D
DasErlibnis
Guest
I totally get where you’re coming from regarding backyard mission work. I feel the same, that there’s plenty to do. It just seems you haven’t found the clarity you seek doing the things you’ve been doing. So my suggestion would be to try something different.
Regarding bills, well, they’ll be there when you get back. But consider this, before Jesus began his ministry, he had a desert experience. He got out of town. The desert isn’t a place to cut n run, its a place to find yourself. If you want to do it locally, then do 40 days in a monastery with a spiritual director, or go to the Indian missions. Whatever does it for ya. Do whatever it takes.
As for me. I went to seminary three years, and just came to realization that I’d die a slow death as a diocesan. So I went back into the Army. I’m a Cavalry Scout. I’m working with a vocation director now, and my spiritual director, to go to the African Sheol with the Fransallians to participating in their F.O.S.T.E.R program. The Sheol is a pretty “undefined” place, but mostly, its a subsaharan region, where the jungles of central Africa meet the deserts if northern Africa.
In this place, Central Africa is predominantly Catholic, except in Nigeria. The nomadic Muslims inhabit the deserts to the north. There are always clashes. Everyday, there is the practice of conversion by the sword. Wives are raped, husbands are killed, and children kidnapped into slavery and combat. The orphans there just ain’t the same as the orphans here. It ain’t even close. We’re not talking about painting walls (no offense), we’re digging wells for potable drinking water cuz it doesn’t exist when you’re 10 years old and your village was burned down and you’re walking through wilderness with other 10 year old trying to figure out which way is Uganda or Chad or Kenya…then maybe u finally get there, and there’s 209 other kids and not enough fish or bread for even them. But you give it a chance anyway, cuz where u gonna go? You just crossed a hundred miles and survived rebels, lions, hyenas, starvation, sickness, intense desert and tropical heat both, and u don’t even have shoes or a hat or a blanket. But half the nonprofits out there are offering “experimental” vaccines, which may or may not kill you, but you wouldn’t know the difference, you’re half-dead already cuz you feel like your soul was stolen when you saw them slaughter your dad and rape your mother and sister, that and you’re belly is swoll from the parasites inside it from the non-drinking water. But hey, America ain’t no better you think, cuz they have poor people too. So there you are looking for a reason to live, and the local U.N. outfit is giving you condoms, cuz you’re 10 remember, and someone from a warring tribe recognizes you, and declares a vendetta cuz some cousin of yours thrice-removed killed his third cousin when you were being run down by Muslims on horseback.
I’m not trying to be a smart-ellick with you. I’m just throwing some stuff out there.
But I tell ya what…I don’t know much about anyone else’s motives, I’m going there to do what I need to do. I know what my college loan was worth, and it ain’t paid off. But I ain’t trying to make a buck, I’m just looking for salvation. I have no other desire in life but to be a saint. Jesus said, “pick up your cross”, and he said “carry nothing”.
So I found a few other people who said “that ain’t so bad”, maybe I could do that too. So there’s 7 of us, more or less, who want to do this. We want to make our lives a “donation”, we’re gonna go and give it all away, and if the promise of Christ is true, that those who give their lives away to Christ, will find life - life abundant!
And i’ll add this, it’d be good to have a carpenter with us. Three are seminarians, three are soldiers. I’ve been both, and I’m going as both. One is a poet.
But I don’t know how to swing a hammer as well as I can swing a machete, that’s what learned as a scout. I can navigate deserts, jungles, urban terrain. I can hump 50 miles in two days. But my hand-trade is cooking. I used to manage a restaurant before seminary. Was a cook for a long time. I can feed 1,000 people a day. And how do I relate to these kids? I was an orphan until I was 4. I’ve served over seas. These are orphans of war and they need food, water, and shelter. And they need hope. Jesus gives us all hope. If I lose myself for these, the most vulnerable, that they can have life, well, maybe that’s a life worth living. Maybe you could build a kitchen? Show us how to dig a well? Teach us how to turn clay into bricks?
Joseph was a carpenter too.
Someone asked me what I’m doing?
I described it like this:
I’m making an oblation to Saint Joseph, the Foster Father of the Persecuted Christ, and he had a great devotion to the Immaculate Conception, and served both Jesus and Mary as a Carpenter.
You wanna try something different? I’m looking for someone just like you. You’re needed.
I figure these kids might be getting bread and fish, but I’m feeding both their souls and my own this way. I hope its what Jesus wants.
Grace and Peace to you brother
“Das Erlebnis - The raw, brute, lived, concrete experience”
Regarding bills, well, they’ll be there when you get back. But consider this, before Jesus began his ministry, he had a desert experience. He got out of town. The desert isn’t a place to cut n run, its a place to find yourself. If you want to do it locally, then do 40 days in a monastery with a spiritual director, or go to the Indian missions. Whatever does it for ya. Do whatever it takes.
As for me. I went to seminary three years, and just came to realization that I’d die a slow death as a diocesan. So I went back into the Army. I’m a Cavalry Scout. I’m working with a vocation director now, and my spiritual director, to go to the African Sheol with the Fransallians to participating in their F.O.S.T.E.R program. The Sheol is a pretty “undefined” place, but mostly, its a subsaharan region, where the jungles of central Africa meet the deserts if northern Africa.
In this place, Central Africa is predominantly Catholic, except in Nigeria. The nomadic Muslims inhabit the deserts to the north. There are always clashes. Everyday, there is the practice of conversion by the sword. Wives are raped, husbands are killed, and children kidnapped into slavery and combat. The orphans there just ain’t the same as the orphans here. It ain’t even close. We’re not talking about painting walls (no offense), we’re digging wells for potable drinking water cuz it doesn’t exist when you’re 10 years old and your village was burned down and you’re walking through wilderness with other 10 year old trying to figure out which way is Uganda or Chad or Kenya…then maybe u finally get there, and there’s 209 other kids and not enough fish or bread for even them. But you give it a chance anyway, cuz where u gonna go? You just crossed a hundred miles and survived rebels, lions, hyenas, starvation, sickness, intense desert and tropical heat both, and u don’t even have shoes or a hat or a blanket. But half the nonprofits out there are offering “experimental” vaccines, which may or may not kill you, but you wouldn’t know the difference, you’re half-dead already cuz you feel like your soul was stolen when you saw them slaughter your dad and rape your mother and sister, that and you’re belly is swoll from the parasites inside it from the non-drinking water. But hey, America ain’t no better you think, cuz they have poor people too. So there you are looking for a reason to live, and the local U.N. outfit is giving you condoms, cuz you’re 10 remember, and someone from a warring tribe recognizes you, and declares a vendetta cuz some cousin of yours thrice-removed killed his third cousin when you were being run down by Muslims on horseback.
I’m not trying to be a smart-ellick with you. I’m just throwing some stuff out there.
But I tell ya what…I don’t know much about anyone else’s motives, I’m going there to do what I need to do. I know what my college loan was worth, and it ain’t paid off. But I ain’t trying to make a buck, I’m just looking for salvation. I have no other desire in life but to be a saint. Jesus said, “pick up your cross”, and he said “carry nothing”.
So I found a few other people who said “that ain’t so bad”, maybe I could do that too. So there’s 7 of us, more or less, who want to do this. We want to make our lives a “donation”, we’re gonna go and give it all away, and if the promise of Christ is true, that those who give their lives away to Christ, will find life - life abundant!
And i’ll add this, it’d be good to have a carpenter with us. Three are seminarians, three are soldiers. I’ve been both, and I’m going as both. One is a poet.
But I don’t know how to swing a hammer as well as I can swing a machete, that’s what learned as a scout. I can navigate deserts, jungles, urban terrain. I can hump 50 miles in two days. But my hand-trade is cooking. I used to manage a restaurant before seminary. Was a cook for a long time. I can feed 1,000 people a day. And how do I relate to these kids? I was an orphan until I was 4. I’ve served over seas. These are orphans of war and they need food, water, and shelter. And they need hope. Jesus gives us all hope. If I lose myself for these, the most vulnerable, that they can have life, well, maybe that’s a life worth living. Maybe you could build a kitchen? Show us how to dig a well? Teach us how to turn clay into bricks?
Joseph was a carpenter too.
Someone asked me what I’m doing?
I described it like this:
I’m making an oblation to Saint Joseph, the Foster Father of the Persecuted Christ, and he had a great devotion to the Immaculate Conception, and served both Jesus and Mary as a Carpenter.
You wanna try something different? I’m looking for someone just like you. You’re needed.
I figure these kids might be getting bread and fish, but I’m feeding both their souls and my own this way. I hope its what Jesus wants.
Grace and Peace to you brother
“Das Erlebnis - The raw, brute, lived, concrete experience”
And it sounds like what you are about to undertake is an awesome thing. One that anyone would come out all the better for and more confident in what their calling is. And i would be inclined to join something like that if i thought of it as being a reasonable thing for me to do at this point in my life. However, it is not. I’m not at the point that i could even be ready to join in on a mission trip such as that. Would i discover my true calling by going with your group and working in the African Sheol? I would put money on it. But there is no reason for me to believe that its what God is calling me to do right now at this point in my life. Not “never” perhaps…just not now.
) that children are a major handful and can be very hard to raise a lot of the time. I just think that i ought to face the fear of marriage and commitment and defeat it so i can firmly discern one way or another. Because my last relationship left little room for proper discernment for both of us…and honestly left me far more afraid of commitment than i was going into the relationship. And my ex girlfriend will claim she had nothing to do with that and i should just “get over it”. And she may be right…i just don’t know 
I tend to ramble a lot too, so your post was right up my alley as far as the number of words go