally go on to replace the old dry-rotted floor joists and planks, etc, until the house is stable and safe. Metaphorically speaking, when we become Christians, we tend to do the same thing with our world view. What we often forget is that any time during the renovation of our foundation (worldview, spiritual life, etc), fire, wind, rain, tornados, earthquakes and swampy soil can assault that foundation. There is no guarantee anyone will be spared. “In this world you will have tribulation, and the rain falls on the just and the unjust.”

It is perhaps too difficult to ask those of you who have had your foundations crash on “rock bottom” to see this as not always such a bad thing. If and when it happens, there will be little left intact of your old foundation, the one that was patched together to the best of your ability with pieces of scripture, cultural values, and the wisdom of the world. Jesus, speaking to Jews in a Jewish culture, says in the Gospels that the wise man builds his house on solid rock—the rock of Jesus himself and his words. But today as we endeavor to do that, our own thinking, and the teaching and the sermons we hear are so filtered by cultural values that we have little idea what is actually scriptural verses what is cultural. Few of us have been equipped to examine our own values so that we can tell the difference between biblical values and cultural values. We just assume we know when we really don’t. So we set out to obey Jesus, thinking we are building a foundation on solid rock when in fact we are building on the sifting sand of cultural values. But being on rock bottom gives us a unique perspective and position. We can clearly see what has worked and what hasn’t and we can choose the right materials (values, beliefs, perspectives) to rebuild.

Some of us will be afforded the opportunity to sift through the rubble and wreckage and be able to separate those rare pieces of steel and granite (our relationship with Christ, Biblical values, and what transformation that has occurred because of it) that survived the crash, from the flotsam and jetsam that did not. From the crash we can see what survives and why, and we can use that to rebuild from the bedrock of “rock bottom.” For many of us, our foundations are in various stages of neglect, disrepair, or renovation. As time goes on, and life drives us along, we somehow think our foundation needs no ongoing examination or critique, and we think that if we change the oil or add a quart when needed, things will take care of themselves. In my case, the walls and floors of my house started to creek and sag, and show signs of becoming warped because the foundation had serious stress cracks. Instead of examining the foundation and addressing the unseen causes, I tried to throw a new coat of paint on the walls, and put new linoleum, tiles or rug on the floors and address the symptoms. I wasted a lot time on superfluous home repair while the foundation was in the process of sinking and crumbling. When it finally came down, it crashed close enough to “rock bottom” to allow me to begin to build upon the same very same bedrock of “the” rock bottom.

Although I have never read Harry Potter, I love the quote because when I muse upon it, I end up in a place where I realize that hitting the bottom as hard as I did was a gift. I still feel the intense emotional pain of rejection, loneliness, living in isolation, tragic loss, and standing naked in the darkness of uncertainty, but as I stand in the midst of the wreckage called my life, I now know that with God’s help I have a chance to actually begin to rebuild from scratch, something all most none of us are afforded at the time of conversion. In a way, although the pain is still fresh and the road is difficult, I don’t have to limp along anymore in this life relating to people and making life decisions based on a patch work of values and beliefs that are an indecipherable blend of cultural and biblical values. You may spot me limping along for sure, but only because the wounds from my crash are still tender.

Brian

Cauldron of the Ia Drang Valley

2011-04-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

His faded olive green uniform was tattered and ripped to shreds by the saw grass and other brush. He had too many cuts, abrasions, welts and bruises to count. Leeches, mosquitoes, and fire ants had all left their marks. Up to this point, avoiding vipers and scorpions was successful, but avoiding heat rash and jungle rot was not. For days now, he limped along the semi-camouflaged trail, seeing signs of no one, favoring his left leg as it was too painful to put much pressure on his ankle which was either broken or badly sprained. He dared not take off his jungle boot where his foot hurt not only from the fall down the ridge, but from jungle rot. He stopped, sat on a rock high enough to make a chair of sorts and aired out the other foot and boot. He wanted a cigarette badly and said to no one in particular, “Fuck it. Just fuck it! I’m six days out, and barely a fly by to look for me.” He was completely alone except for pesky mosquitoes and fires ants. The brass forgot about him and left him for dead. With all the beau coup movement in the area, and from what he could hear, everyone was catching the shit, everywhere. One lost and lonely infantryman was not high on their priority.

The NVA strung a mine up into tree and let the point man pass before they detonated it. He, himself was blown off the trail and tumbled down hill for a long time, bouncing off trees and rocks until he lay still in a stream at the bottom of a ravine. Occasional single shots up the ridge signaled the demise of what was left of his squad. Fear and rage left him days earlier and now his only companion was a burning anger. He was angry at himself, his company, the enemy who slaughtered his squad, and at God for dumping him into hell alive rather than dead. It would have been so much easier if he had died with his squad. He was not looking forward to a slow torturous death.

Over the last few days, he had been moving slow and could be easily have been tracked but he was pretty sure he wasn’t being followed at all. He lost his helmet, rucksack, and weapon on his skid down the hill. All he had was an empty canteen, a knife and his side arm with a full clip. He was soaked and still shivering from last night’s rain and trying to catch the rays of the early morning sun which were breaking through the triple canopy jungle. The sun felt warm and good as he sat on a semi flat rock. Again, he wondered what good it was to be alive. He checked his side-arm. He worked the bolt back and forth, and found it seemed to be functioning well. He remembered the letter from his ex-wife in his shirt pocket so he pulled it out to read it again, but the rain caused the ink to run making it unreadable. He crumpled it and tossed it into the bush. He had it pretty well memorized it anyway. She needed more money for her and the kid. Wasn’t that always the case and wasn’t he always giving all he could as it was? “Fucking ingrate,” he thought. He regretted his lack of investment in raising his child and was again kicking himself in the ass and cursing his family for what they had become. What made him sign up for his third tour, anyway? His mind worked its way around to his 13 year old son who he bent over backwards for but who threw shit right back into his face, and rubbed it in. Tears of frustration and sadness came to his eyes as he realized that neither of them missed him, or could care less that they might never see him again alive. Was he that much of an incorrigible asshole? More tears welled in the noncom’s eyes, smearing the mud that was caked on parts of his face.

For 30, he was in great shape but with his foot, no food, and little sleep at night he was weakening fast. Why bother going on anyway? “Nothing at home for me there anyway.” He was way past hoping his marriage could be restored and his son had didn’t care enough as to write one letter over the past 2.5 years.

In the early sixties, he had been pastoring a small church in Pennsylvania, and things were seemingly steady between him and his wife until the past year. She was getting sick of the low salary and always having to scrimp for this and that. After a particular ugly fight, his wife began talking about divorce. Although he didn’t want that whatsoever, he didn’t really blame her because some of the baggage he carried from being raised by an alcoholic father began to come to the surface along with other resentments that were stacked up like cord wood in his life. His unhealthy past injected toxins into the way he handled their marriage relationship. She was sick of him and his dysfunctions and she had realized that being the wife of a pastor was not all it was cracked up to be, even though that is what she wanted all her life. She hated life in a fish bowl, and going through all the bullshit pleasantries that were required of her. She found out soon that she really didn’t even like her husband; she fell in love with a fairy tale. There was little in the way of counseling in those days, but they met with a pastor from a Presbyterian church out of town, but in Henry’s devastated state, he didn’t seem to be able to make much progress, and Sonya had really already made up her mind. He was served with the papers and instead of fighting it, signed immediately but not without much regret and sadness. His church immediately asked him to resign. It was such a blow that he began to drink in secret, and went into a deep depression and just could not get back on his feet, other than a construction job here or there, or driving truck. None of this was as stimulating as preparing sermons, leading Bible studies, preaching, counseling and being a respected member of the community. He wanted to teach, but no schools at that time would take a divorced defrocked preacher. He hated his ‘new normal,’ a state of mind that was extremely uncomfortable, full of uncertainty about the future, and close to hopeless. He often felt exhausted, agitated, irritable and distracted, and wondered about the truth of the verse in the Bible that said God would never give someone more than they could handle. He had a hard time even keeping simple jobs. He was gossiped about, branded and ostracized by the town folk, so one afternoon in a drunken stupor he enlisted in the army and requested to be sent to Vietnam. “Fuck ‘em all,” he thought as he signed on the dotted line. “That’ll show ‘em.” He realized years later, that it didn’t show anyone anything but that he was an idiot. As pastor, he knew that loss is a part of life, and everyone sooner or later experiences loss, big or small, but it is how one responds to loss that counts. Sgt. John Henry responded to the loss of his wife, family and ministry in ways that he surely would have counseled parishioners against. Yet, he lost his moorings somewhere amidst the shock and the grief that followed. A myriad of emotions of mourning, sadness, anger, betrayal, and rage began to pile up. This was sheer weighty darkness, he thought. Where was God in all this? I can’t see him in this darkness!

Now here he was, all alone somewhere in a South East Asian Jungle near the Cambodian border. Three years ago he was walking with God in a life that made sense, a life that wasn’t perfect but a life where he experienced some levels of joy and happiness. Now it was July of 1967, and he was a soldier lost in a tropical jungle in the Vietnamese Central Highlands who couldn’t bring himself to do anything but curse the name of the God who allowed him to end up in such a cluster fuck. “What did I do to deserve this? Why am I being punished so harshly? So much for a God of love and forgiveness,” he thought. He remembered those carefree days on the campus of his Bible College where students encouraged each other with scripture verses, avoided demerits, did work details, played guitars on the grass, and went out to spread the gospel from door to door on weekends. “Was that real life? Was that normal? What is normal-jungle rot and someone trying to kill you? No one knows God until they’ve walked through their share of shit up to their eyeballs,” he thought.

“Hi, my name is John Henry, and God has a perfect plan for your life. Just admit you are a sinner and Jesus will forgive you. Would you like to invite Jesus into your heart and have a happy and prosperous life? If so, just say this little prayer with me……what kind of bull shit was that? Who of us had any idea that suffering was to be included in the deal. It wasn’t even in the fine print of gospel tracts he handed out. Perseverance and suffering were not even alluded to as part and parcel of the program. No clue that being invited to follow Jesus meant to yoke up with his suffering. But I’d surely trade those days of not being able to walk on the grass, or chew gum in glass, or staying 6 inches away from a girl, for this crock of gook shit any day, even if it was some strange sub-culture of Christianity. Damn, I need a smoke.

He sat there stewing in his predicament. Maybe he would blow his own brains out after all, not giving God, the NVA or Charlie the satisfaction of doing it for him. That was the one thing in his life he did have control over. He stood and slowly made his way down the trail, sharp pains shooting through his foot. What was left of his water soaked uniform was being replaced by sweat. White sweat lines permeated most of his tattered fatigues like waves leaving lines along shore where they deposited bleached seaweed. Soon, a cornfield appeared off the trail and he stopped to relieve himself. He filled up an entire leaf with his urine until it folded in half and dumped the contents right back into his lap. Shit! Even this was a slap in the face, he thought as he plucked a few unripe ears of corn to eat. He saw some banana plants and sugar cane growing nearby as well. Gosh, this corn tasted good. Too bad they had to fertilize it with human shit. With the smell of human feces in his nostrils, he also recognized the smell of a cook fire coming from a nearby village, so someone was around-just his luck to run into village that was supported by the NVA. But after all, this was the Central Highlands and the Ho Chi Minh Trail area.

Death had no longer become a big issue for him- he just didn’t want it to be long and torturous at the hands of an enemy. His Karma was dismal-just look at his predicament, so why have hope? His father was a loser, his wife screwed him over, his son could care less about him, and God stabbed him in the back a long time ago. He glommed on to a few father figures at Bible College who ended up proving to be rather shallow and legalistic. Too many heavy resentments plagued him. Why go on? But he was pissed. Maybe he’d go on just to throw it in their faces. Someone obviously had it out for him and they could care less if he died alone in some god-awful place so far from home. Rage and resentment was the only thing that kept him motivated to survive.

He stooped down at the side of the trail to wash his face in some rain water that collected in a water buffalo’s hoof print. “What the fuck,” he muttered as he drank out of another indentation. His reflection in the hoof print caused him pause. “Who the hell is that? A week’s beard growth covered a face that was caked in mud accompanied by pus ridden mosquito and ant bites, not to mention dried saliva in the corners of the his mouth. “Is this me?” he gasped? He thought to himself, “Who expects to survive three tours anyway?” The odds of survival after each tour plummet. And why should I be the only one of Company B, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division to survive? Does that mean God has a plan for me, or is this some cruel cosmic joke? In spite of all his bluster, he sort of hoped God would show up, but his recent life circumstances convinced him he was on someone’s shit list.

Sgt. Henry was still ensconced in one of the 13 valleys of the Ia Drang and less than ten clicks from the Cambodia border. He had some rugged terrain to negotiate through the NVA, the Khmer Rouge, and the Khmer Viet Minh territory, let alone avoiding air strikes on enemy positions by his own navy or Air Force before he was anywhere near safety. Unless, of course, he ran into some of his own by chance. If that happened, he just might believe there was a God.

Darkness tends to set in early in South East Asia, especially in the valleys so Sgt. Henry decided to leave the flat low land trail and make his way westward toward Cambodia which meant climbing back up the steep ridge. The flat ground he had been walking on led north and to the east, straight into Injun territory. He grimaced at every step as the pain in his swollen foot was intercepted by his brain. Not long in to his ascent, he spotted a small rock outcropping he could crawl under to keep himself semi dry for the night as the evening monsoon was approaching quickly. He poked a stick around to dislodge any hidden vipers, lizards, geckos or scorpions. Satisfied, he peppered his nest with leaves, and then dragged a few branches and sticks in front of the opening, rearranging it so that he could remain partially concealed. The rain came in torrents, but he managed to stay somewhat dry, but sleep was elusive because of the constant throbbing in his ankle and the itching of the infected bites. Feverish dreams came and went. He dreamt he was about to make love to his ex wife on one his furloughs in Thailand, and before they could, she disappeared and he spent the rest of his dream trying to track her down in Bangkok, only to learn that she was on the lam with another man. The dream seemed so real it nauseated him, but it certainly wasn’t the first time he had the dream, nor he felt, would it be the last. He was sure of that. He dreams again that his wife was yelling at him on a public street corner at the top her lungs, berating him for being such a poor husband. God even seemed to thwart him in his dreams.

He woke up once again to see the sky had cleared. Fire bases were still thundering in the distance and exchanging artillery with the NVA. His foot throbbed more intensely and he could not get comfortable but at least he was dry. To pass time, he tried to think of one thing that happened for every year of his life. He could only go back to the age of three where he remembered the time his mother had taken him to a beach, and time his younger brother and sister were born, and when he entered school. He remembered how his early grade school teachers singled him out as white trailer trash and took advantage of every opportunity to the let the class know of his humble origins. He was convinced he was a loser from the start. His brother and sister fared no better until he became a decent baseball player in junior high and his family gained some respect in the eyes of the faculty. He remembered in junior high when his father crushed his thumb in a pulp mill accident. This changed the family so much that daily shouting matches became the norm and his father was falling down drunk by the time he got home from school. He still continued to attend church with his mother, brother, and sister which proved to be the calm in the storm of his young life. As an adult, every time he smelled the sulfur process to break down wood fiber, it made him ill as it reminded him of his youth and his father’s job at the pulp mill.

The only other stable things in his life were his Baseball Coach and Scoutmaster. His Pastor seemed more comfortable ministering to widows and the elderly in the church but at least he had a respected youth group leader, who was always getting in trouble by taking Jesus too seriously. After school Henry stacked lumber at a local mill, caught for the baseball team in High School, and was involved in Scouts. He struggled to keep his grades at a ‘C’ average and had no plans for any other college accept maybe attending a two year Bible College upstate. His father could not tolerate this idea. These days, his father could not tolerate much since he lost his job at the mill because of his drinking. No one in the house had gone without frequent beatings. He had often been beaten for protecting his mother from his father. He was getting big now, a junior in high school and it wouldn’t be long before he let his father have it with all his fury and rage.

He woke suddenly with the noise of diesel truck engines struggling under intense loads. Clouds of diesel smoke enveloped his make shift lean to. Truck after truck after truck rumbled hundreds of feet above him, shaking the very ground where he lay, dislodging the rocks and blow down around him. Visions of home beatings, his pleading mother, and domestic violence began to fade, replaced by a feeling of imminent danger. He thought to himself, “Where the hell am I”? He soon began to recognize his make-shift shelter. No longer could the fire bases be heard belching out their salvos over the din of the trucks grunting up the switch back of which he had no clue existed a few hundred feet above him. He was thirsty, his mouth was dry, and he had to urinate. He unbuttoned his fatigues and relieved himself through the thatch covering he set up. As he looked about in the moon lit sky, he noticed rivulets of water streaming down the sides of the outcropping. There was no chance of being seen if he kept low, so he helped himself to the fresh rain water cascading down the sides of the rock to quench his thirst.

His fogged up luminous watched was showing 4:30 am. He was wide awake and felt he had been up most of the night but he remembered dreaming so he must have fallen asleep at some point. The trucks began getting fewer and farther between as they headed toward the Cambodia border which was the way he wanted to go as well. Sure would be nice to walk on that truck route rather than bush whack, he thought. As first light dawned, he found a sturdy sapling and hacked it off with his knife and made a walking stick of sorts. Walking was agonizing and he cursed God for not affording him the smallest break. Am I God’s child? Or was I God’s child? What am I now, an outcast? I can do this without God, since HE can’t be bothered to show up here in any way!

Before he crested the ridge onto the truck route, he noticed that a framework of branches had been set up and a canopy had been erected on top to maintain cover over the mountainous road so that it would not be picked up by aerial photographs. Gosh, how labor intensive that must be-maybe that’s why Charlie is not losing this war yet. They’re real that smart. This is no Maginot line strategy. He hobbled over the berm and looked both ways up and down the switch back. Nobody seemed to be bringing up the rear yet, so he walked in the ruts made by the tire tracks. Intermittent spots where springs were bubbled out of the upper side of the embankment were wet but remedied by box culverts or an arrangements of logs and branches placed in the soupy areas so the trucks wouldn’t become mired down which was apparently exactly what happened to the second of the last trucks going up the mountain. Sgt. Henry made his way over the embankment and up a small rise where he could just about see NVA soldiers forcing a small group of Montagnards at rifle point to push the bogged down vehicle out of the hole. It must have been the Montagnards who unloaded the dozens crates of ammunition to lighten the truck. He stood there mesmerized as exertion, fatigue and starvation began to catch up with him. With no plan as to where to go from here, he turned around and ran right into a tribe of Indians with bows, arrows and spears, all trained on him. “What do these fuckin’ headhunters want with me,” he sighed. How easy the word “fuck” rolled off his tongue these days as opposed to a time long ago on a Bible college campus.

Trussed up, and led along by a rope to their camp, Henry tried bravely not to cry out in pain as his injured foot stubbed roots, logs and rocks along way. “God took a big dump on me and there is no way this story will ever have a happy ending,” he thought. After a few agonizing kilometers, they reached camp and he was untied. They had taken his knife and side arm and made no gesture to return them but they did make him sit down on a mat near a cooking fire and encouraged him to eat some rice porridge in an old sawed off gourde which he was more than glad to do. He was offered some rice wine in another gourde which went straight to his head but helped him to forget about the pain in his ankle for a while. While these tribal people knew some French, he did not, so they had to communicate by nods, grunts and hand gestures. He gestured for another bowl of rice and was not refused. Many of the tribal woman, young and old, dressed in long grass skirts. Some of them were topless, and they gaped at him and smiled through toothless grins. He grimaced as he tried to smile back. Who were these people? Timpoun, Jarai, Rade, Brao, Krung, Hmong? What did it matter, anyway, no one seemed to speak English. The women cleaned him up, took off his boots, blanched at the odor of his feet but washed and dried them anyway. Everything in camp smelled like smoke from cooking fires so his own body order didn’t offend him. They kept smiling and cackling the whole time as if they were taking care of some domesticated animal in a zoo. He spotted one old woman with sagging breasts nursing a child and in between nursing, she would give the child a puff from her pipe. What kind of shit was this? Most women smoked pipes or chewed beetle nut, some of which they gave him to stave off the pain of his foot. It tasted strange and bitter in his mouth and made his teeth feel like they were all wearing little wool sweaters. He had to spit a lot, but again, the rice wine and beetle nut it made the pain in his foot subside.

He spent the day with the tribal people, not doing much but resting. The Fire Bases were active again in the early evening as the sun began to set and he heard fire fights far away. He knew his company was history but other Americans units were somewhere close by. It began to rain so he took cover in a hut on stilts. Warm, fed and dry, but with his foot still throbbing in pain although lessened due to the rice wine and beetle nut, he fell fast asleep. He dreamt again of his wife, and how they met at Bible College. He woke with a start. Gosh! He gasped, as he thought back to the first time he met Sonya- he remembered never feeling an attraction so powerful in his life. He was amazed with how that chemistry could feel so real just after a vivid dream, even though he hated her now for what she done to his life, with the divorce and all. In Bible School, she was all he could think about. She was rather tall, very pretty with long dark hair, beautiful perfect white teeth, and she knew her Bible. They would often study together under the old massive white oak tree down near the stream, eat meals together, and he would spend holidays or school breaks at her house with her family who loved him. Although they were seen as the “Christian poster couple” on campus, and were both Resident Advisers, they broke a few rules but did their best to be chaste. During the second year though, he began to realize the Bible school was rather legalistic and its philosophy of ministry was rather irrelevant to what Jesus would have done in their contemporary culture. He fondly remembered his youth pastor who secretly admired Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, and how his view of the Bible was one that transformed culture and confronted systemic injustices. He was told America had no systemic injustice and just did what they said to do on door to door ministry, but felt bad because he knew at times he was being persecuted for being a jerk, rather than a true Jesus follower. The more deeply he thought about these things, the more he realized that those in authority purposely confused obedience to God with obedience to rules around the campus, like no mustaches/sideburns, no hair below the collar, no wearing jeans, not being out after curfew, etc. At one point early on, he wanted to emulate the directors and teachers and wanted to be just like them until he got close enough to see how their personal lives were a mess. They certainly weren’t very much like Jesus, though they voted Republican and hated gays like Jesus would have.

The first summer he was invited to stay and direct a camping program, which he accepted so he could be close to Sonya. One Saturday afternoon, he and his assistant walked over to the camp admin building to turn in some receipts for a lean to they were building on the mountain and then went back to their cabin. Not long after, there was a knock on their door. It was the two older men from admin. “Hey, you two, did you see any money? $800 just went missing after you two left. Do you mind if we check your cabin?” Being subservient types, John Henry and his assistant Will, told them they didn’t mind. Dugan and Hart had them wait outside while they went in to ransack their stuff. When they found nothing, they returned to tell the two program directors they were confined to their cabin. An hour later or two later, Dugan and Hart came back to tell them they found the money under some loose papers in their own office and they were free to carry on with their business. No apologies, no nothing-another stab in the back that went unnoticed at the time, but went deep down to the soul over time.

Henry worked all week long directing a camping program on the Bible college campus and drove over 3 hours on Friday night down south to run a youth group every Friday night. On Saturday he did outreach with the youth group, and preached on Sunday morning and Sunday evening. Often he would return back to camp exhausted on midnight on Sunday night. At 6 a.m. Monday morning was a scheduled Bible Study for camp leaders which was led by George, the camp director. All program directors were required to attend. Sometimes if Henry had a really late night, he would skip it and sleep in which angered George who thought his words were on par with scripture and shouldn’t be missed. At the end of the camp season on the last Monday morning devotion, George, the camp director, handed out booklets where he signed each of them. In Henry’s, he wrote; “Dear John Henry, now you can finally get it over with and go home and get married!” Oh, how this stung! All the work he’d put into the camp ministry and into the little country church down south, and this was the thanks he got. This insult went to the core of his being. Who are these assholes with the ministries of discouragement? They are nothing like the Jesus my youth group leader spoke of. Sonya, still very much loyal to the organization and ministry, could not empathize with Henry over his feeling of being burned by those in power and felt that he was becoming somewhat rebellious.

Another incident occurred that next winter. It was below zero and he was supposed to drive some visiting professors back to the airport a- good three hours away. His classes ended at 11:45 am and he would have no time for lunch in order to get the Bible College’s guests to the airport on time. The bell rang, and he trotted uphill to the snow covered trail that ran along and across the power lines to the garage area where all the buses and vans were parked. His van was blocked in by two other vans so he got three sets of keys and moved the first two vans. Then his van wouldn’t start. He was already late from moving the first two vans and his guests were getting nervous and fidgety, complaining about the time. By himself, no one in the garage offered to venture out in the zero degree weather to help him, he jumped his van, and put the other two back in their slots. He pulled up in front of the garage, entered the garage to fetch his guests and was proceeded to be ripped a new asshole buy Mr. Gushee, the garage manager who yelled, “ Why are you so late, you’ll never get these guest to the airport, what is wrong with you?” Henry was seething because the garage staff was well aware of the possibility of the vans not starting and could have gotten things set up earlier that morning so there would have been no delays. Henry, a model Bible College student, pushed the medal to the pedal up to 75 miles per hour down the interstate to get the guests to the airport on time. They arrived on time with a few minutes, or so to spare. Henry figured he had about six more months of enduring this petty insanity and the playing of petty power games in the name of Christ. Sonya was not able to see all they hypocrisy that was going on around her, nor could she see that a 40’s type of Christian Fundamentalism was being pushed into the late 70’s which was quite relevant. Even the Jesus people who could relate the gospel well with the new hippie sub-culture were not allowed on campus. Conversations with Sonya were frustrating because she was adamant about sticking to the college party line. She did not even try to think out things on her own. It even felt like she was on their side!!!

Falling back to sleep on the bamboo slatted floor, he wondered why he fell victim to so many people and institutions. He hated to dwell on that the stuff and pushed it way back under with alcohol or adrenaline, such of type he would experience in a fire fight or making his way alone in the bush. Dogs, pigs, geese and chickens were making a racket under the stilted house to the accompaniment of indigenous instruments, but just feeling warm and dry enabled him to drift off with his last thoughts of being a victim of circumstance who had every right to hate the people and institutions that hurt and betrayed him.

Morning came with the sounds of chickens, geese, snorting pigs, and barking dogs underneath his bamboo slat floor. He opened his eyes to see a long haired man in a head band in his fifties who he assumed to be the village chief, sitting across from him, smiling broadly with his filed teeth. He held a map in his hands which must have gone back to the days of the French. The chief pointed out their exact location which was about ten kilos from Cambodian border near the Ia Drang River. Henry remembered a recent briefing, recalling that in the 1960s, the Khmer Rouge forged an alliance with ethnic minorities in Rattanakiri, exploiting tribal people’s resentment of the central government. The Communist Party of Kampuchea headquarters was moved to Rattanakiri in 1966, and hundreds of tribal people joined CPK units. During this period, there was also extensive Vietnamese activity in Rattanakiri. Vietnamese communists had operated in Rattanakiri since the 1940s. He was up shit creek without a paddle or at least wedged between a rock and hard place. He was on the right track before he climbed up the damn hill. At least these tribal people were friendly towards Americans.

He noticed on the old map the location where LZ Mary would be back in ‘65, the remnants of Hal Moore’s command was close and had no hills to climb or triple canopy jungles to traverse, but it also meant cutting through many farming villages in the low lands. And, who knew if there was still an American presence at LZ Mary. So back down the hill and to the east he would go. The tribal chief returned his side arm, knife and gave him the map. They also filled a reed basket with provisions for his trip back down the ridge and through the flat lands. He absentmindedly began to thank God for the small break before he caught himself. A fire fight ensued a few miles down the ridge. Should he make his way there instead? He heard the sound of Huey’s in the distance and the rattling of the M-60’s.

About a click into his walk back toward the switchback, he heard voices and saw a platoon of NVA regulars making their way up the road carrying their wounded on stretchers. He took off the pack basket and lay as flat as possible until they passed. He nearly pissed his pants and he was sure they could hear his heart beating from a hundred feet away. The leaves he lay on were crunchy and he dare not move a muscle when he felt a viper crawl over his legs. Panic surging and adrenaline pumping, he began to whack at it with his walking stick. The NVA were startled, and dropped into a fighting position- the leader motioning each squad leader to flank the area where the sound originated. Henry un-holstered his side arm when a troupe of Montangards nosily exploded out of the jungle making themselves visible to the NVA. They were on a supposed boar hunt, the boar of course being invisible. His bladder relaxed, and his heart sank back into his chest. He hated to admit it, but too many coincidences were happening to be dismissed as random occurrences. Maybe God does have my back!!??? He must, because there is damn little I have with in my control 10 Kilometers from the Cambodian border deep in jungles of the Ia Drang Valley-except blowing my brains out with my Colt 45. He remembered attending AA meetings before he first enlisted, and how he was urged to admit he was unable to manage his own life, and was powerless over alcohol. Now here in the Ia Drang he was unable to manage anything and was powerless over everything. He remembered the next step was to submit to a higher power. He never got all that far in AA because he was soon shipped out to Vietnam and soon forgot the steps when they got in-country as he was one of the first to jump into any weekend pass ordained brouhaha. But now he had nowhere to go and no one to save his sorry ass so he prayed, “Lord, what do you want from me? I gave you my life and even went into ministry to serve you. Then it all went to hell with the divorce. I didn’t want that, and I would have fixed it if I could. Is it my fault that my upbringing fucked me up? If you are there, take me and all the bullshit that comes with me.”

Sgt Henry, looking half Montagnard and half US infantryman, hardly resembled a Platoon leader from the 4thInfantry Division as he slowly made his way back down the ridge leaning heavily on his walking stick. It seemed to take hours get back down to the flats. He knew that following the Ia Drang River would bring him close to LZ Mary but his damn foot couldn’t take much more walking, even on flat ground. Just before leaving the jungle he felft “whump, whump, whump”, and the ground was flying up all around him. He hit the deck with the taste of dirt already in his mouth, and he buried in his head in the moist leaves of the jungle floor waiting for the mortar rounds to stop falling. The acrid smell of cordite hung low in the air. Exhausted, he had fallen asleep right where he lay. He dreamed of his father abusing his mother and siblings. He dreamt of his own beatings. He dreamed of his bad experiences at Bible College, his divorce, his inability find work and a place in this world. He woke up realizing how many times he had been a victim in his life. He was a victim now of this foolish war but then it dawned on him that it was he himself that had enlisted. He began to see all the ways that he accepted the victim role without much forethought or even questioning. Thirsty, he grabbed a gourde full of water in his pack basket and swigged it down. He found and gobbled down handfuls of sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and put the rest back. He felt a bit better, but still a bit like a fool for not realizing he did not have to play the role of a victim. If he has been smarter, he could’ve taken his domestic problems to his scoutmaster, minister or coach. If he was smart, he would have realized the chemistry that attracted him to his wife, was not who she was, it was only who he had conjured her up to be. She was a pretty clone who aspired to the American dream when all he wanted was to forsake everything to serve his Lord. His response to being a victim of the divorce was rather skewed. He shared a large part of the responsibility of the divorce but blamed most of it on his selfish wife. And, indeed it was true he was a victim of those Bible college authorities but how could he continue to relive and nurture those hurts and move on at the same time? He had been stuck for so long. Maybe God did have his back, but could he be forgiven, too? You don’t do three tours without having done a lot of whoring and killing. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” Holy Shit, there it is. “I have to forgive a lot of people who hurt me before I can move on and be forgiven by God!”

Dusk was falling, and he wondered who those mortars were meant for. There had to be Americans around here somewhere but now wasn’t the time to go looking for them. He crawled over to the trunk of a large tropical hardwood and tried to make himself comfortable before the darkness encroached. Spiritual Darkness, psychological darkness, or whatever one calls it, he thought, that is what I have been shrouded with now for three whole frigging years.

Sleep came fitfully. He dreamed of his sweet wife again, dressed in her best Bible School outfit, yelling at him on a public street corner for all to hear. Now she was married to some fancy college graduate business man living the American dream with his 13 year old son. The dream pissed him off but he was not going to hold onto to it. “Let it go-it don’t mean nothing,’” he told himself. Some gecko close by was barking at the top of its lungs while other night jungle insects let go with their cacophony of sounds just to keep him on edge. His watch showed 1:20 a.m. He got out the rice wine and finished it all off, threw the gourde in the jungle, and fell back to sleep.

In and out of sleep, he thought about his most recent tour when he landed in Pleiku on May 18th, 1967 and after a short time at the replacement camp there, he went to the 4th Infantry Division base camp near the town. Pleiku was one of the first areas where U.S. troops engaged North Vietnamese Army Regulars (NVA) and was a constant hot spot throughout the war. 1967 was one of most intense years of the war, seeing a full escalation of over half a million U.S. troops by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Shortly after his arrival, John joined his brigade on the coastal plain of Quang Ngai province, near the town of Duc Pho. The province center town of Quanq Ngai as well as Chu Lai was to the north. He was assigned to a regular reconnaissance platoon of about 40 men. Two medics were assigned to the platoon and his friend Chuck was one of them. On the evening of August 21st, three months into his tour, his platoon was spread out in a rice paddy just outside of a village. Chuck and the other medic had served the platoon hot meals sent out by helicopter. Chuck had just finished putting the last of the insulated food containers back on the helicopter and was walking away when a VC sniper fired a single shot. The bullet passed through Chuck’s left and right thighs, hitting the artery in the left leg. With rapid loss of blood he lost consciousness within a minute. He was evacuated by helicopter quickly to the battalion aid station at the local base camp near Duc Pho. He recalls coming to very briefly while on the helicopter and seeing the other medic smiling down at him, obviously glad to see a sign of life. After initial care at the battalion aid station, he regained consciousness and then was med-evacuated 25 minutes north by chopper to Chu Lai to the 2nd Surgical Hospital where arteries repair surgery was done. He was there for two weeks and then transferred to the Army hospital at Qui Nhon, further south on the coastal plain. After two weeks there, his condition was stable enough for transfer to an Army Hospital in Japan where he spent six weeks before being sent to Madigan Army Hospital at Fort Lewis, Washington.

Chuck had all the luck he thought. He was a strong Christian and knew Krung and Brao languages, and was now out of the eternal mess that John was in. He could’ve used Chuck’s language skills, too, with the tribal people. Chuck also went to Bible School and did fine. “But for me, how did being a pastor prepare me for being out in this world?” Nothing tangible it seemed, and faith only seemed to work with little old ladies and their sore bunions and arthritis. But, again, things were out of control, and if there was a God, he or she had to be in control so he whispered a prayer under his breath that he would be saved in order to start a new life without booze and resentment, and the sense of being the world’s biggest victim.

His biggest problem was how to get used to this new darkness in his life which was new now, for just about three years. He missed the old normal and tried in vain to try to get it back again but the divorce, loss of ministry and career, being ostracized, and now being a combat vet kept him from finding that elusive normalness. He continued to try to skirt around and avoid the darkness and pain in his life. Drugs, woman, and alcohol only relieved it for a time. In an occasional moment of clarity, he thought it time to face it and accept this terrible darkness as his new normal. Being busy helped him to deal with it a bit, but in the army, there was a lot of time to hurry and wait. This was tough. And, how do you accept and face the darkness, the new normal if you decide not to escape from it. These were all new thoughts born of his 6 day of his jungle experience.

Sgt. Henry woke up soaking wet with a sore back from sleeping propped up against a tree trunk. His foot still hurt, and he ate what was left of the sticky rice, bananas and water. That was that, and he tossed the empty gourds, banana leaves, and the basket into the brush. It would’ve made a nice souvenir to bring back to the world. A sharp pang in is lower intestines told him he’d better find a place fast to relieve himself and he ran to a nearby tree and just before he could lower his fatigues, a gush of watery feces shot out of his back end. This happened three more times during his walk back to the tree trunk. Soiling what was left of his under ware, he took out his knife and cut them off and buried them. He was worsening and felt a high fever coming on, most likely malaria or dengue. He had both but couldn’t yet tell which one was coming on.

He gathered up himself, dizzy and staggering a bit and walked out of the dark jungle and back on to a section of the trail had been walking on before. The marsh grass was glistening with drops of rain, and new foot prints from Ho Chi Minh sandals peppered the trail. A four foot monitor lizard crossed the trail in front of him. What a good meal that would make if he had the energy to wrestle it down and kill it. Instead he settled for some domestic sugar cane that grew as a wind break for the corn patch. He cut and stuffed a bunch it in his pocket for energy. The malaria was giving him a severe head ache but he pressed on for a while down the trail, getting even closer to the village when he came face to face with some teenage girls carrying baskets of mangoes. No one moved and each stared at the other. Finally the girls dropped their baskets and ran back down the trail from whence they came. Woozy, lame in foot, and weak from dysentery, he knew the end was near. One side arm against well trained Charlie wouldn’t get him too far. He felt death was imminent so he pulled himself back off the trail, and found a comfortable spot to rest before he was captured. Gosh, he felt like hell. And darkness and the pain he felt toward his divorce paled in the light of being this weak and sick in enemy territory about to meet his maker. He made a mental inventory of all those who he held resentment toward and asked God to help him forgive them, especially his father and his wife. He thought about each person and how he was not a total victim. His responses added to the complexity of the situation. He thought about all the people he had hurt, like his father, his son, and ex-wife. He day-dreamed in a malarial haze about someday making amends to those he offended if he made it out of here alive. He forgave God, realizing he was angry at God for allowing all this darkness to envelop his life and that his own responses to God’s refining in his life created more complex consequences for his life.

He decided to walk into the Ville and get it over with but he could barely stand even with the help of his walking stick and tree truck. His head was both spinning and splitting, and trying hard as he could, he could not stop the flow of watery feces gushing down the back of his legs. He cried tears of frustration for not being given the time to right his resentments and offensives against those he loved. He cried for his own life and what it could have been ifo he'd been able t make it right. Pain was everywhere-his head, his foot, and his back end was totally raw and bleeding from the constant dysentery. Darkness began to envelope him and his last act was to un-holster his side arm and chambered a round but he dropped it on the ground. Mustering up all the energy he could, he bent over to grab it only to see a boot standing on top of it. His mind working slowly, but still working noticed it was not a Ho Chi Minh sandal but a G.I. Issue jungle boot. The last words he heard were, “Hey Sarge, you’re a long way from home.”

He barely remembered being carried out on a ponch to the helicopter or the evacuation to the Chu Lai’s second surgical hospital where they set the bones in his foot and treated his dysentery and malaria. Unfortunately, he would re-coup to continue this tour but this bought him some time to get back in touch with his higher power, forgive those who trashed his life, and make amends to those he hurt. He knew he could fight the darkness with distraction,women, or addictions, or face the darkness by walking headlong into. He was more afraid of that than anything, but for some reason, had no doubts that God was behind him with this plan. He would choose deep change over the slow death that so many fail to see in their denial and refusal to admit to their own part in victimization.

After two weeks in bed, a clean shave, a G.I. standard issue haircut, a cast on his foot, and new set up fatigues, he looked in the mirror. He saw a vast improvement. He inquired about his friend Chuck who days earlier had been around to visit him in his unconscious state but Chuck had been med-evacuated south to the Army hospital at Qui Nhon. Dang, he thought. I’d love to tell Chuck about how God had my back the whole time I was lost in the bush against all odds of survival.

He liked the sleep meds and the pain killers a bit too much, so Sgt. Henry, sought out an AA group and became involved until it was time to be reassigned. Meanwhile, the chaplain came to see Sgt. Henry but he sent him packing with all his cliché’s and pat answers about Christianity. One had to come to the end of themselves to really see God and know his will, and God’s will was not an event or a place, but a way to live life that included submission to God, self-awareness, humility, confession, forgiveness, acceptance, serving others, and restitution-all being set on a foundation of grace. He knew all this from his pastoring days but could never put it together in a coherent way where one could follow it in steps like in AA.

He knew he was just beginning a new journey and still felt trapped in the darkness but he decided to call his ex-wife back in PA to apologize for his part that led to the divorce. Afraid she would hang up (It had been 2.5 years since the divorce and he hadn’t spoke to her verbally since), he picked up the phone which felt like 8000 lbs. He lit a cigarette and dialed the number which had to be routed through the military telephone system. After a while, he heard, “Hello”? Not knowing whether or not she would hang up or the line would drop, he blurted out, “Hi, Sonya, this is John. I want to tell how I am sorry for my part in the dissolution of our marriage and how I left you alone with the raising of our boy, and for my lack of engagement with you and family.” “Whew,” he thought. He got that out. She awkwardly thanked him and he requested to speak with boy who did not at first want to come to the phone. The Sarge also confessed his sins to his son and promised a new start with him if he would agree. The boy accepted the apology but would have to think about renewing the relationship.

Over the next few weeks John made as many calls as he could from the surgical base, both to forgive people who had burned him and to make restitution. Some hung up in his face, others cursed him, while yet others thanked him and offered to help him. Although he still walked in his ‘new normal’, a different form of darkness, he finally he felt some of that darkness lift a slight bit. He no longer counted himself as a victim as he saw may terrible cases come into the surgical hospital where soldiers had 3rd degree burns all over the their bodies, faces blown off, some were just torsos, etc. Life was certainly unfair and he had no room to complain in comparison.

He also wondered again about the scripture that said, “God will never give you more than you can handle” because he met those were involved in atrocities who killed themselves and there were others with severe mental challenges that no one could cure who also took their own lives. Who could blame them, he thought? The God he was getting to know certainly did'nt. The thing is, he thought, with perseverance there may or may not be a miracle just around the corner. How many cash in their chips when there is a miracle just about to happen? How many happen to ‘keep on keeping on’ expecting a miracle around the bend when there is none? This mystified John. He also was in a quandary whether or not to make Jesus his higher power in AA or not. All the pain associated with his upbringing, family of origin, failed marriage, Bible College and being ostracized by the church gave him a bad taste of the Jesus of organized religion. But, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater, he did like the more organic grassroots Jesus his youth pastor used to talk about. He thought that the radical non-churched Jesus was much more realistic than the plastic Jesus on the dash board of the pastor’s car.

John never really knew much about this war because he joined up to spite all those who hurt him. The funny thing, he found out soon, was that they didn’t give a hoot –only his mother and siblings begged him not to re-up. One thing for sure was that he didn’t think that we could win this war, and if he were to begin to get a handle on his life, he’d have stop killing people which meant getting a transfer to the rear with gear or go AWOL. Since he proved himself out in the field, getting a new rocker on his rank insignia, and with a purple heart to boot, chances are he’d not end up in the rear with the gear. He didn’t really relish the idea of becoming a REMF either but what could he do and where could he go? He once again felt he wanted to make his life count for something and killing the enemy in their own country to keep America free from communism just did not seem that rational. He saw too many of his friends sent home in body bags-and for what?

He had 90 some odd days and a wake up before he finished up his tour, and little did anyone know, a large VC and NVA operation was in the planning stage that would be unleashed before the Lunar New Year called the Tet Offensive. This would take place in late January of 1968. He was scheduled to rotate home during the same weekend of the Tet.

Meantime, what would he do with his “new” ‘new normal.’ The one he struggled with for the past few weeks without drugs, alcohol, women and other distractions? Physical therapy and AA meetings kept him busy during the day and he began to journal when he could. He found an AA sponsor he liked and worked started to work the steps. He internalized new values about honesty, truth, service and self-examination. Some of the darkness began to lift. He prayed each morning for the knowledge of God’s will and the strength to do it, as well as for his wife, son, mother, siblings and for the war to end. But he prayed most that he would be able to forgive his father who had given him beatings instead of love. He had deep father wounds and the only way he could ever find the real love of God was in those wounds being healed. He had no idea whatsoever how to know God as a real father although he wanted to do that with all he had.

After a few months of working with in the rear with the gear, he returned to active duty in the field doing reconnaissance with his platoon and then was sent to Pleiku at the time of the TET. During the TET, his unit experienced some heavy automatic weapon fire and some Katusha rockets, but the Air Base remained intact with no KIAs.

Glad to be on that big Freedom Bird home, sitting in clean clothes, watching pretty stewardesses and sipping cokes, he got out his journal. He wrote that he was walking yet out of one type of darkness into yet another. Once again he would be stripped of his skills, knowledge and competences only to be walking naked into the darkness of uncertainty. What would become of him? Would he work in a pulp mill like his father? Re-marry and have kids? Struggle with the darkness and his mental health challenges? He knew by now that he could not avoid the darkness of uncertainty. He had to engage it, and somehow live with it. The pain would never leave, and this is where he needed God. He was still not sure the religious Jesus was for him but knew that in order to move forward that nice plastic Jesus on people’s dashboards had to go. Maybe he’d explore the God of Martin Luther King, a God who cared for oppressed and the hurting. Sgt. John Henry dozed once again into a deep sleep where he studied the Bible with Sonya under a massive white oak tree where the magic attraction was like electricity.

2011-03-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

I was talking to one of Abraham’s converts, a young man who was addicted to drugs and in a violent gang. He now helps Abraham lead the church service on Andong Village church. I called him the “big gangster” in Khmer. We were talking and he asked me if I ever got into any knife fights when I was a teen. I told him, ‘no,’ just a few fist fights, and those I could count on one hand. I was trying to think of the worst thing I had done when I was a teen but couldn’t come up with anything worthy of a knife fight. I do remember hiding in the closet of a friend’s math class in 10th grade and walking out half way through the class, saying “Hi, Mr. Mac,” to the teacher and disappearing out the door. And there was the time I tried to steal an empty keg of beer from a Greek restaurant when a barrel-chested, curly headed Greek mad man chased with me with a cleaver as I jumped through the back window of a friend’s station wagon as we sped away. And there was the time the police arrived at a party and while they were in the back yard, I got into their squad car and turned on all the lights and sirens and sped away in my ’66 Volkswagen Beetle. Or, there was the time my boss got his deer in Vermont and brought it back and gutted it at his gas station in Greenwich. I noticed the legs of the deer in the dumpster so I got them out and put them in the trunk of VW. Later that week (it was cold) I just happened to see my friend’s car parked in back of a restaurant near a pizza joint so I got a pizza box, put the legs in it, and put it on the front seat of his car. His girlfriend hit the ceiling when she realized it was not extra pizza that was in the pizza box. I also used to roll my neighbor’s car (Mr. Pemburn) down the street and park it in another neighbor’s driveway. And there were times when we put M-80’s (quarter sticks of dynamite) on people’s front stoops using a cigarette as a delayed fuse so when it would blow, we’d be a good half mile away. One of my more devious tricks was to sit in the library, going through all the magazines, filling out the “bill me later” ads and sending magazines of questionable morality to various school mates, sign them up for military service, and enroll them in refrigerator repair courses, etc. One day I heard my father, who worked at the post-office, tell my mother that Mrs. Starr, mother of one of my school mates was in the P.O. ranting and raving to the boss about her son having been subscribed to Playboy Magazine at age 15. I did get suspended in my senior for staging a fake fight with a friend. It looked so real that all those watching us in the quad jumped out of classroom windows to come and watch the fight. And one time camp at Scout summer camp I took bug spray and sprayed a spot over our Senior Patrol Leaders head on his tent. Doing so takes the water proofing out the canvas. That night it poured and he got soaked. He chased me half way around the camp and caught me, only to give me a stern reaming. So as I look back, I was more of a merry prankster than one who was into gang violence. I guess the only really violent thing I did was make my brother stand on a #10 can with an M-80 under it which totally flattened the can and blew Steve a few feet in the air. He noted that he had a nagging headache for the next few days. Like the former gangster at Andong Village, I have repented, and no longer engage in any prankster like activity. I don’t even know how to pull pranks anymore. Maybe I should look for the old manual and dust it off a bit, and try to sharpen up my old skills.

2011-03-14T03:23:00.001-07:00

I’m about three hours out of Phnom Penh heading for a 5 hour lay-over in Tapei. I have been trying to reflect on this recent month long trip to Cambodia but it all just seems like one big Southeast Asian blur. I know our first group of teens went up-country to Kompong Thom (in the center of Cambodia) to engage with the Khmer students from the outer limits of Kompong Thom who have come to the provincial city to attend high school and stay in the dorms built by one of our more eccentric partners in ministry. From these junior high teens I learned all I needed to know about who Justin Biebher was and he was about. I was tempted to buy his pirated CDs at the Russian market but did not cave in to the temptation. I doubt Neil would approve. Neil Young that is. I also tried to keep them away from trying to find out which soup the Khmer put marijuana in as seasoning and was largely successful. These teens then went back and forth between KEY (the ministry for emerging youth leaders I helped start in 1995) and the Andong squatter village. At the KEY Drop in Center they taught English and music to the drop ins. KEY staff used to call it the “dropping center” in their broken English but I told them it was not a center for scatological studies. In Andong, they led games with the elementary age squatter children in Abraham’s school. Last year, a teen girl from Wesminster Chapel, Jacqueline, organized her youth group to raise 5K for Andong to build houses and put in a drainage system. This year they will do another fund raiser.

During my time in Cambodia, one of my former students was killed by a drunk driver. I am very close to the family and they were devastated. He was only 28. I do hazily remember speaking in chapel at Hagar, Int’l (an organization that reaches out to widows and children). The Westminster Chapel group headed back very encouraged about their trip while the First Pres Bellevue and Calvin group arrived. The Pastors of this group went to the coast to help with the training of the pastors (TAP Project) and I hung out with the youth pastors and young adult group who went back and forth between KEY and Andong doing some of the same things the Westminster teens did (games, sports arts ‘n crafts), except go out to check out the night clubs and karaoke parlors. Although the teens did ask permission to do that, it was unanimously denied by the non-consenting adults on the trip.

While the pastors were away, we went to visit women prisoners in Pray Saw Prison on International Women’s Rights day with the Human Rights Organization, LICADHO. Were handed out bread and other sundries to the women and were encouraged to engage with them. I was talking to a handful of them and told them I was recently divorced and one woman said to me, “If I wanted to marry, I would marry someone who wasn’t old and someone who was handsome.” Ouch!!!! The truth hurts. I guess I’m old and in the way now, like an old worn tire with the belts showing through.

The next day we went to visit and old friend Wayne who runs an orphanage for children who are HIV+ on the land of a Buddhist Pagoda. Since the advent of the anti-viral drugs, death is longer a regular part of their lives at the Pagoda, so Wayne is switching gears a bit. It was a good visit and his stories of life on the pagoda for many years were moving and challenging.

Various members of the team went to visit former Diamond Program students who were pastoring churches, running orphanages, working for Human Rights organization, working in prisons, running sports ministries, and working with land evictees, etc. They also met up with folks from Human Rights organizations, LICADHO and International Justice Mission. I covered a lot of ground while I was here but wished I could’ve spent a bit more time with Seila, the director of KEY (Kingdom Equipped Youth). I did get to sneak out and see my old pal, Dave Rebok for noodle soup quite a bit and we’d always get carried away recounting our experiences while serving in the Nam back in ’67 up in Ia Drang Valley.

Got some dental work done and my stomach fixed while I was here as well, and did indeed enjoy the sunshine and the Khmer food. Somehow I just barely managed to keep up with my studies and I will arrive home just in time to write a 12 page paper and do a final exam. Then I am gloriously done with my Masters Degree in Global Leadership (although I will greatly miss it!!!)

Today, on our last day, I translated at the worship service at Pastor Abraham’s church for those in our group who were giving testimonies or preaching. There is something about preachers where they just can’t stop themselves from going on and on. I guess that is the nature of the beast. I was tempted to make a few twists of my own in the story line to correct what I didn’t agree with but ended up behaving myself. I’m not yet fully sold on all Presbyterian doctrine.

I know this newsletter is more like a report, with little or no reflection. I guess the only reflections I can muster up at this time is that this trip was an experience where I had to balance the tension of being in a place I love and with the people I love, but all the while being reminded of all the good memories I had with Debbi and kids when we were here. It was a powerful sadness that existed uncomfortably alongside the joy of being back in the saddle again.

Brian, reporting live from Phnom Penh….

The Church-Where Heroes Need Protection

2011-03-14T03:16:00.001-07:00

Today is a rather sad day as one of my former staff, Mr. Phearun, 28 years old, was hit and killed by a drunk driver while driving his motorcycle. The drunk who hit him spent the night in the jail but will probably be released soon or is released already because the family has money. I knew Phearun since 1998, and had hired his older sister to work for the EFC KEY. He was a young man full of energy and service for the Lord. He will be missed by man.

This morning we had a touching experience as group of Seattlites listened to former Pastor Amos speak about his call to Human Rights and social justice work. I also knew Amos from the time he was a very young boy in 1990. His father was a church leader during the time of the underground church during the late 70’s and the 80’s up until freedom of Religion 1990. Amos grew up in the Olympic Church which was very active during 70’s before Pol Pot took over. Amos was a student of mine in the Diamond Program Level 2 in 2008, and really felt the call of God on his life to help communities in conflict from one of our DP blocks taught by Indian Raju Bagwat on Social Justice and Community Organizing. At the time Amos studied with us, he and his fiancé were working at FEBC radio station. One of our themes in DP was; “Don’t read the Bible in one hand unless you are reading a newspaper in the other.” As Moses continued to broadcast about the love God on the radio, he began to become acutely aware of all the land evictions happening in Phnom Penh and all over the country. He began to wonder what good it was to broadcast the love of God and go to church and sing lovely praise songs while doing nothing to relieve the suffering of those being evicted, cheated by the government and beaten violently by the police. His Christian peers and pastors kept telling him that getting involved in politics is not the job of the church but Amos did not see it as political. He could not see how any Christians, western or Cambodian could separate love from justice. The love Christ demands a sacrificial, risking love that ends up delivering people from bondage and darkness. Amos got tired of offering Christian platitudes over the air and went to work for a human rights organization. He has slept on eviction sites, advocated for evictees, provided them with legal counsel and disseminates information about the abuses of the government on the poor. Amos is a prophet and is a target of the government and a thorn in the side of the church as he continually reminds them of the hollow their preaching and worship is while they keep their hands clean of risks and helping the poor. Amos is a prophet, just like the Biblical prophet Moses, and is highly respected by the non-Christian Human Rights community as a Christian of love and action. He is criticized by many Cambodian churches as he confronts them for preferring the statusquo of worship, Bible study and basking in God’s blessings. Jesus, he says, has called us to yoke up with his suffering and to lay down our lives for the sake of our marginalized brothers. Amos is passionate about his calling, and pledges to fulfill his role as a prophet to call the church to repentance. He is willing die for his role as a prophet and for human rights activist. When I posted he quote; “To get to heaven, one needs a reference letter from the poor,” he was one of the only ones to really appreciate this quote. Other commentators began to split doctrinal hairs and missed the whole point entirely.

I could really relate to Amos because we really are kindred spirits. I am a bit jealous because I believe his prophetic voice is being heard while mine falls on deaf ears. Maybe I am just meant to be a prophet and voice for the poor to myself?????

Anyway, Amos was a great inspiration and challenge to our group of white, wealthy, and overly educated Christians from the Seattle. Not one the 14 of use were unmoved. Now the real test will be to put what we all felt was a shove from the Holy Spirit into practice. 45 Million Americans have no insurance, more that that are unemployed, 13 million children live in families under the poverty level, education for minorities and those is urban low rent areas is atrocious, the media pumps sexual gratification into all its marketing strategies, corporate managers get richer while blue collar jobs are made obsolete and are outsourced to developing countries. The government gives large tax cuts to the richest 5% of Americans whiling cutting programs for the poor, and our foreign policy and military are used to create ever expanding markets for global capitalism and the environmental degradation of developing countries that follows. We American and Global Christians have our work cut out for us but are we willing to be prophetic, challenging and willing to offer creative strategic initiatives, or will we be content to just be nice church people. The church is not only called to be the conscience of the government, but to model a better way to society. Let’s do our job.

The Church-Where Heroes Need Protection

2011-03-14T03:11:00.000-07:00

We are ones we have been waiting for…

Many of us today are asking, "where are the MLKs, the Mandelas. . . where are the Lincolns and Wilberforces?"

As we look at the world, we feel overwhelmed and powerless to change the atrocities and injustices that occur on a daily basis.

We wait impatiently for God to raise up prophets to confront the host empires and, because we find none, and things stay the same, we turn cynical.

Cynicism, it seems, is a method by which we criticize these atrocities from afar, without taking any action. We feel somewhat vindicated by the "good" we have done in the world by merely acknowledging "there is a problem", only to retreat to our affluent middle class worlds. Even after retreating, however, we are never fully impacted by the human rights violations that occur in other countries. Our cynicism manifests itself in apathy--we want to see change, but have lost hope in our ability to make those changes.

We have a time line for solving the world's problems and God is taking way too long. Science and the innate goodness of humans have failed to deliver evil from the systems that enslave us.

We seek a prophet. I know a man.

I know a man who has not yet fell victim to cynicism. He has has not yet retreated into a spiritual bubble, waiting for Jesus to come and judge all those bad people out there and their corrupt systems.

This man is Uon Selia.

Seila has built a movement of spiritual and social change among thousands of youth in Cambodia. He is a person of faith and conscience, taking his his commissioning as a prophet seriously, but accompanied by the virtue of humility. Seila believes that the world can be changed, especially through the young people of this generation--full of faith and hope. These young leaders, have the genuine belief that they can no longer wait--they are the only avenue for change.

He has created incarnational disciples among young Cambodians who have become human rights activists, orphanage directors, community organizers, and pastors working in slums and in prisons. Seila dares to dream big, seeing the youth become leaders in all aspects of society, rectifying the evils that have plagued Cambodia for decades.

While many have chosen to use the ministry as a stepping stone to fame, power and wealth, he has not succumbed to any form of nepotism, honor seeking, and the desire to accumulate material wealth that his peers have. He is planting potent seeds that are germinating in the social soil of Cambodia, and he’s weaving Kingdom strands into the social fabric of the culture.

Prophets are among the first insiders to be marginalized by the church. They challenge the status quo when most pastors want to be left alone to their preaching and teaching, not getting their hands dirty in muck and mire of social injustices. Like most prophets, Seila won’t come through his prophetic ministry unscathed. Bill Bright said, “I’m a Great Commission man myself, and the Great Commission tells us to teach to others about all things Jesus teaches us, and he taught us that a big part of the gospel is caring for the poor.” Seila is a Great Commission man. Seila is this nation's prophet.

Today Seila is in a tough spiritual battle. I invite you to pray for him in terms of wisdom and strength in the coming days. Pray that he will be as wise a serpent and gentle as a dove.

Life in the Living Fields

2011-02-25T20:35:00.000-08:00

Cambodian Update-

Today I am helping Seila in DP 2 (Diamond Project 2). The lesson is about Isolation and why it happens to us, and how we can wait, persevere and work through it. Seila asked me to give my testimony concerning my isolation just before, during and after my divorce and what God taught me. I shared with 20 DP students what I have shared with no one else, mainly because nobody really ever asked. The DP students asked a lot of very good questions. It is very encouraging to see DP classes going strong in KCham, PP, and K.Thom. They are having some problems with K.Chhnang but these problems can be ameliorated. The drop in center is packed from 3:30 pm to 7:30 pm at night. Even monks come to learn computer and English. The drop in center is right next to the CMA’s monolithic flagship church and remains empty most of the time, except on Sundays for church services.

Yesterday I went to look at some land in Kompong Speau province that would make a perfect camp ground that could be used year round. It is owned by a Korean man who wants to make use of this land. He does not want to sell the land, but let us use it as long as we want it. Other than being ripped to shreds by thorns, wilting under the sweltering heat, and stung by nasty red ants, it was an interesting tour through bush. It reminded much of my tour of duty in the Nam back in ’68.
The Westminster Chapel gang has gone back to the land of free and corporate greed and left me holding the bag in Cambodia. I don’t mind that. I’ve already gone to the dentist to repair two fillings for the cost of $100. Next I will find my Russian doctor to diagnose my stomach problems which I have had since before Thanksgiving.
Tomorrow I will go out to an Island on the Mekong to attend a church service in the church of my friend Mr. Ey Vonn. He really has only one eye so it seems God played a trick on him by giving him the birth name of Ey Vonn. If pronounced the American way, it is Vonn Ey (one eye).

The church is doing better in the Kingdom. His Excellency Heng Cheng, General Secretary of the EFC is helping to bring unity to the various generations in the Khmer Church. Raju Sbagwat is helping bring reconciliation those Christian leaders who have held grudges against each other in the past and is having a lot of success. The EFC KEY is still doing great work training up emerging leaders. Seila is becoming a highly desired teacher and speaker on worldview and how to engage this post-modern generation. He is also a writer on indigenous theology, a poet, musician and owner of former dog, sniper. The latter is his best credential.
I have been asked to speak at Hagar this Monday to the expat and Khmer staff. This will be a first. I am still wondering what to say but I suppose I will come up with something. I am here waiting for a group from First Presbyterian and Calvin to come in with their big guns (105 mm Howitzers). I’m just a little gun with a small pop (an air rifle with a cork in the barrel.

Since I owe the IRS $7300, I might skip the country and stay in Cambodia. I will keep you posted while I am in hiding in Cambodia. As money gets short, I may have to live on duck embryos and crickets.

Amazing Stories from Kompong Thom

2011-02-20T15:03:00.000-08:00

Just a short update from the bowels of Cambodia… I have been in my glory eating Cambodia food which I have missed so much. Wow, it is so good. The soup seasoned with Ganja is especially tasty. I’ve finally come home. The language is back, jack. I’m the man again.

Along with Pastor Ralph and a few young adults, I am leading a group of Junior High School students from Westminster Chapel in Bellevue and here we are, way up country, ministering to students in dorms who come from far away in the provinces. We had a great time playing games and doing tie dye t-shirt with them. We also participated in a Diamond Program class here in Kompong Thom (I helped launch this program). After church today we head back to PP where will minister with the EFC KEY and Andong Village.

I can’t say how impressed I am with some of these junior high school kids. Only 15 or 16, these teenagers are grappling with some difficult issues and concepts, ones that we adults suppress all our lives in order not to the abuse and suffering of the impoverished in this world. We work and hoard, and pile up material processions so high we cannot see a hurting world around us. In the last few days, after seeing the Diamond Program students and spending time with the teens of group, I feel hopeful. If we aren’t willing to get it, a remnant of the church will somehow. These teens are at a point where they can choose not become hoarders, consumers and good capitalists who market to know no end. They are not yet trapped in the system.
Last night Pastor Ralph led a debriefing in our room and we listened to what impressed the teens. One teen was impressed how the Diamond Project students (19 of them) were so serious about learning how to become good Christian leaders. No one had to be enticed to come and learn with promises of entertainment- they actually paid to enroll. Another teen girl who had to use the outhouse was sort of shocked that the sink was an open concrete/ tile box with murky water in it. It hit her just how our western reality is really a social construct which doesn’t reflect or include the reality of the rest of the world. Yet another teen saw how Cambodian young people really knew how to have fun and no one stood around trying to be cool. All the Cambodian dorm students participated in the games and activities, no one was excluded. One of our teens commented how awesome the Diamond Program was as they listed to DP students talk about time they spent with their mentors and all the creative field work they were doing. She sort of wished they had such a program back home. Most of them realized that by agreeing to go on this trip, they would be faced with a choice; either to build a life-long ethical response to the poor or to begin building life-long defense mechanisms enabling them to live in denial of a true Christian ethical response while they purse self-actualization, and the building of economic safety nets, maybe even in ways that oppress the poor. I have great hope for the majority of this group. I am glad too, that there will be some adults who can follow up with these young people and help them to continue to process all that emerges from the very unique situation God has placed them in. Pray for them.

Stories from Kompong Thom

Thamor Kohl District Church in Kompong Thom hosted our group today. Chumno, an EFC KEY staff of Kompong Thom translated the announcements. "Please pray that we can find the funding to rebuild our chicken. Our chicken burned down a few months ago." I was aware their kitchen burned down, but no one told me about the chicken burning down. Shouldn't be too hard to raise some funding to buy a new chicken but why aren't they worrying about the kitchen? Doesn't make much sense.

The Westminster teens taught the dorm students in Kompong Thom how to tie-dye t-shirts. It was interesting. I jokingly said to a Cambodian student, when you're finished with that, why don't you tie dye that white dog over there? A few minutes later the Westminster young people were calling me to stop the Cambodian boys from tie-dying the dog. "Brian, why didn't you stop them?" I said, "Well, their pastor was right there, I didn't want to over-ride his authority." Now Thamor Kohl has a white dog with a green racing stripe and few patches of blue. They blame me. What's up with that? By the way, they all wore their tie dyed shirts to church the next day and they looked great! I saw the white dog slinking about the church grounds and he fit right in.

The other night, Nick, one the adult leaders took the “Fertilized Duck Egg Challenge.” This consists of eating a fertilized duck egg which has developed almost into a baby duck in the shell. Has soft bones, a beak, wings, feathers, etc, inside the shell. You open the top of the egg, put a mixture of pepper and lime juice, and then eat the embryo out of the shell with a little spoon. Nick popped a big piece into his month and set there contemplating swallowing it. Pretty soon he began to look a little pale and spewed the contents of his mouth onto his plate. This just delighted those knuckled headed junior high students who were laughing themselves silly we attracted quite a crowd-with them being the noisy Americans they are.

Its a Funny Kind of a Story

2011-02-19T14:42:00.001-08:00

Here I am on a looooong flight from Seattle to Taiwan…then on to Cambodia. I’ve been mulling over some thoughts and really couldn’t pull them together into something coherent….not until I gave up and watched a movie. The movie said what I was thinking in many ways and you ought to get out and go see it. It is, A Funny Kind of Story. The story is about a 16 year old boy, who is facing a lot of pressures that young people and all people face, realities of a bad local and global economy, two wars, global warming, pressure to excel at his private school, extra pressure from his dad to get into a summer program for gifted teens with business acumen, and the fact that all of his affluent peers have academics come easy to them, as well as sports, drama, and music, etc. Craig actually has to work extremely hard at all these things to keep up. Craig has been on anti-depressants and goes off them. He finds himself checking into a sanitarium on his block because he feels suicidal, and after getting a tour and seeing his new roommates, he begs the psychiatrist to let him out- he made a mistake and wants to go home. The head shrink takes his admission of feeling suicidal seriously, and tells him he has to stay for a week. Craig is petrified among these people; schizophrenics, an orthodox Jew who burned out on an acid overdosed, an Egyptian man who can’t get of bed, an middle aged African-American woman who flipped out when the Patriot Act was passed, his closest new friend Bobby, a mid-thirties guy who just can’t make it on the outside and a beautiful teenage girl, Noelle. He wants out, he tells the head shrink, because he isn’t like them. Ring any bells?

And, I fear this is what many of us church goers feel when we look outside the four walls of the church. We are okay because we are not like ‘them’ and that attitude is our death sentence. The church is busy dying instead of being born. We need to ask ourselves as individuals, “ are we busy dying or being born?” Christians today have more of a need to be converted than many other groups we pity or point our fingers at, groups that are the target of our ministries.

After a few days in the psych ward Craig’s whole perspective about life is changed as he learns from patients he lives with. He discovers how to express himself in art which relieves him of the great burden of stress he carries. He also learns wisdom from his fellow patients and begins to understand that although they may be screwed up every which way, each one imparts wisdom for living to him. By the end of the week, Craig drops his sense of entitlement and decides to live the life of a normal teen rather than become a victim of the overachiever mindset his dad is imposing on him. Craig plans to do art, go biking, skating, spend time with Noelle who met on the ward, and just live life. He is excited about the prospect of being normal and simplifying.

I see so many Christian parents put academics as a priority over discipleship with their children. They want to make sure their children will enjoy the affluent, safe and ‘risk free’ life which is not what Jesus calls to at all. Jesus calls us to yoke up with his suffering, self-sacrifice, self-denial, simplicity, equality and solidarity with the poor. Damn, what a disservice. How can we as parents discover our error and change our tact before we create bigger Pharisees of children than we have of ourselves? We can only be converted to the truth by becoming the poor, the marginalized, the addicted, the ostracized, and the mentally ill, or experience their reality. We need to build our theology and perspective of life not from our perch in the affluent burbs, but from the margins of society, which is the context and perspective from which Jesus spoke.

By the end of the week Craig is serving the patients and doing things for them that enrich their lives. He decides that volunteering on the ward will be part of his new life. He was born again, and he became a new person because he became one the dregs of society, one of the forgotten, and the experience has changed his life, and he has a new course that will freak out his parents. He was spared from a sentence of being a teenage overachiever in a pragmatic world where all activities were done to put on a college resume in order to get into the best college, to get the best job that makes the most money. Perhaps he would become a great psychiatrist and help those who taught him how to live.

Probably by this time, half of you stopped reading and the other half of you are muttering charges of heresy and ‘let’s burn him at the stake.’ That’s ok, though. I’m just writing from my own experience- no full time job, lost my spouse and former ministry, and other that, I am doing great. The last 3 years of life has been one of conversion by the marginalized and to the marginalized. I owe them my life.

Brian

The Hooch Squad

2011-02-03T16:54:00.000-08:00

While on home leave this summer I stayed up late a few nights just writing about various life experiences. Sometimes I forward these articles on to magazines that might be interested. Back in December of ’97, one of my articles appeared in Adirondac Magazine. This most recent December (2000), The Adirondack Explorer published one of the articles I wrote this summer about my life and times at Paul Smith’s College which is in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains. I studied forestry at Paul Smith’s in the late seventies -and loved it.

When The Adirondack Explorer received my article, they requested that I might dig up some photos of my early days at Smitty’s. I found a few and sent them on. Meanwhile, the folks at the ‘Explorer’ had gone to Paul Smith’s and collected a few photos of their own. When my folks sent me the magazine, I was surprised to see one particular photo I had never seen before. It had four students at a ‘Woodsmen’s Meet’, standing against a truck with a sign that said, “Hooch Squad”. I knew two of the students quite well. One was my roommate (center with a beard) for the summer of ‘78 and the other, the one farthest to the left, was the guy whose testimony urged me seriously to consider becoming a follower of Jesus back in early ’79. His name was Mark Coffin.

When I first arrived at PSC, Mark Coffin had a long thick beard and was captain of the Woodsman team. He kind of reminded me of Aqualung but larger and more buffed. He was from somewhere around Boston and grew up as an adopted child. Mark was a serious drinker and a brawler, a pretty rough character all around. I managed to avoid him, not really knowing what he was all about. At the time, I was thinking, ‘safety first’ is the best policy.

As I went into my second year as a forestry student (PSC was only a two-year college at the time) Mark graduated and went to work with a local logging outfit. Meanwhile, through a real revival type situation on the Paul Smith’s campus, some of Mark’s friends had decided to become followers of Jesus. They shared that good news with Mark who didn’t think that it was such great news at the time. For Mark, it meant having a few less drinking buddies.

One a late winter afternoon, somewhere not too far from the Saranac Lake area, Mark was helping the skidder operator slap some chokers around the butts of some remaining felled trees that had been limbed out and ready to go. This was the last hitch of logs for the day to be dragged out to the landing. They were pretty far back in off the main road. It was getting quite cold and their warm breath clouded in the chilly late afternoon air. It was the weekend so everyone wanted to get home early. Mark told the skidder operator, “go ahead and take this hitch out and I’ll walk back. I want to take care of this one hanger.” Earlier while Mark was felling a tree, it’s crown got hung up in another tree, never hitting the ground. He wanted to make sure it was on ground before leaving the area as hunters or hikers might chance by only to have the tree come down on top of them. Mark watched the diesel skidder roar to life, belch out plumes of dense black smoke and disappear around the bend with a thousand feet of timber dragging behind it. Mark fired up his Stihl 0.51. He began to cut a small section out of the butt of tree hoping it would cause the crown to roll off the other tree and come down. The tree did twist, and quite fast but in the wrong direction so that it came down right on Mark’s leg, breaking his femur and pinning him to the ground. He lay there trapped to the ground in a bed of hard packed snow while a flurry of swirling snowflakes landed on his face intermittently. From the angle where he lay, all he could see was the tops of hardwoods, swaying in the Adirondack’s bone chilling winter breeze. In excruciating pain, the only thing other thing his senses were picking up was the sound of the skidder, now about half way out to the log landing. He knew he was dead. He would die within a half-hour from shock or from hypothermia. Both weren’t the worst ways to die, and what better place than in an Adirondack forest, but on the other hand, he was only twenty-one and he wanted to live. For some reason he thought of all his friends and those he would miss the most. He thought of his Christian friends whom he had alienated. At this point, he was ready to deal with the God; the God of whom his friends had said was good news. He talked to God in the pain, in the cold quiet grayness of the waning day and in the isolation. He told God, “If YOU, like my friends say, are great enough to deliver me from death and save me, I will follow your son Jesus for the rest of my life.” How this would work out, he knew not. All of a sudden Mark noticed that there was complete silence in deepening grayness. The sun had set and dark was rapidly encroaching on what traces of light that were left. The dark made the silence deafening but it seemed to carry a message with it. In his delirium, he was trying to think. What is it about this quietness? Then he knew immediately. The skidder had reached the log landing, was parked and shut off. The only thing that occurred to Mark was to shout for help, which was ridiculous because the landing was almost a mile away – but he did anyway. He shouted and shouted until he became hoarse and could shout no more. He lay back to let shock and exposure do its work. What else could he do?

The next thing he knew, the familiar sound of a diesel engine was idling in the background of his senses. It was dark now and his leg was hurting to the point where he’d rather slip back into unconsciousness. Someone had a peavey and was lifting the tree off his leg, shouting at him to try and move. He vaguely recalls the ride back on the skidder which was probably a good thing - a mile over logging trails (not logging roads) in the dark with a broken femur could not be that comfortable.

I heard about the accident and that Mark was in the hospital. Then I saw him hobbling around campus with crutches, after that a cane. The next time I saw him, he was knocking on my door at Gabriel’s campus in late December of 1978. The cane was gone but there was a new addition. There was a large Bible under his arm. For Mark Coffin, this was something new! Mark was making the rounds. He went to every single dorm room on Paul Smith’s College Campus and Gabriel’s Campus (where we second foresters were sent in exile). He even looked up students living off campus. He wanted to tell everyone that Jesus Christ, is indeed good news. It was because of his testimony and his love for God that made me consider my own situation. Not long after that, I committed my life to following Christ as well. How many others were influenced by his life, I am unsure but I would not be surprised if it were more than I thought.

The first I heard from Mark after he left the St. Regis area was in 1984 while I was studying at Word of Life in Schroon Lake. He was working with Youth for Christ in San Jose. I tried to look him up again but lost track of him. I did reach him from Cambodia by email in ’96. I forget how I got hold of his email address. He had left Youth for Christ and was a Youth Minister in a large church Evangelical Free Church in San Jose, CA. I have once again lost track of him for a few years but found out that he is in Montana pastoring a church and hates email.

Brian M. Maher

Most Christians are Too Nice and Very Boring

2010-12-28T11:13:00.000-08:00

I go to the same mega-church almost every week. It has all the right doctrine, both evangelistic and social justice outreaches, a preacher with a PhD from Stanford in literature, and 5 services per Sunday with attendees numbering 4000. The music is excellent and professional and you can pick between a traditional (choir) and a contemporary service with a live band. I have always appreciated the pastor’s sermons and I am being mentored by the mission pastor. I also attend a divorce recovery workshop there. And, I don’t have to fight too violently to get my kids to come along. The only thing I miss is community. I don’t know anyone there and no one knows me. No one says hello to me except the greeters and I say hello to no one because I don’t know anyone either (accept the pastor, the mission pastor, and a few mission elders). Since I don’t have too many friends here who aren’t super busy, I crave for human community.

Once in a while I pop into a pub on Mercer Island where you might say the less polished rich people frequent, or those who have been rich and lost their millions, or for those who drive school buses but inherited great wealth from their parents on the Island. It’s a bar for the rich who lost their way. As with frequent clients of bars, many are loudly opinionated. The less they can back their opinion, the louder they are. I usually go to watch the game and just to be around people. After a while of being a bump on log type stranger, people will begin conversations with me. White bearded old Lou Summers an 80 year chap that looks like he stepped out of a geriatric form of an L.L. Bean catalogue was the first one to make my acquaintance. He tells me stories of growing up in Seattle while he whittles away at his martini and sometimes spills it on me. He loves to talk of his time as a marine when he fought in Korea. Born a Lutheran, he lost his faith when he saw American priests giving last rites to American Soldiers who were sent into unwinnable battles with the Chinese and North Koreans. He is often brought to tears as he recites the many war atrocities he witnessed on both sides. Whenever I engage Lou on philosophical or religious issues he will stop to ask me if I am writing a book on the characters in the bar. I say, “No, I am not writing a book. “Are you sure” he asks me? “I like you, but I think you’re up to something. You’re the one person in this pub who is not looking for somebody or something to save him.”

People tend to avoid Lou because they’ve heard all his stories before so when I enter the bar a shuffling of chairs takes place and suddenly the only chair left at the bar is next to eighty year old Lou. Behind me is Ward,a six foot seven, former Canadian Football player and millionaire who drives a hummer and is throwing darts with Burke. Ward never gave me the time day until he found out I was a dyed in the wool Neil Young fan. I sort of avoid conversation with Ward as he is a handsome male athlete in his mid 40’s who uses his spare time to drink and engage in the conquest of women as a hobby. I am not sure he would appreciate my perspective on that. Burke, his dart-loving friend, on the other hand is another large man but much more rotund and graduated from High school in 1971. Balding on top with salt and pepper stubble and the sides, he is handsome man who is in the construction business but has no work going at the time. His wife divorced him and took everything. Ward took him in and he camps out on Wade’s couch. Burke is a Catholic and goes to church. He is especially open and friendly with me because he grew up in Stamford and I in Darien. We both grew up Catholic. He attends church and has an appreciation for God but has few Biblical values, or least conflicting ones. His habits with women and alcohol consumption don’t seem to conflict with his faith values. Maybe he holds them in tension well. He would be right smack dab with the conservative right if it weren’t for the abortion issue. What he has going for him is that he is a good natured fellow who is quite likable.

On occasion, I will get a spot next to Van. Van is about 70 and was Special Ops for the Russian Navy. He is brilliant pool player and understands culture and world politics very well. The bulk of my in depth conversations take place with Val. He served in Afghanistan in the 1980’s and had many stories tell. For special Ops, he is a gentle man who likes to discuss religion. He told me, if anyone could possible convert him to the faith, it would be me. His atheism is dissolving.
Behind me would be James, former US Secret Service. He orders his glass of house wine and talks a seat at a table in the back and just observes. He rarely says a word unless someone joins him at his table. He was the one who told me the pub was owned by the Chinese Mafia!

The Barmaid would be Tracy, who is now about 27 but immigrated to America when she was 7. She is totally acculturated and she is beautiful and her pop culture quotient outweighs any other knowledge she may have about anything other than mixing drinks, pool, or pop music. She works hard and has fun too, even takes the occasional sexual harassment like water of a duck’s back.

Bruce, sporting dirty blond hair and always a day’s growth of stubble comes in about 5 pm, riding the bus from Seattle wearing a trench coat with the Seattle times under his arm. He’s a brilliant man who was born wealthy but somehow lost all his wealth along the away. Now he works for a large hotel chain doing IT work which he does not enjoy as people younger than him who are over him treat him like he knows nothing. He travels around the Seattle on a trivia team as a hobby when he isn’t playing pool in pub. He and I have had some deep conversations, many times around Christian ethics and values. He parades his values as compassionate but I challenge him that his cynicism is a mask just to protect his real indifference toward the plight of the world. He often says, “Why those #%$#X&@)* Christians, blah, blah, etc., when he is actually referring to the Religious Right and their abuse of the abortion and gay marriage issues to cloud other important issues of unjust wars for oil, poor education, 13 million American Children living in poverty, poor health care, no insurance for many, the poor and the working poor, and the plight of the poor in other countries, and the marriage of corporate conglomerates and the government. He has a good point here but misses the fact that abortion needs to be included in the quality life argument too, even if it used unwisely as a smoke screen at times.

The fun apart about the pub is I can talk deeply with people about critical issues of faith and culture. I can’t find a venue at church to do that. I have two great landlords that fall on the side of the being very conservative religiously and they change the subject when I ever get to close to a ‘liberal’ or ‘moderate’ agenda. In the pub, if I approached a sensitive topic with some friends, they might curse and swear but the conversation would continue. Other than having a couple beers, I have not compromised my integrity and at times have even given inebriated customers a ride home.

By no means is a bar going to become my new church or regular group therapy but it may become some sort an occasional community where I can explore in depth issues of faith and politics which is taboo in many churches.

ABC's of Brian's Year Review

2010-12-19T14:42:00.000-08:00

Alana enjoyed her tour of duty at Mercer Island High School and desires to graduate from the exclusive M.I. High next year (Obama’s mother graduated from M. I. H.S.).

Brian was divorced on Aug 17th but continues to see the kids as often as possible. He attends First Pres. Bellevue, has been doing tree work, and leading short term trips into Cambodia.

Cambodia calls out to me and is still on my mind. I miss my friends and tight community that I enjoyed so much there. God Bless Cambodia!

Divorce has taken its toll on me but I am very thankful to God and to close friends who have sustained both me and the family through the last two and a half years of very tough time.

Eugene Maher, my dad passed away in early December. I was glad to have been there when he passed to be a support to my mother and spend time with family and friends.

Funeral- My dad’s funeral went very well. I did the eulogy which seemed to go well and the service was accompanied by Darien Firemen and we had an escort to the grave site by fire truck. Dad would have been very impressed.

God is very present in hindsight as I can count and identify the evidence of his presence each day but He seems to be silent concerning the future. This is perhaps the greatest struggle for me.

Humor- I was just checking out (did not join) E harmony on the internet and I left it on my screen and Jordan said, “Dad, your new E harmony wife won’t like the fact you don’t have a job!” I am re-reading all my Patrick McManus books again which make me laugh out loud.

International- I am still having difficulty segueing into American culture when I am international at heart. That’s my niche and I still feel like I am a fish living out of water.

Justice- I pray daily for trafficked children, the poor, marginalized, the oppressed, child laborers, and single mothers, for all is not right in the world, even during this Christmas Season.

Kingdom Realities- “Thy Kingdom come, they will be done, as earth as it is in heaven.” The Kingdom is here now and will be fully realized when Jesus returns to usher it in. “Fear not,” Jesus said. Good news for a country that manipulates its citizens through fear (even religious authors).

Loss- I have lost a life partner, a ministry, a cohesive family and my dad this year.

Matthew graduated from Sammamish High School last year and is taking a year off. He is going to Cambodia in January and will start at Bellevue College next fall.

Neil Young turned 65 this year. Doesn’t that make you feel old?

Older- I am 53 and still climbing trees. This too, must end.

Power outages on the Island all week long due to high winds.

Quintessential Christianity takes care of the poor, orphans, the fatherless and the widows.

Recovery- I went through a 6 week divorce recovery workshop which was very helpful
Salvage-since the theme of the bible is restoration, reconciliation, reclamation, and redemption, I am waiting on the Lord to put me back on line but the wait is excruciating.

Theological Studies- I have one more course to go in order to finish my MA in Intercultural Studies at Fuller. In this job market, that and 50 cents just might get me a cup of coffee.

Unbelievable Pho! Every week end I take Alana to have Vietnamese noodle soup in White Center where the Pho is the best I ever had. One plus for the Seattle area!

Vancouver. I have been traveling to Vancouver BC on occasion to do some training on Cross-Cultural Ministry with 10th Ave Church. I usually drive across the border.

Worst drivers in the US and worst traffic in the US are found in Seattle. I didn’t say worse than Phnom Penh.

X-My ex is doing well. She has a job but not well paying. She is looking for a real job so keep her in your prayers.

Ya’ll –Thanks for your prayers, encouragement, emails and financial support. We would be in dire straits if it weren’t for you.

Z-in the Greek Alphabet, is Omega, or the end. This ends my year in review

A Forester's Perspective

2010-12-11T10:48:00.000-08:00

Dr. Terry Tatter, renowned professor of Arboriculture and wood science at U-Mass, and author of the books I used to study for my Connecticut Arborist license was called as an expert witness in the law suit over a tree from Calvary Baptist (my church) falling on a woman’s car and bruising her in the incident during a freakish summer storm. He said, “This Arborist, Brian Maher is responsible because his pruning cuts are what led to the decay that caused the tree to crack and fall on the car and injure this woman!

Tatter brought in all sorts of blocks of wood cut up from the tree in radial and tangential sections to display to the court (most of the stem of the tree was removed before he arrived on the scene). “This simple Arborist does not have the experience to know how defects and decay affect the interior integrity and structure of the tree. “ Little did he know that when I was a forester, part of my on the job training was to spend hours watching how logs opened up on the saw mill. I was to study how exterior defects manifested themselves on the interior of the tree in terms of rot, decay, shake, twisted grain, knots, etc. There weren’t too many trees native to New England that I didn’t see sawn out or peeled on a veneer knife. I remember watching with fascination as the veneer knife peeled off wood like pulling toilet paper off the roll. You could follow the history of the tree from clear wood all the way down to the knots. Tatter lost the case and the later appeal as well.

As a forester I sometimes bid on standing timber so I had to learn what exterior defects looked like on the inside of a standing tree and what they did to the quality of the potential lumber. My company did not want me to waste their money on rot, crook, stain, sweep, decay and ring shake. While looking at a stand of timber I was going to bid on, I would check the stumps from logging operations in the years gone by to see what they looked so I could get an idea what was going on with certain species. In stands where there appeared to be no past harvesting of timber, I used a forester’s tool called an increment borer. It was like a hand drill bit that you drilled into the center of the tree and before you backed out the bit, you extracted the core. This could tell you how old the tree was, whether or not the tree was hollow, healthy, fast or slow growing, and whether it had ring shake, tension wood, or compression wood, etc. All this affected the quality of veneer or lumber. It wasn’t as if I could cut a tree down on someone else’s property and look at the rings to see how fire, drought, insect damage or too much rain affected the growth of the tree but it was still a good indicator of health and quality. But, it is much more interesting to track the history of tree or the stand by examining the annual rings on the stump vs. and increment borer.

I know we humans don’t have annual rings but I assume we have something akin to spiritual annual rings. I once did an assignment in seminary where I was to chart what affected me positively or negatively in the psychological, social, emotional, spiritual and physical realm for every year of my life. It really was like examining the annual rings of a fresh stump. I could track my personal history and see how I came to struggle with the issues that plagued me when I grew older. The point was to see that no matter how many bad life experiences we had, God’s grace, whether meted out directly or through persons, was an active constant in our lives. I saw on my annual rings those years when I had some grade school teachers in public school that shamed me publically a number of times in front of the class. By the time I hit fourth grade I had no self-esteem or sense of self-worth. My annual rings were compressed signaling a lack of personal growth and trauma. Rings in the following years showed growth as God sent mentors into my life in the form of teachers, coaches and scoutmasters who found something worthwhile about me. My spiritual annual rings will show floods, drought, fire, insect infestation, etc, or in human terms, trauma, crises, and undesirable events as well as periods of significant growth and health. As one unravels themselves in this light, it is like examining annual rings on a stump. When you try to unravel the life history of someone else, that is when you need an increment borer, especially if they are unable to examine their own annual rings (and that should be done by a counselor).

I remember the guys who operated the veneer knives bringing me blocks of wood containing horse shoes, axe heads, spikes, saw chain, etc, that the tree had grown around and compartmentalized when the tree was just a sapling. Those items shattered the knife. I hope they weren’t blaming me because there was no way I could’ve found any exterior defects signifying their existence. It’s like when some people seem perfect and have it all together with no outside indicators that their lives are anything but in perfect control and stability until knife hits that chunk of steel embedded deep in the interior of a person’s character. That has happened on occasion to me I must confess and it was the only Great Physician who could set things right again.

Back in the fifties a man in New York State had a coon dog who took off one night chasing a raccoon. He never came back and the man always wondered what became of the dog. In the late seventies he had his property logged and the logger bucking up logs on the log landing was bucking up a hollow tree and cut into part of a petrified dog that was way into the top part of the tree. It was the man’s coon dog.

The point is we all have defects. Some of us have defects so large a dog could climb into them, and others of us have a few burly knots or an axe head buried down deep under some clear wood. Some defects are obvious from the outside and some are not and they are ones that might require a little probing with an increment borer, but they are there and they can affect our lives. It is not our job to be defect detectors in others but Grace detectors. Counting anyone’s spiritual rings will reveal a history of God’s grace diffused through the annual rings, such as Oak wood which is ring porous. God’s grace is there in our lives so it might be good to stop striving, especially during this Christmas season and examine the myriad of ways that he has been present in our lives from the beginning.

A Tribute to Lou

2010-12-06T05:29:00.001-08:00

“G1!” “What is G1? I said. I was told it stood for Glenbrook 1, Troop 1 from Glenbrook (Stamford, Ct) of Alfred W. Dater Council that used to meet in Union Memorial church during the late sixties. Anything was better than old “Droopy Drawers,” our current scoutmaster who had us working on some sort of oscillator. I didn’t join scouts to build oscillators, whatever the hell they were. Actually I don’t even know why I joined but here we were in February of 1969, getting a new scoutmaster (thank God!).

But he was from Stamford! Mr. Lou Pape, curly hair on the fringes, balding in the front and sporting a chrome dome in the back, called the scouts of Troop 50 to attention. He wore black rimmed coke bottle type glasses. I, being only a 12 year old snob at the time, was wondering why someone from the neighboring ‘city’ of Stamford had to be imported to lead our Darien Troop. Mind you, Darien is a bedroom community of commuters to New York City, an island for the white and wealthy. Who was this character, I thought? It wasn’t after too long that one learned that Mr. Pape was no light weight, and you didn’t mess with him. After a few months, and a mass exodus of scouts, Troop 50 began to take to shape, a good shape. Finally, I began to realize why I joined scouts. Mr. Pape chucked the oscillators and begin to train us is in actual scouting skills, leadership and outdoor skills.

Mr. Pape was not a guy who looked hip by any means but he had a cool early 60’s Volkswagen van which he slept in on campouts when we weren’t backpacking. He switched over to sleeping in a tent because it was actually colder in his white VW van. Plus it didn’t do hills to well.

I remember one of our campouts that first year; it was a camp-o-ree in Woodland Park in Darien, sometime in 1969. We hiked from the Andrew Shaw Scout Cabin near Ring’s End Lumber Company to Woodland Park on the Stamford line. The camp-o-ree was made up of Alfred W. Dater council troops, all Darien and Stamford. Back in those days, when scouting was more popular, Darien had about 12 troops and Stamford, maybe 40 troops. Close to 25 troops were in attendance at this camp-o-ree. The scenario was that a nine year old girl was lost in Woodland Park and 25 troops had to find her. Zoomies were flying over lending suspense and credibility to the operation. 40 minutes into the operation, Mr. Pape had us comb an area a Stamford troop had jus finished searching. Our Assistant Senior Patrol Leader and captain of the Darien high School wrestling team, Doug Hanum spotted a large log buffered by leaves. He had us pull all the leaves away from under the log and low and behold, there was the girl. We followed our first aid training, built a stretcher from poles and our kerchiefs, and used our stretcher as a backboard to carry her out. Troop 50 one first place in the camp-o-ree that weekend because Mr. Pape’s training paid off. May this character from Stamford was alright. He sure knew his scouting stuff.

Early Campouts were a fiasco, so to speak, trying to whip the troop into shape from the slack days of old Droopy Drawers. On simple ten mile hike, after about hour you would here from the back of line; “Mr. Pape, how many miles?” He would casually reply: “Two more miles, Bubby.” This went on until we finished our 11 mile hike.

There is no age that seems to exhibit the epitome of thorough and unmitigated tomfoolery than that of the junior high school aged boy. His age, around eleven or twelve is precisely the age where he is allowed and even encouraged to sign up in the local scout troop. If it weren't for the older scouts who kept the silly tomfoolery of the younger ones to a manageable level through the use of the evil eye, cutting remarks, condescension, pranks and beatings, this age group would have their fathers pulling out their hair.

The Pound Ridge Reservation is a small State Park just inside the New York State border, not far from Southern Connecticut. If any place stirs up old memories of early scouting days, it is this place. Late March, in '69, perhaps twelve brand spanking new scouts, all dressed in their shiny new polyester scout uniforms, neckerchief slides and belt buckles gleaming sporting their wool checkered jackets or winter Parkas, occupied one of the three existing lean-tos that the illustrious troop 50 of Darien reserved for a weekend wilderness experience. Weekend warriors they were at best.

Earlier in that overcast and chilly spring day, our Scoutmaster Lou Pape had led us all on a ten mile hike around the park. There went the saddest looking bunch of scouts you might well have ever laid your eyes on. Joey B. had pots and pans haphazardly tied to his state-of- the- art Yucca pack, clanging and banging his away down the trail, looking more like an old prospector than a boy scout, scaring away any remote possibility of spotting any real wildlife. Even a crow would have been a welcome sight after a while. Then there was “Gills” Callahan who couldn't walk ten yards without hiking up his sagging drawers. Gills, was the lad who took too much abuse about his weight but always took it quite well and otherwise kept a low profile.

While Jim von K was complaining of chafing his tender thighs raw with his unchallenged, untried, brand spanking new polyester scout pants, "Saigon Elly", a derivative of his actual name (Dick Sagonelli) which resulted from Mr. Pape's intentional mispronunciation, brought up the rear - not to be confused with Callahan, who was continuing to bring up the rear quite literally.

Every now and then some tenderfoot would summon up enough courage to cry out; "Mr. Pape.....how many more miles"? The response never changed - "Two more miles, Bubby". That had always puzzled the best of us tenderfoots but since most of us were not Einstein types when it came to math, except for maybe the Toumey brothers, no one ever challenged Mr. Pape. But there were one or two of us who could put two and two together. For instance, if on a 10 mile hike we had been walking only an hour, and some loon asks the inevitable question and gets the standard, "Two more miles, Bubby" response, then it seemed to us that something wasn't adding up logically. But on the other hand, Scoutmasters never lie. This was a moral dilemma. And since scouts are encouraged to be honest and trustworthy, then we must assume our leader was the guru of trustworthiness. Thus, he would never lie. So, there we were, trapped between a rational rock and a moral hard place. It was only till we were able to read maps and notice trail signs that we had it figured but by then it was one of those nuggets of revelation you kept to yourself.

Stream crossings were always an event to look forward to, especially just after the ice thaws. The older scouts, most specifically a few who were on the High School wrestling squad would take bets on each tenderfoot who came up to take their turn crossing the brook. Gills Callahan lumbered up to ford the stream, hiking up his pants and shifting his pack around till he got comfortable. All bets were on. Gills got about a third of the way across the raging brook when he stepped on a slippery moss covered rock and down he went like a ton of bricks, face first into the stream. His pack had slipped up and was holding his head under the water. When the money was collected and the laughter died down to a dull roar, Assistant Senior Patrol leader, Michael Metzger grabbed the boy by the collar with one arm and pulled him up out of the brook in one swift motion.

There he was gasping for breath, soaked to the skin with his wet hair matted down on his head. Due only to his obesity was his pack and its contents able to remain up out of the water and somewhat dry. Gills immediately checked to see if the sweet tarts in his pants pocket were dry. So to accompany Joey's pots and pans a clanging, a 'squish, squish, squish' now beat out a new tempo to Joey's rhythm. In between the clanging and squishing was the sound of the occasional tenderfoot tripping over a root. It is just amazing where they put those things, right on the trail, no less. They called it, 'pulling a Smith'. Smith seemed to be able hone in on roots like he had radar. His name was personally etched on every root on the trail or so it seemed anyway. I must confess that I found my share in the early days, too.

Arriving back at the campsite, the tenderfoots of Coyote, Buffalo and the Cobra Patrol were indeed tender. Blisters, chaffed thighs, sore backs and aching shoulders where the straps cut into their tender skin under weight of their brand new gear, had this rag tag bunch lagging behind, limping, moaning, whining and complaining. They dropped their gear in the lean to, argued and fought briefly over which prime real estate they wanted and then sat on the nearest available object. The Toumey boys, Ken and Don, stood out amongst them like Mr. Clean on a linoleum kitchen floor. Not a hair out of place, or a speck of dirt or mud anywhere. How did they do it?

As the tired and sore bunch of wilderness novices took inventory of their personal causalities, the Senior Patrol Leader, Hawkins, came to remind us it was about time to rustle up some firewood to cook dinner. It began to drizzle at about 3 pm when we were putting our pea brains together to make a plan to cook up a complicated culinary delight - soup. Some rocket scientist noticed that in our lean to, unlike the others, lo and behold, there was a fire place built in the inside corner. Hey, great, we won't have to get wet! Tenderfoots, no longer in spotless shiny polyester but thorn torn, wet and mud stained, went out to select some choice firewood for a blazing inferno that would take the chill out of our bones on this cold, dank, drizzly late afternoon. Joey, Smith, Louie, Jim, Mark, Kern, Saigon Elli, Don, Ken and Gills Callahan went out to gather up some wood.

Tom Deppen otherwise known as “Bedpan,” and I stayed back to build the fire and brew up some soup. Louie offered us the use of his famous knife which had every attachment from a normal fork to a belly button lint remover. The scary thing was it had never been cleaned. Maybe it was a survival technique. He could have lived for a few days off the crumbs that were stuck between attachments and the green slime that was growing on the various implements that a wipe on a pant leg didn't totally do the trick. If you poured just hot water into his mess kit cup, you'd have a combination of instant Hot Chocolate, oatmeal and tang. So we declined his kind offer of using any of his mess implements. Three hours later and a quarter of cord of unburned green wood, we all settled down to some lukewarm soup. Smelling like we'd lived out our last five years in a hickory smoke house, we abandoned the idea of a roaring bonfire to dry us out. Who needed one anyway? When Mr. Pape came to check on us he took one whiff, and while looking around through the blue haze lingering in the lean-to, he spotted the green wood smoldering in the fire place. I vaguely remember him scratching his head and looking down at his boots, perhaps searching for the right words to say, and then giving us a short lecture on the undesirability and the drawbacks of using green wood vs. dry wood but one thing I do know is that the story of the "three hour soup" still lives in infamy to this day.

Shortly after, darkness fell and with it the rain poured down in buckets. We must have had 12 scouts jammed into that lean-to. Since it was raining so hard, our normal campfire program was canceled. We were all settled in our little jelly rolls, dodging cold drops of water that never seemed to spring up in the same place twice. It was only 7 pm and as the temperature dropped, occasional flashlight beams sliced through our warm breath which was clouding and rising in the cold night air.
Before everyone got settled into their little jelly rolls, there was a frenzy of rummaging going on.
"Shoot, gotta get my canteen and put it right here in case I get thirsty." And another;
"Let’s see, If I put my boots right here, I can get 'em if I hafta take a pee in the middle of the night."

Or;

"I should've brought a pillow", as someone wads together some T-shirts and underwear and stuffs them under his head. The back ground to all these comments or thoughts is someone blowing up an air mattress that inevitably will be flat before morning. One of the Toumey boys is donning a poncho, ready to head out into the down pour and brush his teeth. Someone rips a loud one and the lean-to erupts with laughter. Gills, in a panic is ripping apart his pack looking for some back up Twizlers or Nibs to tide him over for the night. "Hey where did my Pez go? Did anyone see my Pez"? It had been swallowed up in the mysterious darkness of the lean to. "Oh, shut up, Callahan, just wait until morning."

After three or four hours of unmitigated tomfoolery, laughing at dirty jokes, telling crude stories, the passing of wind at large decibels, guffawing, etc., some of the tuckered tenderfeet dozed off. Every now and then when our laughter got out of control, we'd hear Mr. Pape yell;
"Knock it off 'yuse guys, its lights out"!

Only when the beam of a flashlight began to shine in our direction did silence resound in our lean to. Funny, you could hear a pin drop-but not for too long!

All of us were stacked into the lean to like cord wood with our feet facing out toward the open face. Only Gills Callahan, because of his sheer obesity was lodged perpendicularly to us, closest to the outside. Rain was cascading down off the roof in sheets in front of us, creating quite a large puddle in front of the lean to. Bedpan, myself and perhaps another scout ascertained that Gills had fallen fast asleep, perhaps dreaming of Sweet tarts, Nibs, Necos or Fireballs. Whose idea it was, I can't remember, but with a slight nudge, we rolled poor unsuspecting Gills out into the depression that was caused by the rain cascading off the roof. Gills was thoroughly soaked before Mr. Pape had discovered him, a quite waterlogged, mostly disheveled lump of cotton, polyester and flesh on his final rounds before turning in. He must have kicked Gills back into to the lean to. Amazingly, Gills didn't wake up until the next morning. Or so it appeared. Mr. Pape assumed Gills had rolled out on his own after some tossing and turning. He should have known better.

One dilemma Mr. Pape hadn't quite solved and that was just exactly who it was in the corner of the lean to, body shivering, teeth chattering and wrapped in a pink blanket. No sleeping bag, just a pink blanket-pink, no less. First the Green wood-three hour soup, a disheveled lump sleeping in a puddle, and now a shivering body in a pink blanket. Did it get much better than that?

After a cold breakfast of whatever un-edible food we rustled up, we began to pack up our knap sacks. Mr. Pape had come by earlier to identify the shivering body in the pink blanket. Nobody had to tell him it was Joey. Mr. Bachman or Mr. Metzger or some other kind hearted parent had boiled enough water for the gaggling of tenderfoots to have a cup of hot chocolate. Forgetting that anything could get hot on a camp out, most of us singed our tongues down to the bone. It always took at least a week for my tongue to heal and for that burnt taste in my mouth to go away. My mouth always felt as though a group of tenderfoots had camped out in it for the weekend and used it as a latrine.

Mr. Pape was not God, and could not create something out of nothing, but he did his best.

I freely admit I was rather obnoxious as a pre-adolescent (probably adolescent as well) but Mr. Pape taught me and mentored me in scouting skills and gradually I emerged as a leader in our scout troop. Mr. Pape was my first mentor and coach who (other than my father) accepted me as I was, and worked with me. Many of my earlier experience with adults and people in authority were rather abusive. Mr. Pape helped me to believe in myself and taught me leadership and outdoor skills that are still with me today.

With the switchover to Mr. Pape, we now had campouts every month. Each campout had to do with at least a 10 mile hike. Tailgate camping was just not found in Mr. Pape’s book. Darien’s Troop 50 became quite competitive in the Alfred W. Dater council from 1969 to 1973. In 1971, my father became Mr. Pape’s assistant and we proceeded to grow in scouting skills.

Mr. Pape wanted to see me get my Eagle Scout badge and encouraged me from early on. He told me: “Son, one day you’re going to meet a monster, and she is called a ‘girl.’ When you meet her, the probability of any progress on your Eagle Badge will cease. Work hard now, so when you meet the monster, all your hard work won’t be lost.” His words were prophetic but I followed his advice and had most of the work done for my eagle badge at 14. I got my eagle when I was 15.

When is the Church being the Church?

2010-12-05T09:39:00.000-08:00

While staying home from church with my recently widowed mother, I was doing some reading and came across this quote:

“How does the Church contribute to the survival of the communities in which it ministers?” Churches invariably struggle with their relevance because they don’t know how they contribute to their respective communities. The survival of an individual church, in some respects, becomes an end in itself. Churches exist for their own sake.” Bruce Bradshaw.

This quote, among other things, has demonstrated to me that the church’s engagement in social justice issues on global and local levels is not only the natural outflow of a biblical ethic of love, grace and justice, but the very means by which individual churches are to survive. Without re-inventing the wheel and giving the complete rationale for social justice as stemming from a purely biblical ethic (read Howard Yoder), suffice it for now to say that Jesus’ summary of the law into the Great Commandment is enough reason for the church to engage in social justice. Many churches separate evangelism and social justice as two unrelated commandments, and often evangelism is prioritized when both are actually interdependent missions/commandments for the church. Teaching in churches on biblical ethics, holistic ministry, and social justice is largely lacking which affects the world view of each person in the pew. I think that any efforts in discipleship that don’t include doing social justice just reinforce a pietistic and doctrinal heavy emphasis type of discipleship that leads to non-engagement with the social system and powers. Obedience in many forms of contemporary discipleship boils down to sins of commission, not sins of omission like our call to social justice. I have only attended one church, Pasadena Mennonite Church, where social justice was treated fairly, given a place in discipleship and the life of the church. This church engaged society and the powers. My expat church in Cambodia didn’t need to address it too much because it was what many of us were already doing.

Early on in my Christian life I felt empty or that something was missing in my Christian life. It just seemed too shallow and when I tried to share the gospel with friends and strangers, it was too forced because my motivation was that I had the “truth” and they needed it- not that I had this particularly great experience that I want to share with someone because they needed it too. I could not even share that my experience was all that great or describe what was different about me (except I didn’t drink or smoke). In the late 80’s I began reading C.S. Lewis and Francis Shaffer and they were a catalyst for thinking about a Christian World view and the evolution of Christian thinking over the last two thousand years. My world view began to allow more space for a biblical ethic of social justice. My exposure to Jai Sankarsarma at World Vision, Cambodia in the early 90’s and living in a developing Buddhist country further enabled me see how interdependent evangelism and social justice were. When I went to work for World Vision I had to develop a Christian Witness Training Module for World Vision National Staff. In the process I read Paul Hiebert, Bryant Meyers, Bruce Bradshaw, Ron Sider, Don Kraybill, John Steward and a host of others. I enrolled in Fuller in 2005 and my courses began to pull everything together in light of God’s missional and redemptive plan for the cosmos.

The course am taking now was very helpful as we studied a biblical view the powers and principalities, and how church needs to engage societal or systemic evil in order to fulfill its mandate of being salt and light and bearing witness to the Kingdom of God in the midst of the cosmos-it should not simply address the symptoms. This challenges my faith in a way because it takes cooperation between churches, unity, organizing, research, and risk. It is much easier to just teach bible studies, preach a sermon or handout food to the poor and feel good about it when we have abdicated the important responsibility of the church being the only entity that can successfully engage the powers. Recently I have been given more light to see, and I want to be part of a ministry that realizes the Church’s responsibility to engage powers. I am saddened in one way because I have recently been divorced and need to be near my children in Seattle where jobs are not easy to find and it looks like I may have to take a low paying job doing anything I can to pay alimony. I would love to find a Christian non-profit to work nearby that does engage the powers and can transform societal systems. So I am not comfortable in my position now, because I want to act, and it seems like those doors are closed for the time being.

The ethical issue, then for me, is not about bribery, or lying, or when to obey the government vs. God, etc., it is how can we live in a particular society and system without giving more leeway to the powers in the exploitation of the working class, the poor, oppressed and alien? How can we let high insurance costs, high interest on credit cards, high health costs, high food costs, and high pharmaceuticals continue to be made available only for the wealthier members of society? How can I live my life in the system without receiving benefits that cost others or make others go without? This will continue to challenge and grow my faith as I pray to God for more clarity in my role in civic society or overseas as a community development worker. Most churches would never have challenged me or pushed me this far toward a holistic type of discipleship. I unfortunately had to come to this point of faith and challenge through working for Christian NGOs and taking seminary courses.

Same Same but Different

2010-06-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

This is one of the first times my stays in Cambodia has not been a great one. I was sharing with a friend that things aren’t just the same; more power struggles, the church has lost its passion, development is happening everywhere but the poor are getting poorer, people change and move on, etc. My friend, Joel, the oldest timer here said pretty much the same thing. It isn’t the same Cambodia and he didn’t mean that in a good way. Not that the old times are being held in romantic sentiment. Things just seem strange.

Older pastors are quarreling and plateauing, and wondering what in the world is going on around them. Younger people are tapping into every electronic device possible. The world here is changing. Seila and the ESC KEY still manage to keep their hand on the pulse of Globalization and continue interpret and wrestle with cultural trends. They are putting out about 40-50 Diamond Program graduates per year along with sports ministry, Big Brothers/Big Sisters Orphan Ministry, Community Impact and all the drop ins we have day at our Bright Spark Drop in Center. All these things are great and relevant things happening for the Kingdom of Jesus in Cambodia but funding is hard to find. It wasn’t hard to raise thousands of dollars for Abraham’s projects in Andong Village but where do we go for funds to train Cambodia’s future doctors, businessmen, politicians, authors, human rights workers, etc. Training emerging leaders is just not sexy enough.

EFC KEY has a group of very committed and creative staff who work hard to see that young people from the churches are involved in ministries to the poor, to orphans, playing sports with non-believers, and offering training programs and seminars. I am now just a visitor here at EFC KEY (one time founder) as Seila knows how to run this ship on his own and I like what I see. I just wish we knew where to find more donors so we could expand rather than having to cut back on ministries with huge impact.
Just a few thoughts from a far.

Brian

Testimony of Pastor Abraham

2010-02-12T20:13:00.000-08:00

Interviewed by Brian M. Maher

I was born in 1974 into a Buddhist family in Kompong Cham Province of Cambodia and I grew up living in and around the Pagoda because my grandfather was the Buddhist Patriarch of the Pagoda. The Pagoda was my second home until I graduated from high school. My youth had been highly influenced by Buddhism as I was expected to study Buddhism regularly. After I finished high school in I went to Phnom Penh to study at the Phnom Penh University in 1992 where I studied the philosophy of Education. It was there that I had heard the good the news of Jesus Christ for the first time in 1995, but I took no interest in Christianity, and as matter of fact, hearing it angered me and turned me off to Christians. A friend of mine invited me to join in his church’s Christmas program and he gave me a special gift. I thought the gift was a shirt, money or something special until I got home and opened it. It was simply a bible which I threw in the river on my way to Kompong Cham for a school break. I had no interest in Jesus until I finished at the university.

When I finished my Bachelor’s degree in 1997, I became an official in the ministry of Education. Shortly after, I went through training in order to evaluate the education levels in government schools. Therefore, I was enjoying my work and it was great but the salary was extremely low but those around me were getting rich because of corruption. As for me, I did not appreciate corruption and often confronted those involved. My life was difficult because of the low salary so I had to find some additional work to make ends meet. I contacted a lumber company from Hong Kong who bought timber from Cambodia and after some training I became their manager which provided a great salary. I saved up my money, quit my two jobs and opened my own lumber company of which I partnered with the Hong Kong Lumber company for a short time before they closed up. I produced lumber at my saw mill and began to partner with a Thai family which made me quite wealthy. This was in Koh Kong province which was like the American Wild West, and had no rule of the law and there were many poor people living close to my mill. We had a gang who ruled the area and fleeced the poor through violence and intimidation. When I saw this take place, I began to help the poor who were being ripped off by the gang. I created my own gang and we had automatic weapons to fight the bandits as I had become a soldier as well during that time. It was now 1998. I ended up killing the leader of the bandits and gang dispersed and ceased to oppress the people. I am the only one left alive from our original group of modern day Robin Hoods, because, as I thought at the time, my good luck came from the magical powers of a Khmer Witch doctor bestowed upon me.
Business was going well, too, but soon my partner ripped me off in Thailand and I lost everything but the shirt on my back, including my fiancé which broke my heart. I had to sell my mill to pay my creditors.

My life by then was a big mess, and full of problems. My mother really worried about me and called me to meet with a Khmer fortune teller who told me I would never have a wife or children. This often made me hopeless and I often remembered that friend who encouraged me back in 1995 with the words of Jesus. I took a break from life and stayed with my sister in Phnom Penh and went to Campus Crusade for Christ to ask them about Jesus and they explained quite a bit of the gospel to me. They gave me a New Testament and I took it home to read. When I was free, I read it. It was two months before I finished it, after that a particular verse really interested me. It is found in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth and the life…..” I remember that Buddha said, I will show you the way, but that Jesus was saying I am the way. During this time I was considering the difference between Buddhism and Christianity but I did not believe just yet. The book of Romans talked a lot about salvation and that we cannot save our selves, only Jesus can. The teaching in the Pagoda told me we could receive salvation by doing good deeds. If we did good things, good things would happen to us. But for me, I wondered why when I did good things, bad things happened to me. Romans said we are not always able to do good because we are sinners and this made a lot of sense to me. It gave me a clear answer. Romans said that Jesus is the only one who can forgive ours sins and give us salvation. Again, it was a clearer explanation than Buddhism, one which I was looking for. I also sought Christians to answer the questions I had until I was invited to attend a Sunday worship service and when I went, they sung a lot of songs, one of which made me cry. It was “Jesus, the Rock of Salvation.” When they sung that song, I got goose bumps. It was the singing of hymns that brought tears to my eyes and I wondered why this never happened when I studied Buddhism with my father. I had the feeling of excitement in my heart. Because of that, I decided to follow Jesus that day which was August 15, 1999 (my spiritual birthday) and I wanted to transform Cambodia and rid my country of crime and corruption. I wanted to join a political party that was against crime and corruption but my family told me I would be dead in two years if rose within the party. How could I change Cambodia quickly? My parents and friends asked me to consider my plans so I prayed to the Lord to ask him. I prayed and fasted many times and God told me the answer was in sharing the gospel with the Cambodian people so I wrote out a covenant that told God I would give my life to spreading the gospel in Cambodia whether it meant life or death.

When I first believed, I met up with some heavy persecution from my family. My father wanted me to work with the government having a big title and a big salary but I was intent on serving the Lord. My father commanded me to stop following Jesus and join the government to become an official. I felt caught between a rock and a hard place. The tension between my written covenant with God and the demands of my father caused me so much angst that I sought God in times of silence and solitude, and the Bible showed me that my sacrifices for the Kingdom will bring much more blessings than that of what is “lost” in return, so I offered my life and everything I had to Jesus again, including the idea of working for the government of Cambodia. I decided to serve the Lord through Campus Crusade for Christ.

When my father heard this news he was livid. He said I was crazy to fall into the influence of a western religion such as Christianity and that I was now brainwashed. When I visited him, he had to get drunk in order to talk to me. He said I was the one of his children who destroyed his heart and he remembered when he used to brag that I was one child that brought him the most pride and honor. Through all of this, I still followed the will of God as I knew for my life with Campus Crusade for two years. Because Campus Crusade was not a church planting organization, I resigned because I had the vision to plant churches and so joined a Baptist Denomination. For three years I studied in their Bible school, learned a lot, and gained some experience in the process until I had some conflicts with some of the foreign missionaries running the denomination. I wanted to do holistic ministry even though I did not fully understand just what it was. The missionaries said God only cared about spiritual things like Bible reading, worship and evangelism, and the physical or social needs of people so I prayed about this for a long time and came to the conclusion that it would be best for me to leave and so I volunteered to serve at an independent church as an associate pastor.

After getting more experience with church problems and politics, and persecution from my family, I decided to add another name to my given name which is “Abraham,” because my character was akin to that of Abraham in the Bible. Like Abraham, who left his family in Ur to travel to the Promised Land, I left my parents to follows God’s call. Now I am called ‘Abraham’ Simting Hang, but my nick name is Abe. I had to go through a lot of red tape with the government to get all my identification documents changed but now even my father calls me Abraham.

In the church where I served, I noticed a young woman who had a servant’s heart in the youth group. I was very impressed and decided that I was going to marry this girl. After knowing her 7 months, I boldly asked her to marry me. She was shocked and said she would pray about it. Three weeks later she agreed and I had to go meet her father and he wanted to meet my parents to talk about the engagement. When my parents heard, they were angry with me again. They would not come to meet my future in laws. So I went by myself with another young person from my church. I apologized for the rudeness of my family but since Sophin’s family were Christians, they understood and said, “No problem.” The first time my parents met Sophin’s parents were at the wedding. When my family came to join the wedding they saw me crying because I was so excited about the wedding. When the service was over, we had the reception at noon. As I sat with my parents, my father asked me why I cried. “A man should not cry because it is not culturally appropriate.” I said to him, “I am crying out of joy because this wedding is where God brought Sophin and I together as one.” My father did not answer but his face showed how he felt. After two months, I told my wife I wanted a son but I remembered what the fortune teller said, and we prayed to God that God would bless us with a son who we would name “Purith,” which means in Khmer, “one who brings blessing to family in the way of good relationships.” God answered our prayers and gave us a son who ended up bringing my family together with my parents and extended family and until now, we have a great relationship and they are trying to understand what our faith is all about.
This is about the time when I became a student at EFC KEY’s Diamond Program in 2004. I was surprised by the uniqueness of the lessons, and especially the lesson that articulated what Holistic Ministry really was and this gave me more impetus to do holistic church planting.

In 2005, I left my church and started my own ministry in early 2006 and focused on holistic ministry. I prayed that God would help me fulfill the vision I had for holistic ministry. When I shared my vision for holistic ministry with many church leaders, they didn’t like the idea and said it was only good for community development, not for church planting. I was convinced otherwise so I continued to pray and an American missionary friend encouraged me to pursue God’s vision for me.
After that, I began to work with the poor because of Luke 4:18 and 19 and I wanted to follow Jesus’ model of ministry to the poor and oppressed. I found a whole bunch of IDPs living on the river bank that fled the war since 1979. They were squatters who were very poor and who were forcibly evicted from the riverside and thrown into a rice field north of Pochentong Airport with only tarps and rice bags for shelter. They had very little food and the field became a quagmire because during the rainy season. Their new location was called Andong Village. There was no infrastructure-sewage, drainage, electricity, clean water, health care, etc, so I moved my ministry from the riverside to Andong and spend my time just visiting among the former squatters. When they began to ask about me, I told them who was and that I was a Christian. Then some began to ask me about Jesus and I shared the good news with them and they became believers. Eight of us gathered for worship outside of a Korean Medical Clinic and after a while we began to grow numerically bit by bit. When we got big enough, I rented a small house with some land for worship but the house soon became too small so I built a simple thatch church building that could hold about 100 people.

The people were suffering and unorganized as the government paid them little attention. No NGO was able to have a voice or organize this group of high independent and unruly squatters but I decided to become an advocate for these squatters as many groups were out to steal their land. Soon I partnered with some churches in Seattle and a local organization called LICADHO to build new roofs for the people that were living in terrible makeshift dwellings. Some days, after putting in the poles for framing, we’d wake up in the morning to find them pulled out and torn down. I decided I needed to sleep out there in Andong in order to prevent this gang from doing it again. They were not happy with me. With funding from Seattle, we were able to rebuild houses for about 500 families. This helped my reputation with people and they began to seek me for counsel but a gang sponsored by someone with bad intentions for the Andong residents threatened to kill me many times. I told them, “You can only kill me if God wants me dead.” We built roofs which really helped, but the extreme poverty and health problems were taking a big toll on the people. But mainly, I noticed three things: 1) many of their problems stemmed from not having Jesus in their lives, 2) they had no education, 3) they had no confidence in themselves, and depended on others to sustain them. I wanted to change these three main obstacles in lives of the villagers. We already had a church, but this was for the believers. Most squatter children were not allowed to attend public school because they could not pay the fees and most of their parents were illiterate. I was concerned that the children would grow up to be illiterate like their parents. This gave me the idea to build a school for the children of the 1000 families at Andong. I shared this idea with many but they thought this was the job of an NGO or the government. So in the beginning, I built the school with money from my wife’s savings which was about $5,900, and she was in agreement. After the school was built, we had a problem finding funding for the teachers but I shared my ideas with the potential teachers who decided they would volunteer their time to teach so the school began to operate with three grades and 65 students. After that, the Seattle churches began to help fund school supplies and the school began to operate smoothly and funds came from Tasmania for teacher’s salaries. The process I began with a concept began to show fruit on the ground so I offered the fruit back to God. When I was invited by the Christian and Missionary Alliance in the US to travel to America, I had the opportunities to preach at their youth camps and in churches about holistic ministry. The offerings I received for my personal use totaled close to $10,000 which I invested back into the school and general development of the village.

When I came back from America, a group wanted to evict the IDPS once again as the land increased in value so I gathered the villagers together to urge them not to let anyone displace them again. After a few days, I was bringing my pregnant wife (2 months) to Phnom Penh on my dirt bike and suddenly I saw a motorcycle coming up behind me at a high speed. They shouted at me and kicked the bike. I called to God for his help as we were crashing and God answered. God protected my wife and our yet to be born child. My knee suffered damage and the bike has never been the same. In spite of these problems, I prayed with my wife and we compared our situation with that of the Apostles. We were happy to have the privilege to suffer for Jesus.
Shortly afterwards, I received encouragement from Australian, Mike Frost who shared from his book Exiles which really touched my heart. His teaching affirmed that what I was doing was God’s will. This gave me more impetus to continue along with seeing the fruit that God was giving me through Holistic Ministry despite outright persecution. I began to see my vision become clearer each day and this gave me joy.
We had a church and a school so I thought I would start an NGO in order to partner with other organizations and NGOs that were hesitant to trust churches. Through the quality of our work, I hoped we would be a testimony to the secular NGOS and this is happening now to a measurable degree.

Two years after we put new roofs on the house, they needed to be replaced. Many villagers came to see me, full of tears, as the rainy season was approaching. I told the people to pray and believe in Jesus and he will hear their prayers. I gathered 50 villagers to pray each night and two weeks later Medical Teams International and Imago Dei Church from Portland, Oregon responded with funding for corrugated tin roofs and water sanitation. Through them, we built 103 new houses and the people were amazed and praised God. I would like to continue with the new houses/roofs until all the villagers have good roofs, good health, and good infrastructure. These holistic efforts, done after Jesus’ model, have caused the villager to come to my office at the church to ask to become believers. They used to call the village a hopeless case but since transformation is happening, they now have much more hope than they had in the past. In addition, many onlookers from NGOs, neighboring villages, etc, are surprised to see such transformation in this squalid little village of 800 families. This is an example that we can use for community development in other villages in rural areas.

I recently preached in churches in Australia and they were surprised to see the model of ministry I was using and have recently sent interns to come learn with me. They are now changing their model of ministry to become more holistic and more akin to Jesus’ own model.

Just yesterday, there was a meeting of organizations and NGOs working in Andong Village which I was unable to attend. News reached me that these secular and Buddhist organizations who initially hostile to my work had voted me to represent this association. I was overjoyed that our testimony and work had impact on even Buddhist organizations.

My future plans are to plant churches and build a school in Oddar Meanchey Province (near the Thai border) among the former Khmer Rouge. I have been given seven hectares of land by a government official in order to this. Just this week, after traveling to Anlong Veng with MTI and Imago Dei church I was able to share the gospel with many former Khmer Rouge leaders as I slept in their village for two nights.

I look forward to what God will continue to do in the Kingdom of Cambodia through my NGO and our many partners.

HISTORY OF THE EFC “KINGDOM EQUIPPED YOUTH” COMMISSION 1995 -2010

2010-02-02T18:19:00.000-08:00

The birth of EFC Youth Commission was born largely of one man’s vision to see the Youth of Cambodia, discipled, trained and mobilized as a force that would stem the decay of the Khmer society and function as a preservative, salt and light within the Cambodian contemporary youth culture. This man was the Rev. Chhon P. Kong, Khmer expatriate who escaped from Cambodia to the Thai border in 1979. He was repatriated to a third county, the United States, where he pastored a Cambodian Church for 12 years. Chhon with Radha Manickam, were perhaps some of the first overseas Cambodian Christian Leaders to return to Cambodia in 1989 when the doors opened. On Chhon’s second short-term mission trip, Chhon brought me (Brian Maher) along with him. Working with the youth both on two short-term trips in 1990 and 1992, I was convinced that the future development of the country was largely in the hands of the Cambodian Christian youth generation. Chhon & family moved to Cambodia in 1992 under Mission to Unreached Peoples to run Cambodia Christian Services. Chhon had been successful in helping me catch a vision for Khmer youth in 1990 so my family and I came shortly after Chhon with the same organization in 1994. The two of us planned to set up a ministry to the emerging leaders of the local Cambodian churches under Cambodia Christian Services which became the Evangelical Fellowship in 1996.

At the Cambodia Christian Service’s annual meeting in February of ‘95, Chhon, as General Secretary, made a call for volunteers to join me in establishing the CCS Youth Working Group. Responding to this call was Swiss National, Harry Zuberbuhler who had come to Cambodia in ‘91 to begin YWAM’s ministries here. Time was set aside for those attending the CCS Conference to come together and discuss the possibility for future youth ministry among Cambodian young people. Before the conference I done some research and interviewing which helped inform our mission for working with Cambodian Youth and during the Conference, Harry and I began what we would call the "Youth Commission" and soon after Mr. Uon Seila joined us. Harry and I worked together as co-directors with Seila as our cultural advisor. We began with a handful of committed and talented Cambodian youth such as Uy Pheara, Ouk Vannarah, Chea Vuthy, Khan Rasmey, Chhinho Saing, Bun Sambath, Hang Rasmey, Son Ti, Seng Vuthy, Tith Vannseam, Thong Romanea, and Kim Tha.

Mr. Uon Seila was our resident expert advisor on the cultural relevance of our goals, direction and content of teaching. Seila steered us toward a focus on teaching sexual awareness to Christian Young people for two reasons: the blow up of AIDS and other STD’s in Cambodia and the fact that the only way to learn about sex was on the street. Cambodian young people did not even have basic information about reproduction and bodily functions that we in west learn in eighth grade biology. Seila began teaching what Harry called BGR (Boy-Girl Relationships) in our weekly youth training program that turned out to really meet the needs of Cambodian emerging leaders. Seila later published a booklet for the Youth Commission on Sexual Awareness called, ‘Sacred Love’, written from a thoroughly Biblical perspective.

Our first event in April of '95 was an alternative Khmer New Year's Event in Kean Svay, a picnic area just out of town on the Mekong. At this first event there were 13 churches represented and about 250 youth.

The Youth Commission operated under CCS or a year, doing youth leader training, and special youth events. Chhon, Harry and I had been wanting to do a youth camp from early on and Seila had the opportunity to attend a Scripture Union Youth Camp in Malaysia and brought back many helpful ideas so in 1996, we ran the first National Cambodian Christian Youth Camp ever in the history of Cambodia. This was held in the seaside town of Sihanuokville. The Youth Commission also held it’s first provincial seminar in the province of Kompong Chhnang, using the emerging leaders who regularly attended our youth leader training program in order to disciple them and give them hands on experience. In late 1996, CCS closed shop in order to give room for the Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia, a movement birthed from within Cambodia, to grow without competition. The Youth Commission then came under the Umbrella of the EFC. In mid ‘96 we had two Khmer interns. First, Mr. Tep Samnang, a young man studying at the Phnom Penh Bible college and then a Phnom Penh Bible School graduate, Mr. Bun Chan Veasna. Soon after, Harry and I hired our first full time youth worker, Miss Sidara Ieng.

We have had many very successful national youth conferences since then and many provincial seminars and a number of sexual awareness seminars here in Phnom Penh for Christian youth as well as other programs and activities. We also gathered youth from Christian Churches each year to take part in National Environment day to teach Christian youth about stewardship of the environment and community service. We also began a ministry to the child commercial sex workers. These children are a part of World Vision Cambodia’s New Ship Ministry. The girls of the Youth Commission minister love and the Word of God to these girls on a monthly basis. In 2000, we began ministering to the orphans at UNICAS orphanage. Both ministries were arranged so that young people could catch a vision for holistic ministry.

In February of 1998, Mr. Harry Zuberbuhler left the field leaving me as sole director but I was on home leave from June 1997 to June 1998 so Rev. Steve Scoffone of International Teams filled the gap until I returned the following June. With Seila's help, we put together a Board of Directors. The board came together in 1998, consisting of some national pastors, missionaries, and gifted Cambodian young people with Uon Seila serving as board chair. Also, in 1998, Dawn Landes from Mennonite Central Committee began to volunteer her time to help with board and staff development. In 2003, Mark Fender of International Teams and Todd Smith from New Zealand also came on as official advisors. In 2004, Graham Symons of ICC replaced Dawn Landes as Financial and Capacity Development. Elijah Penner of MCC began to serve as our liaison to Mennonite Central Committee.

In 2004, former chairman of the board and one of the founding fathers, Mr. Uon Seila, accepted an invitation to come on as a full time co-director of the Youth Commission. This move brought us closer to national ownership and ultimate sustainability. The same year we began to teach drug awareness and a trainer of trainers (TOT) program for those elders in the churches who want to teach their youth groups about drug and sex awareness.

With grants from Mennonite Central Committee, Global Family, and TearFund, we were able to hire six adequate full time staff members to allow the Youth Commission to build a good foundation for proper accounting, report writing, planning and organizational development. We are grateful to MCC, TearFund and Christian Reformed World Relief Committee who have helped with funding and training of our staff and board members.

The EFC Youth Commission endeavored to disciple Emerging Leaders and bring unity among Christian groups both Khmer and expatriate by including all Christian churches and Christian organizations in our planning, program and events. We want to teach youth about leadership, being salt and light, and how to minister holistically to the church and society. We endeavored to give Christian young people the tools to create vision among them selves, and how to interpret cultural trends within the contemporary youth culture and minister the Good News accordingly. We are thankful for the all the help we have received in human resources here in Cambodia from Servants, ICC, CRWRC, InnerChange, World Vision, SAO, TearFund, Samaritan’s Purse, and Action Int’l. We are also indebted to local church leadership; Rev. Heng Cheng, Pastor Mam Barnabas, Rev. Chhon Kong, Pastor Nara Runnath, Dr. Yem Tevyneath, Ms. Sen Samphos, Ms. Sen Navy, Mr. Uy Pheara, Ms. Yos Bophal, Ms. Navy Chhan, Pastor Heng Pisit and Prey Sokoin for their excellent contributions over the years.

In 1999, the Youth Commission put on a provincial seminar in Rattanakiri for some tribal groups. During this time, Seila was walking through an area where they were digging for gems with Rev. Heng Cheng, General Secretary of the EFC, when he almost stepped on a mat that had some gems on it. They were all crusty and covered in dirt so Seila didn’t recognize them as gems, but Heng Cheng warned Seila not to step on them because they were, indeed, gems. Seila found it hard to believe so Heng Cheng later brought him to the town of Banlung to see those crusty gems processed, cut and polished. This impressed Seila and over the next few years and as our youth training began to stagnate, Seila thought how training young people should be multi-faceted, not just academic. He thought we might add mentoring, field work, labs to a more specific form of training that focused on leadership development. Seila mused that most pastors saw their young people as pests, similar to those crusty gems Seila thought were useless pebbles so he was moved to gather those crusty pebbles up, cut them and polish up and return them to the pastor with great value.

Meanwhile, New Zealander, Todd Smith became familiar with the Youth Commission’s programs and offered to help develop Seila’s vision for a new type of training. Todd consulted many curriculum development experts in Cambodia and then began to develop the curriculum, asking qualified individuals to provide lessons according to his template. Many of us supplied lessons that Todd edited. We then had teacher training for those that would teach what would be called, as Seila dubbed it, the Diamond Program. “DP” was launched in 2004. The Diamond Program is a one-year ‘in-service’ training program for emerging leaders which focuses on leadership development for emerging church leaders. Participants are first recommended by their pastor, and then interviewed by the DP directors before acceptance into the program. 30 emerging leaders are accepted per year and about 23 actually graduate. Each participant meets with a mentor on a weekly basis and our mentors are trained and oriented on a quarterly basis.

Part of the idea of DP is to bridge the cultural gap between young emerging leaders and the pastors who are often in conflict. The young people how to use computers and speak English and many of their pastors do not. Their pastors have been through the Khmer Rouge Regime and have much wisdom because of their life experiences to offer the youth. DP has been intentional about putting out emerging leaders who are willing to humble themselves and serve their pastors and much feedback from the pastors has proved this to be a successful endeavor.

In 2004, we opened our first satellite office in the provincial city of Kompong Cham, overseen by Mark Fender (Int’l Teams). We are grateful to First Presbyterian Church Bellevue, Westminster Chapel, and Calvin Presbyterian (Seattle) for sponsoring the expanding work of the Youth Commission in the provinces which is also proving to be quite effective per feedback from rural pastors.

By 2006, the DP Project proved to be very successful and students began to ask to be taken to a deeper level of leadership development. Todd, Seila and I began to put together a leadership curriculum for DP 2 based on Personal Spiritual Formation, Dynamic Reflection, Praxis and Field work. Instead of personal mentors, a group of DP students would meet together weekly as peer mentors to discuss the lesson and pray for each other. This ended up being a witness to the community as they were meeting in public places.

Testimony IV: DP 2 Graduate

I am so glad to study in DP II training and I thought that it is very importance training for me and other students because when I studied the course I can serve God strongly both at church and work place.

More than ten months that I learned in DP II, I knew that God changed me a lot both spiritual and daily actions. God also taught me how to live with others and understand about the worldview of the difference people. The lessons are very good; it improved me to grow in Leadership skills and became a faithful servant of God. I have a vision and commitment to expand God Kingdom in my nation, Cambodia. I also learned about Personal Spiritual Formation that helped me to know that pains, sufferings, difficulty I met in the past were an experience for my life and I know how God shaped my life. Moreover, the course helped me to focus on both spiritual and social activity, before I thought that Christian have to focus on only spiritual. I reflected that, now, DP II helped me to become a humble leader who serve not for popular.

I will use the lessons to help teach people around me and I will apply the practical insights such as exposure trip to see and help the poor. And I will do my best to share good news about God to people as much as I can because I remembered that when I conducted a survey on Other Faiths people always ask me who is God.

Also in 2006, Craig Greenfield from Servants to Asia’s poor put their Big Brothers and Big Sisters Program under the wing of EFC-KEY which is a ministry that mobilizes emerging leaders to mentor orphans in villages in the provinces Kandal, Takeo, Kompong Cham, Kompong Thom, Kompong Chhnang and Phnom Penh. BB&BS is serving 230 pairs (pair mean adult mentoring a child) of Big Brothers/Sisters and orphans. Now there are 3 pairs in Battambang. Plans are to expand in existing provinces, especially Battambang.

In 2007, at our annual planning and review, the name, EFC YOUTH COMMISSION was changed to EFC-KEY (Kingdom Equipped Youth) and a Satellite KEY office was opened in Kompong Chhnang City to run the Diamond Program and other KEY ministries. This same year DP 2 was launched with 20 emerging leaders who have gone on to do great things; Hang Abraham, Bontok Seila, Ms. Khantey, Nov Bora, etc.

Also in 2007, KEY began a Drop in Center across from Indra Devi High School for teens at risk. This has been unexpectedly successful as up to 60 teens per day come for computer lessons, music lessons, English class, French class, and to find a safe place to hang out playing chess or ping pong while waiting for their classes to begin or for their parents to pick them up. The name of the center is Bright Spark and KEY has helped ‘drop ins’ form a soccer team that plays in tournaments organized by the KEY Sports ministry which Todd Smith helped get off the ground during this same year. Ten students have given their lives to Jesus through Bright Spark.

Our Social Awareness Program morphed into the Community Impact Program which mobilizes emerging leaders and Khmer Youth to respond to community needs and disasters such as fires and land evictions. Community Impact trains church elders to become trainers concerning drug and sexual awareness in their churches. The next Training of Trainers 3 month course will be “First Responder” training through Medical Teams International, which is similar to EMT training.

KEY now has 15 full time staffs that are overseen by their Director, Mr. Uon Seila, who has three expatriate advisors that help with different areas of KEY. They are: Todd Smith, Lynn Ogata, and Brian Maher.

KEY is now training its 7th class of Diamond Project Emerging Leaders, 3rd Class of DP 2 Emerging Leaders and will soon run their 16 annual Emerging Youth Leaders Camp. Plans for the immediate future include opening another satellite office in Kompong Thom and adding an advisor to Big Brothers and Sister’s Program. KEY is open to partnering with organizations who value discipleship and developing the capacity of this generation of Cambodia’s emerging church leaders.

We thank God for the dedicated people who have been a part of this ministry.

Brian M. Maher

Genocide in Cambodia

2009-12-25T19:14:00.000-08:00

Thoughts from the Valley Floor

2009-12-25T09:03:00.000-08:00

If you use the metaphor of the valley floor to describe one’s situation in life, it assumes you can’t get much lower when in reality, that is not the case. If one specifies that their situational valley a floor is in Southeast Asia, then one will understand that just arriving in the valley might not be so bad and maybe even the first day or two until you run into torrential rains, flooding, leeches, malarial and dengue mosquitoes, quicksand, wild animals, disease, mines, poisonous plants, insects and staggering heat and humidity. There are many ways to continue to spiral down once you arrive on the valley of floor.

Few of us prepare for life in the valley because we don’t expect to live our lives down there so when the valleys come, we are not prepared for an extended stay. Few are prepared including the psalmists who cried out to God in complaint wondering what was happening to them.

Like I said, few of us are prepared for an extended stay on the valley floor. We didn’t bring a knife, map, compass, food, rain gear, good boots and extra clothes. We pretty quickly realize we were off the well groomed trail of life and deposited on the valley floor in the jungle without any survival gear. Most of the time, there is no way back to our groomed trail but only forward through the many dangers and hazards the lay waiting on the valley floor in the jungle.

Believers are afforded at least one resource to keep one going, such as a canteen of faith but not everyone staggers onto the valley floor with a full canteen. Some go in with a full canteen and come out with it empty while others go in with an almost empty canteen and come out with full – or all sorts of variations. Some lose their canteen in the dense jungle as they stagger around lost in the sweltering heat, trying to keep fire ants from biting their feet and mosquitoes off their neck. It is difficult to maintain the presence of mind to protect and steward the one thing that can keep us surviving a bit longer on the valley floor.

I remember a Cambodian man telling me how he fled to the jungle during the Khmer Rouge rule and how he, as a city person, was taught by the locals how to survive in the jungle. Water was the most important thing for survival. He told me about two vines that were nearly identical but one wrapped around the tree to the left and the other the right. One was good for providing life sustaining water, and the other produced poisonous water that could kill you. Surviving on the floor requires a new perspective, a different way of looking for what God will provide to sustain one in the valley. It is difficult to see what God is doing, or if he is doing anything at all, when jungle fog settles down all around us. The valley floor is also full of traps that can send one spiraling down into death pretty quickly. The floor is complex because we often stumble around in the fog trying to find our way forward and at the same time trying to avoid the pitfalls of floor. For survival, those of us on the valley floor need to change our sense of perception because God will be working outside the box of our former conceptions and expectations of the way we think he should work.

Time, when one is lost, seems to slow down, which further complicates life on the floor because one’s suffering is drawn out. If you can avoid the major pitfalls (addictions, giving up, suicide, affairs, etc.), you are bound to be worn down by all the irritations of being lost, figuring out which way is forward, the heat, insects, thirst, poor visibility, etc. My own prayer is that God will fast-forward my time on the floor to where I am coming out on the other side but knowing God’s track record, he unfortunately does not often do this. This is not the best news.
The valley floor is a place where one is isolated, lonely, and lost (confused about direction, which way is north or south). While faith often wanes as we are beaten down on the valley floor, a renewed perspective and new sense of awareness are things we can develop to help sustain what faith remains.

For me personally, it has been hope that keeps my small amount faith alive. And even as the rays of hope that God has given me evaporate, they have kept me going (barely) like a stone skipped on a roiling surface, and when God skips stones, they don’t always skip in a straight line, nor are they evenly spaced - they jig and jag uncomfortably and unpredictably.

So it is from here on the valley floor that I record these musings. Valleys are found in all sorts of terrain and geographical locations, and if any of you find yourself wandering near my valley, be sure to give me a shout.

Brian