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Testimonies (again)

There have been a lot of things throughout training that have made me feel like Forrest Gump (“…so I went to the White House again, and I met the President again.”) I know I’ve written about Life Stories/Testimonies before, but I’m going to do so again.

For the last three years, Life Stories have been a big part of Quito Quest training. Some people make a distinction between a Life Story and a Testimony, but I think our vocabulary around here is more to keep from scaring the Methodists and Episcopalians. At any rate, every day during training, we have heard one or two life stories from the various summer staff and full-time missionaries. Today was my day to share.

Now (being Methodist), I didn’t even know I had a testimony until I was about 21 years old. And I’m still not particularly fond of sharing it. Especially when I have to go after somebody with the sob-inducing kind of story. I joke around sometimes that I wish I had done drugs or something so my testimony would be more exciting (not even remotely funny, I know, Mom).

One of the things I’ve realized over the course of the last four years, though, is how God works in every experience in our lives. I had a really good resource sent to me when I was preparing to tell my story at IT training two years ago¹, and it is really cool because of that being able to look back at some of the things I never realized at the time impacted my life and my ongoing journey of faith. It’s also cool to see the questions or comments I get later and see how even though I feel sometimes I don’t have much to say, it still allows me to impact people and for all of us to connect as we find out things about each other.

My friend Dana wrote a blog post about this very phenomenon last year. As she put it after a day of testimonies at a you event, “Through powerful testimonies we were able to better see God’s characteristics like His provision, faithfulness, tenacity, and love.”² Those words are much more eloquent than anything I can come up with with this much sleep-deprivation, but that’s how I’ve felt this week, even with my lingering apprehension up to my turn this morning. What we do here as missionaries is never about what we do, but it’s about what God does in and through us, and it has been a lot of fun finding out about some of those works I never would have known of otherwise.

¹Going back to look through related blog posts, I realized that it was exactly two years ago this morning that I was giving my testimony in Elgin, IL. It’s interesting to notice how my attitude and what I include in that story have changed between telling my story to Rich, Kelsey, and Ted, and telling it to a room full of Quito Quest staff today.

²I’m planning on getting her permission to use those words after the fact. It’ll be fine. She knows she loves me. And my bloggy-mcblog-o.

Josué

Below are a couple of pictures of Josué. Josué (Joshua in Spanish, not to be confused with the name José/Joseph) is a 4-year-old boy who is part of the preschool program at Carmen Bajo. Back in September when Laura took me to Carmen Bajo for the first time in over a year to show me how to get out there using public transportation, Josué was pouting and crying the entire afternoon. Laura smiled a huge, genuine smile as soon as she saw him, called his name and held out her arms. Josué crossed his and turned around, running to the other end of the comedor and Laura just laughed. She turned around and told me that Josué was one of her favorite kids, and that he could be both sweet or mad. When he’s sweet, he’s really sweet. And when he’s mad, he’s really mad.

That was a Tuesday. I went back to Carmen Bajo the following Friday. And the next. And the next. Josué was variously pouting, frowning, crying, and screaming each of those days. I thought Laura was crazy, and I wondered how anyone could ever put up with this terrible little kid. But finally, after four weeks, I walked up the stairs to lunch one day, and there was Josué playing Foosball nicely with a couple of other little boys, laughing and smiling.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. But the more time I’ve spent at Carmen Bajo, the more I realize that Josué is a really sweet little boy. He needs a lot of coaching to get there some days. And some days he doesn’t get there at all. But now, even on those days when he doesn’t get there, I can still see this great little kid underneath the frowns and tears.

In February, I was hosting the Grace Community Church team that helped take the Pre-Kinder and Kinder classes to the zoo one morning. Each of us “adults” (I still laugh at that term being applied to me, no matter how long the kids at my home church have been calling me “Mr. Danny”) took three kids. Except in the case of supervising Josué. By the end of our time there, we’d given him to the craziest, most energetic member of the team, and the other two kids originally in that adult’s care had been siphoned off to others. For the most part, Josué was doing what he was supposed to. Until the bus ride back to the Compassion Project. Fabian and Grace’s youngest daughter Raquel was sitting in the front seat with another 4-year-old-ish little boy. Josué wanted either to be in Raquel’s lap instead, or just to have the front seat. I’m not sure exactly what set him off, but he flipped out. I’ve seen some temper tantrums in my time, but nothing, and I mean nothing anywhere even approaching this one. He was flailing all over the place and beating the other little boy with both his fists. Raquel just huddled over her charge. I had the luck to be the next closest person over the age of 5, so I grabbed Josué and pulled him away, holding him in a bear-hug that I intended to both show my love for him and function as a straitjacket.

I tried to calm him down over and over as he cried and screamed and flailed, sometimes somewhat escaping before I’d pull him back into my arms. I must have asked him two dozen times to “Digame con tus palabras lo que quires.” I was doing everything, including conjugating my verbs for “usted,” to treat him like a person and not a problem. But he simply wouldn’t calm down, and I finally (literally) passed him to Grace, who held him the same way I did and just smiled. I mean grinned at this kid. She never spoke a word, and after about 45 minutes, the waterworks and most of the sound effects had calmed down. (Grace made quite an impression on the team through this, too).

Then one day last week the VBS group from the Pueblos Unidos team did Fruit-Loop necklaces for their craft. As the kids were coming out of their classroom to go upstairs for lunch, I saw Josué standing and smiling on the sidewalk. I swooped over and picked him up and swung him in the air, and he immediately screamed at me to put him down. Wondering what about that had changed his attitude so quickly, I did just that. I was stunned. He’d been smiling, and I’ve done this a hundred times, never getting that reaction. So rather than just thinking “Oh, that’s just Josué,” as I would have several months ago, I asked him what his deal was. “Tengo cereales in my bolsillo,” he said: I have cereal in my pocket. And that he did. He pulled out a heaping handful of Fruit Loops he’d stashed in his pocket during craft time. Now that’s Josué, I thought. Then we went upstairs to lunch, and Josué pulled out the rest of the cereal from his pocket. Handful after handful. I couldn’t believe a 4-year-old’s pockets were so big. He set them all on the table, and a couple of the kids around him looked at them longingly (as if they didn’t all have strings of them around their necks). When one of the kids asked if he could have one, and reached for a single Fruit Loop at the same time, Josué snatched them all away and clutched them to his chest, sticking out his bottom lip. I leaned over, from the tiny seat next to him that I was doing my best not to break (it wouldn’t have been the first time I’ve crushed preschool-sized furniture) and told him “Tienes mucho. Queremos compartir,” (You have a bunch. We want to share). I didn’t expect that to remotely work. But it did. He pushed one Fruit Loop to each of the 4 kids around him. Not the most generous reaction I’ve ever seen, considering that he had half-a-box-worth of cereal in front of him, but I took it. With a little more prodding, he actually doled out about 75% of the Fruit Loops to the other kids at the table.

This is getting long, but I’ll give you one more example before I make my point. Whenever we have a team at Carmen Bajo, the first thing we do in the morning is roughly an hour of devotions with the team and everyone from CB. We arrived one morning, and I scanned the room for the kids I know, one of them being Josué. He was standing in the middle of the room with a cup of Sprite (or something clear and fizzy) and not looking happy. He wasn’t crying or screaming, but he was a little down in the dumps. With a totally different reaction than I’d have had 5 months ago, I set my sites right on him. I figured there were two ways his day could go from here, and I knew which way I didn’t want it to go (and which way I didn’t want to listen to it go). And aside from that, I do just really love the kid. So while all the other gringos steered clear, I walked right up and asked him if he wanted to hang out with me for devotion. I truly have no idea how that came out of my mouth in Spanish, and in Spanish that a 4-year-old would understand, no less. But whatever I said, he looked up at me and immediately bobbed his little head “yes.” I took him by the hand and led him to a chair at the far side of the room, where I sat and plopped him in my lap. He finished his Sprite and continued to play with the cup. He hardly said a word, and he only got squirmy once, standing up and trying to pull me to come with him somewhere. It was in the middle of someone’s testimony, so I tried to get him to sit back down, but as soon as they finished, I decided it was less disruptive if I just stood up and went with him. Turns out after all the soda, the poor kid just needed to go to the bathroom. It would have been nice if he’d just said “Me voy al baño,” and I wouldn’t have delayed the poor little guy, but I guess he forgave me pretty quick, because he came right back upstairs with me and stayed on my lap until I had to go down the hill with a construction group a while later.

So now we finally get around to it. Josué reminds me of me. Not because I was ever anywhere near the obnoxious little stinker than he can be. And yet because I am. I’m selfish and my feet are “swift to run into mischief.” I can only imagine that from the vantage point of God, I look like the flailing, screaming, child that Josué can be, refusing to be calm or rational or to think outside of himself (myself). And yet He sees through all that to the person He created me to be. The person who knows better, and just needs a little prodding in the right direction. He sits me in His lap and holds on to me, comforting me in my distress, and even in those times when I struggle with all my might to get away, to ignore Him, to head to somewhere that He can see I don’t need to be. That’s what we all need, to be held onto, cared for, even in our ignorance and sin. My love for Josué has made me thankful that God has love enough for that, love enough for me.

Tree House

When I was a little kid in Anderson, South Carolina, I had a tree house. It was huge (granted, I was 3-5 while we lived there) and had a swing set attached and a sandbox underneath. I remember running out to it in the rain and climbing into the covered part when we were house-hunting before we even moved there. I remember playing up there for hours with Dee Hayes. I remember the time I fell off the top rung of the ladder and twisted my arm catching myself on the way down. I remember begging my mom to take the whole thing apart so we could move it with us to Lawrenceville, Georgia.

Maybe it’s because of these that I so closely associate tree houses with childhood, but I felt very childlike this afternoon as we took the team out to Hacienda El Refugio and had facilitated quiet time in the tree house. The El Refugio tree house is something dreamed up by Paul Reichert that the staff and tons of teams have been building for three years. It’s finally finished, and this was my second opportunity to spend time there.

Part of Paul’s devotion was about the fact that we are children of God. People talked about the image of sitting on God’s knee, or thinking in terms of other people being God’s children as well. But for me, I just thought of how much we have to learn as children. Being a learner, especially even as I am in a leadership position this week, has been a theme for me over the last few days.

We talked a lot today about why we have days out at El Refugio. We want to have intentional quiet, worship, and prayer time, taking a step back from scheduled “ministry” days to realize that we worship and minister through our lives. Having that childlike feeling of being in a tree house, it was quite easy to do that all afternoon, being intentionally in the position of a learner and being among other children of God. Even after our official time there was finished, I stayed around and had a chat with Mark, Cathy, and Deb. They are all old enough to be my parents, and Mark is the team leader, but as we talked about our worship time, about the tree house, about ministry, and about what God had been teaching us, I think we all learned something from each other and from God, and did our best to share our hearts and thoughts as well. For those twenty minutes or so, reading scripture and talking, our responsibilities, our titles, and our schedule simply didn’t matter. We just had fun being God’s kids together.

I’ve heard Paul’s orientation both times I’ve gone to the tree house, and as he puts it, we don’t have to go to a specific place to worship, but it’s a helpful opportunity when we set aside a specific time and space to connect with God. A lot of what that specific tree house represents is a space in my heart, but that’s exactly what I was able to set aside today, and what I think we all need to remember to do as we go about serving not just in physical times and places set aside, but with every aspect of our lives.

Not Atypically Not Ready

Miguel and I were talking recently about hanging out on a weekend once he is finished with classes after this week. What I hadn’t realized up until even more recently is that today, I’m completing my penultimate weekend before I head home for Christmas. I’m on day 104 right now, which is over a third longer than the longest I’ve been here previously. It doesn’t feel like it at all.

This week is going to be psychotically busy. I’m not even 100% sure yet which days I’m sleeping at which house, and I have people to see and projects to complete and shopping to get done and parties to attend in addition to my normal work week of teaching and writing and meetings.

Although I know I’m going to be busy, I’m trying to be “all here” right now, as we say at YW.¹ I keep thinking about August 2008 when I came home from Quito Quest. Much as I tried to hide it, I had a bad attitude, and a difficult readjustment to life in the States because of it. And a good chunk of that was (lack of) preparation. When anyone from Youth World asked me if I was ready to go home, I simply said “no.” I caught myself leaning in that direction last week, realizing while I wasn’t grumpy about it, my response was not excited either.

I think that part of that is that I know there are certain things about life and ministry here that simply cannot be understood from the safety of your pew in North America, and I’m bracing for it a little bit. And part of it is that there are a lot of things I am leaving behind this time: more connections, ministry sites and projects to plug back into when I return, knowing that this is my last week of living with Lourdes and her family. What I’m trying to be conscious of and intentional about is things I have to look forward to and be excited about at home.²

Almost a year ago I reminded a friend that wherever she goes, God is preparing her for it and He is there already waiting for her. This week while the craziness of life plus preparing for holidays and travel surrounds me, I’m reminding myself the same thing. Much as there are special people and memories here in Quito

I’m really stoked to see my family and people at church, as well as friends who will be in/around Elizabeth City for Christmas. And not that this is in the same class at all, but I’m also really excited about Mexican food.³ I

¹I had this big internal debate whether to use the expression from El Refugio or to quote the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (“Keep your concentration here and now, where it belongs.”) I decided that the former was more appropriate, but the latter deserved an honorable mention.

²I hope Cameron doesn’t read this. I misused four prepositions in the same manner in one sentence.

³Contrary to popular belief, the staple foods here are things like rice. Not. Tacos.

Weird Skill Set

One of the coolest things to me about Youth World is how open the organization is as a whole to new and different ministries. Some of the first new branches of Youth World seem completely logical for any Youth training-oriented organization: Hacienda El Refugio, a training and retreat center; Casa Gabriel, a discipleship program and home for former street kids; Ingles Student Ministries, formerly Expat, which mostly consists of the Chaplains’ office at the local English-speaking school.

But recently, some even more unique ministries have come up here: a soccer ministry, art classes, and even a skateboard ministry. Each of these were started because someone had a passion and ability for it, and saw a need and/or an opportunity to reach out to people.

I’ve talked and written before about how I don’t feel like I have a skill set that’s particularly tailored to the traditional idea of a missionary. And yet here I am in Ecuador working with International Teams, getting ready for ministry in the form of writing, working on a website, and playing guitar.

Another skill that I basically take for granted at home is my experience with sound equipment. After eight or so years as the sound guy/radio tech at my home church and three years working in a music store, I’d like to think I’m decently versed in sound equipment. And for the first three out of three weekends of this stay in Ecuador, I have run sound for a Spanish Christian Rock band, Gedeón.

I have been friends with Roberto, the guitarist/leader of Gedeón since I first came to Ecuador in 2007, and met singer Christy Stumbo last year. The first week I got here, the two of them were both “super-duper” excited that I was around because (aside from my good looks, irresistible charm, and general awesomeness) they were totally lacking in the sound operator department and had a bunch of concerts scheduled. I was pretty immediately enlisted, and have gotten to go to some sweet places because of it (even Otavalo and Esmeraldas so far).

Until I got back here, Gedeón has had to just grab whoever was around to watch the sound board. If you do a sound check beforehand, and don’t run into any major problems, this is doable, but not in any way ideal. And while I’ve pretty much sat and stared at the sound board, increasing the monitor volume, cutting out feedback every once in a blue moon, I’ve realized just by everyone’s gratitude how useful it is to have someone around who at least has some idea what they’re doing. Even if all it does is save Roberto from running to the back of the room in the middle of a song, that makes a pretty big difference.

It’s been a slightly strange experience to run into people here at the office or around the neighborhood and have them say “Oh, I we have this need at such-and-such a ministry site and it’s exactly one of the things that you do.” Especially since I still feel like I have a weird skill set. It’s been fun. It’s been enlightening. But it’s still slightly strange. Some days I get the feeling that God is saying “I told you so.”

Wallet

People ask me all the time if it’s dangerous in Ecuador. There are definitely some rules to follow here, especially if you’re a gringo, and like all major cities, there is some violent crime. But the big thing to worry about here on a daily basis is theft. And what an experience I had with that today.

The cheapest form of transportation in Quito is the Quito trolleybus system, a.k.a. El Trole. I walk a few blocks downhill from home each day, then across Av. America, one of the major streets, and go a few more blocks past HCJB and Alliance Academy to Parada La “Y” (pronounced “La Yay”), and hop on the Trole there. It’s five stops (or roughly 2.75 kilometers) South from La “Y” to Colón in the Mariscal neighborhood and then another few blocks walk to get to language school each morning. And at 8:30ish in the morning, it’s usually not to bad a ride.

Coming back on the Trole, though, tends to be a little more intense. At lunchtime when I finish with class, the Trole is packed. If you think you’ve been in a crowded area before, you have no idea. When the doors open, people theoretically use the door on their right, so the people exiting don’t run into the people entering. During peak times though, people are usually crammed up against the doors anyway, and are trying to move further into the Trole if they have a few more stops to go, and people entering and exiting the car are trying to squeeze past in any way they can. You have to be pretty daring sometimes, especially in getting on (see my football example from the previous post). The area closest to the doors becomes a flash mosh pit at every stop, and the area further inside the car becomes this resolutely unmoving wall of bodies.

I told you that to tell you this.

Pickpockets here are good. A girl on one of the teams I hosted last summer had a large amount of money stolen out of her bra (we tell teams to distribute their cash all over their person) and she didn’t even know it until she went to pay for something. And that was at the market, which is crowded, but nothing compared to the Trole. I had even specifically moved my wallet from my back pocket to my front pocket so I could feel it against my leg and could keep a hand on it. Didn’t work.

The problem with trying to hold onto things on the Trole is that you simply spend too much time holding on to the Trole so as not to slam into people every time it starts or stops, which is even more frequently than when it reaches a station, despite the (theoretically) Trole-only lanes on the highway. I realized my wallet was gone even while I was still on the Trole, somewhere between Mariana de Jesús and Florón, so roughly halfway home. When I got out at La “Y”, I dug through all my pockets anyway, just to be sure. It was gone.

Fortunately, there was a grand total of $0.00 in it at the time. Add that to the fact that credit and debit cards are significantly harder to use here than in the States, and the fact that I trucked home to call the bank, and all I lost was a really nice wallet given to me by a friend.

In all honesty, I was really mad at first. I was angry at whoever stole my wallet. I was angry that I didn’t just balance myself without hanging onto the rail in the Trole so as to keep better hold of my wallet. But while it was kind of a hassle this afternoon, it’s really not that bad. Thanks to my Skype account, I called the bank from my computer as soon as I got back to the apartment. Thanks to my trick memory for numbers, I have a new license and a new bank card on the way. Thanks to the fact that I follow the rules and my own advise that I gave to teams all last summer, I didn’t have extra cash on me (would have been a different story if they’d got it before class, though) and I left my PayPal card at home, so I still have access to my money even here in Ecuador while my new cards are en route, even if it is three steps to get it out now instead of one.

Tonight, I’m just thankful that it wasn’t a bigger hassle the way it could have been. And I’m saddened for the people who feel like they have to steal to get by. I spent a lot of prayer time this afternoon asking God to forgive, enlighten, and provide for (in other ways than gringos on Troles) the person who stole my wallet, and I hope you will as well.

First Day in Elgin

Today has been the official first day of my training with International Teams. I got up early this morning (3:30am Eastern, which was 2:30am here in Illinois) to drive to Richmond, VA and flew from there to Chicago. My flight itself was uneventful, and when I rolled off and walked downstairs, my luggage came around the turn on the baggage claim belt just as I arrived. I didn’t even have to stop moving to pick it up and keep walking. I did get stuck in an elevator, but that slight trauma was over quickly, and a few phone calls later I was on a bus to Elgin, where I was met by Stacy who drove me back to the office, a.k.a. IT’s Elgin Ministry Center.

I got a brief tour and discovered I was the first one of the MITs to arrive (that never happens). It was nice, though, to get settled in here before other people started showing up, especially with my total lack of sleep up to that point. The EMC serves as IT’s office as well as its training facility and residences for missionaries headed to the field. Upstairs are (really nice) apartments, each with a living/dining area, kitchen, laundry room, three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a porch/balcony. I’ll be living this week with two other guys, one of whom is here already and who will be doing the same training module as me.

Dinner was (roughly) at 5:30 and it was the first time we all got together and got to meet everyone. There is a total of one married couple here without their kids, three married couples with at least one kid, two single girls and two single guys. Most everyone else will be serving long-term, though both of the other single interns are headed to Ecuador as well (John Andrew to Guayaquil and Kelsey to Quito as well). I’m really looking forward to continuing to get to know everyone, and excited to know that there are a couple of people who I will get to see again in August.

The rest of the night was a more in-depth tour of the EMC facilities, some introductory things, and just hanging out getting to know the rest of the staff and MITs. After dinner and our tour, we were officially finished for the night and headed back upstairs. It was about 8 and still light and really nice outside, so John Andrew and I decided to go find the bike/walking path and scope it out. That gave us a chance to hang out and talk some more and get to know each other, and it was really cool sharing our passion for missions and how we ended up here and where we’re going. As an aside, I wish Elizabeth City would hire Elgin’s park planner. Really sweet public bike path that goes down under the road and back around by the creek and the river.

I didn’t realize until I came back and sat down on our couch how exhausted I was, mostly just from travel. Really good thing I flew. Overall, I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone else through classes, hanging out, and cooking, excited about what God will do through our training and worship this week, and ahorita, sleep.

Affirmative or Otherwise

I had a series of seemingly unrelated revelations today.

The first came as I stopped by First Baptist to pick up my computer. There were some people in the office, so I poked my head in to say hello. Before any other conversation could emerge, one of them asked “Are you leaving the country any time soon?”

I’ve gotten used to that question. But I realized this afternoon how odd it is. None of the three people I was talking to really had any clue that I’m heading back to Ecuador. I haven’t been around First Baptist enough for anyone outside of Discussion Group to really ask me about it, so it wasn’t a loaded question. If it wasn’t a loaded question, why was there a question at all? Which brings me to another question, how is it that I’ve become used to that question? Obviously other people have been asking me that same thing, and while people at church and La Casa ask when I’m leaving, it’s not as if there is a shortage of other interested parties in general.

Tons of people I know have gone on “mission trips”, plenty of them to foreign countries, and all pretty much overflowing with excitement and stories and faith when they returned. But even out of the specific people that I think of, I just don’t seem to have any knowledge of them being bombarded with questions about returning to the mission field (H & D, I’m simply ignoring you in that statistic because either of you could make the same point I’m going for here).

Another such thought came tonight as I gave my Ecuador presentation to the United Methodist Women of Newland UMC. It’s always interesting to see what people comment on at the end or ask questions about during the presentation. I like to see who absorbed what I was saying, or at least what I was trying to say. Or even who got something else totally meaningful and totally related out of it even if it wasn’t what I was intending.

The group was awesome, and I think really understood the value of relational ministry. And I always expect someone to say “I couldn’t drink river water in the jungle,” or “I couldn’t eat guinea pig,” (you would if you were unspokenly competeing with four 14-year-old girls who had no problem with cuy). It’s just that I tend to expect people to eventually laugh and say “Well, I would if I had to,” or “God would pull me through.” I’m surprised at how adamantly people are opposed to doing anything out of the ordinary, even at the risk of missing out on serving the Lord, or having the time of your life mud wrestling in the jungle, or discovering you actually enjoy guinea pig. Or serving the Lord. Did I mention that one?

Now I certainly don’t mean to say I’ve got the corner on the market on how to serve God. If everyone was called to serve God in Ecuador, it would be a really crowded 98,985 square miles of earth. It just makes me appreciate my ability to live without Fudge Rounds and an Xbox. It also reminds me for those times I do spend living in a third world country how lucky I am to have toilet paper.

But ultimately it just reinforces in me both the notion that ministry involves a Call, and the idea that a Call implies a response, whether it be affirmative or otherwise.

Across Two Februaries

Oh come on, I’ve made worse references.

Tonight I did some dp.n maintenance. I now own my domain for at least the next two years. I have no recollection of whether my hosting package automatically renews or not, so the site may still dissapear in five more days. I’ll try to pre-empt that.

I also upgraded my WordPress software. That’s basically everything that you’re looking at. I used to write 100% of my own code, and now I’m lazy and let blog software handle my posts, layout and pages, subpages, and photo gallery. Do I feel any less hack? Not really. I could still do it the hard way if I wanted.

I backed up my entire website, plus an additional WordPress backup, PLUS I imported it to my wordpress.com account (the software comes from wordpress.org, which is functionally an entirely different entity). I was getting ready to manual install the software and then I had an incredible idea. What if my host’s control panel would do it for me automatically? Turns out my hunch was right, and rather than spending the next three hours hacking away at code and uploading it all, here I sit with a new install of WordPress on my server, and all it took was three clicks and about 40 seconds.

At any rate, it probably looks no different to you. No changes even for those (few) of you who login to leave comments. My control panel is organized a little differently (different, not better). My posts will have a couple more categories to go into (I had reached the limit of number of categories I could have in the previous software version, but that number has since been increased). But no automatic aesthetic differences.

So was I prepared to upgrade, even before I knew it would be easy? Well, basically the entire reason I upgraded my software was to get rid of this annoying little message that told me every time I logged in that I needed to upgrade from version 3.1 to version 3.7. And the first thing I did when I finished was login to WordPress and glance up at the top of my dashboard.
Frakking message is still there. It now just says I need to go from version 3.7 to 3.7.1. Manually. Yeah right.

In fact, it will probably be right around February 2011 that I bother to make any major changes, when domainsite and intersabre start reminding me that my domain is going to expire again. But it has definitely been fun to look through all my files as they downloaded through my ftp client and take note of all that I’ve written, all that I’ve learned about web hosting, software, plugins, and writing since February 16th-ish last year. And certainly to think about all the things I’ve had to write about since then: Hospitality, smiles, children, airplane rides (ten), different countries, states and a districts, a dozen new best friends in an 11-hour range of time zones, a jungle, unexpected returns to favorite places, a new instrument, a new language, brothers, a brother, my brother and bros (nope, not a typo), and the Truth that permeates every one.

Thoughts from an anonymous "airplane" commentator

All day today, everyone’s been writing news articles and blogging about planes. And not to intentionally join the trend, but a comment on a blog about airplane safety caught my eye.

Turns out Popular Mechanics put to test the myth about every airplane seat being equally safe. You can read the article if you want the ins and outs of the statistical data, but in jet crashes with both fatalities and survivors (as opposed to one or the other only) the back seats are generally safer.

Out of 19 crashes between 1971 and the present with sufficient data to analyze, the front, middle, and back of the plane had 49%, 56% and 69% survivability in a crash. And while they made a big deal out of it, I’m not changing my ticket over 20% higher chances. Which brings me to my next point.

One of the commenters on the article wrote that a lot of things affect the safety of each seat and each passenger. While this person listed off proximity to the wings and engines, as well as the overall structure of different parts of the plane as being factors, he/she ended with another important safety factor: and individual’s “belief in God…”

I don’t know whether they were joking, or if they were seriously making statistical implications about prayer. But I do know that next time I get on a plane, the reason I’m not worried about that extra 20% average survivability rating is that I’m safe. If I get there at the end of a long life or a short plane ride, I’m going to the same place.