Swaziland (part 3).

Here's the first video I made for our Swaziland trip.  I'm currently working on putting together something more full.





For more stories about Swaziland, check out part 1 and part 2.

Swaziland (part 2).

(This is part 2 of this post.  I split it up because long blog posts are annoying.  And I hate being annoying.)

It's funny how forgetful we are.  I came back on a Wednesday.  The next day, new students arrived at work.  And I've been going ever since.  The few conclusions I made have been buried by two months of doing, creating, teaching, leading.  After chewing on his questions these last couple of weeks, I remembered.

The Swazi people believe in prayer.  Like, really believe it.  If they pray something, they know it's going to happen.  Period.  Full stop.

Most of our days were spent doing home visits.  We'd go to the homesteads of families in the church (and several neighbors), bring some gifts of food and hygiene items, share some scripture and pray with them.  It was awkward.  Swazis are difficult to read, so half the time, it felt like we were being invasive and rude.  Pastor Maziya had to continually comfort us that people were happy and appreciated our presence.

Anyway.  On one home visit, we talked to guy that explained his faith in prayer.  He said that he rarely knew where his next meal was coming from.  He was incredibly poor.  No family to take care of him.  No job prospects.  No good land.  And yet, he had never gone hungry.  He had never gone a day without some kind of food.  When he would pray, God would answer that prayer.

Boom.  Do I have that faith?

Perhaps a more telling story of this was on our very first home visit.  His name is Sofiso.  He was a deacon and leader in the church and lived on his homestead with his mother and sister.  When we visited with him, we shared some verse and talked about life for about 30 or 40 minutes.  He and his mother worked at the hospital in town.  In fact, his  mother should be coming home from work any minute and we could meet her, too.  We decided to stick around a while longer.

She was probably 20 minutes late when we decided we should probably move on.  So we asked Sofiso what we could pray for with him.  He said that his brother was very sick.  He was in the hospital where his family worked, but they had been faithfully praying for him and he was getting better.  In fact, they were hoping he would come home some time that week, so we could come back and meet him, too.  We prayed something fierce for him.  These people see enough death.  God would heal this man.

As we walked down the driveway, Sofiso got a call.  It was his mother.  His brother had just died.

Literally as we were praying for this man's recovery, God was taking him home.  Down to the minute.

Sofiso didn't cry.  Swazis don't.  Our team did.

Later that week, we were blessed to be able to provide most of the funeral costs.  It was too close to our hearts for us not to be able to help in some way.

But just think about Sofiso's faith.  Maybe the severity of his brother's condition wasn't communicated to us.  Maybe he took a sudden turn on that day.  Either way, Sofiso, just minutes before, was laughing and smiling and confidently trusting that God would heal him.  Despite numerous prayers for healing and provision not being answered in the past, he believed and trusted that God would heal his brother. 

When do I have that faith?  When, if I pray something, do I believe it's going to happen?  And when, after I've prayed something and the exact opposite happens, have I continued praying and praising God for his goodness?

If that man from my church asked me again today, I would tell him this story.  This faith, that I've so quickly forgotten, challenges me to trust my God.  I want that faith, darn it.  I want to, despite numerous disappointments before, still believe that God will answer my prayers when I ask something in his name and with his heart.  My hope is to not forget that faith as I have for the past several weeks, but to have that kind of faith.

Swaziland (part 1).

Last week, after church, one of our members took me aside and asked me, "Tell me about Swaziland.  Tell me about your experience."  I guess it's really more of a demand than a question.

So I told him some of the generic stuff.  Stuff I've told so many people about the trip (though I realize I've never written about it on here).  It was great to see believers around the world.  It was an awesome opportunity to explore possibilities of a ministry partnership across the globe.

The slightly longer version is that I'm not sure how Swaziland was.  As most of you know (maybe?), I went primarily as documentarian.  My job was to capture the story of our team's experience and to tell of God's faithfulness.  It was to capture the story of the Swazis.  What is God doing there?  Who are these people?  How do they follow him?  How can we be blessed by them as we have blessed them (We sent several thousand dollars of funds ahead of us)?

To develop a functional ministry partnership, our people needed to know their people.  I took a camera, a decent mic, and my laptop to log and edit footage in country.  The whole trip, my mind was consumed with questions: What's the story here? How can I tell that story best?  How will it cut with other footage?  What's the best framing?  How's the lighting?  Is the audio coming in clearly?  Am I holding the mic so that the cables aren't making noise?  What questions can I ask to get deeper into this story, this emotion?  What's my battery life?  How much time do I have left on my card?  How likely am I to need the battery and the card space later?

I tell people that it was pretty lonely.  Not in the "Wah, I miss home.  I wish I had a girlfriend." kind of lonely, but I constantly felt like I was holding a council of one.  Every artistic decision, every technical difficulty, every question I asked was my idea and I decided if it was good or bad.  No one to help with sound or to interview while I worry about tech.  I've told most people that I'm never doing video on a missions trip again unless I have at least one more person to help.

At no point did I feel like what I was doing was not ministry.  I was keenly aware of video's power to do ministry to peoples' hearts while shooting every day.  Video has the amazing power to stir peoples' hearts in such a way that they experience, in some small measure, what our team experienced while we were there.  With a good video, they will love the people as much as we did.

Really, my ministry was not to the Swazis.  It was to Impact, my home church.

I can't wait to share the fruits of that work, but it made for a pretty unemotional trip to Africa at times.  (There are plenty of emotional stories, too.  Maybe another time...)

But this guy at church wasn't content with that answer.  He kept pressing.  In retrospect, I'm really glad.  Very few others have.

He said, "Traveling overseas, serving others, going on missions trips... it changes you.  How did God change you?  What was not the same about you when you came back?"  I kept trying to BS some answer, but he kept rephrasing, kept asking, kept pushing.

(There's much more to tell, but I hate long blog posts.  I'll continue this next posting.)

Endnote.

There seems to be a huge backlog of content to update this blog with, so over the next few days, I'm hoping to write up a bunch of posts and automate them for the next few weeks.  Maybe a slow drip of Kemp-thoughts will be helpful for someone.  Or maybe just me. 

Endnote was the short film that occupied my "What I'm Working On" tab up there for far too long.  Here's the final product:

Endnote from Kemp Lyons on Vimeo.

I've been an employee of Cornerstone University now for three and a half years.  In my position, I get the joy of helping students with their film productions.  There came a point last year (at about this time) that I said to myself, "Kemp, you haven't actually been on a film set since you graduated...." 

"You know what, self?  You're right!  We should do something about that."

So I wrote something.  And made it.

I learned many things in the process.

1. Making short films on the cheap is difficult.  You really do ask a lot of people.  If it weren't for Producer Sarah Schaefer and Director of Photography Mike Brown, I wouldn't have been able to do this.  These two people suffered through a lot of phone calls, emails, and production meetings just to help make this film happen and I am deeply grateful.  It's because of Sarah that we were able to have any sort of decent location.  Mike Brown helped transform my blocky ideas into beautiful shots. 

My editor, Leesa Lehmann, is equally amazing.  We originally scheduled out that she'd have all the footage ready to go during some vacation time she had coming up.  That didn't work out.  So she spent stolen hours here and there over a period of four months getting this film cut together.  I couldn't be more happy with the result.

Our actors were amazing.  Flexible, talented, good spirited, and just amazing to work with.  I'm deeply grateful for their sacrifices to make this film.  Largely because of this next point.  Lesson: love your people.  Shower them with praise.

2. Getting back into shooting scheduling was...  difficult.  I was an idiot.  Big time.  I signed off on a schedule that alotted us 8 minutes per shot.  Madness.  Sheer madness.  Poor Ujwal and Whitney pretty much hung out by the back of the shot for take after take after take.  We scheduled them until 11pm but they stayed until probably 1am.  Rock stars.  Lesson: 20 minutes a shot.  At least.

3. Professional practice really does help you teach.  This might be filed under, "No, duh.", but I was able to draw on this experience many, many times over the last year.  It has given me more confidence working with students and, hopefully, has resulted in them getting a better education through me.  Lesson: do this more often.


I'm currently working on ideating for some new short films.  As a faculty and staff at Cornerstone, we want to make a short film over the summer.  My problem is that I'm always coming up with ideas that take a few more effects than we have the resources to accomplish.  There's a blog post coming about that, too.

Anyway.  I hope you enjoy Endnote and it makes you think just a little about relationships and how we process them.

I did it.

Hey.

Guess what?

It's over.

A month ago, I wrote this post, challenging myself to practice thinking and writing over the course of 30 days.  In that time, I have written 30 posts, lots of words, and thought quite a bit.  I've started directing my first short film, reconsidered my career, and gotten rid of my home internet service.  Are you ready for some life lessons from all this?

1. Discipline is great.  It's really worth it to sit down and force yourself to do something.

2. Planning ahead is better.  Knowing that, at the end of the day, I'd have to write something has made me think more intentionally throughout my day.  I actually look for ideas to articles.  I write them down.  I live life more interestingly when I know I have to bring home something of worth to share with my adoring fans (read: whoever clicks on the links to get here).

3. I think I still like writing.  So that's nice.

4. Hm.  I'm sure there'll be more.

Tonight's post sort of snuck up on me, to be honest.  By now, I'm so stuck in the rhythm of blogging every night that it's weird to think that the required part is over (for now).  I still have several ideas written down for stuff to talk about (including the upcoming Minecraft Chronicles) - and that's all just stuff in my head.  Can you even imagine what will happen if I started reading more criticism and responding to that?  Or worse, actually playing video games and thinking critically about them?  Good heavens.  It's staggering.

So thanks for sticking around this last month.  The posts will  by no means cease just because I'm not requiring it of myself.  In fact, I might just keep up the blog-a-day thing for a while longer.  See how far it'll go, ya know?

Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  Like many other bloggers (probably, I think...), here's a small list of things I'm thankful for:

1. Food.  It's a simple thing.  I take it for granted.  
2. Clean water.  Whenever I want it.  It even gets heated! 
3. A family that loves each other.  
4. A mom and dad who are best friends.  Their marriage has never, ever faltered.  They've had to put up with a lot through the years, but I have never doubted their love for one another.
5. Sisters.  I guess.  
6. A full time job that I like that's sort of in my field. 
7. A location for the short film I'm working on.

You know what?  It's positively obscene how much I have to be thankful for.  I am a tremendously blessed person and no list, no matter how long, can capture the number or quality of gifts that the Lord has lavished me with.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Discovery.

I started writing this in my journal, but I thought "hey, why not share it?" So I am.

This weekend was Thanksgiving. On the drive to Ann Arbor, I pushed my mind to consider Dust to Dust, a story I've been working on for some time. I made discoveries.

There are many similarities between making stuff up for stories and discovering things. Both result in being able to push the story forward Both result in new characters, events, and locations. Both feel good to do for the writer.

But discovery is completely different. It truly feels like the idea exists somewhere out there, floating in space, and all I am doing is plumbing its depths, trying to find more of what exists.

The birth of a story I came to call Legion was like this. I was sitting in 11th grade Humanities class, bored out of my skull and writing, and all of a sudden, there's this guy named Travis. And he's in a battle. And he's sort of killed, but winds up in this glowy whiteness with a sword on a pedestal in the middle. He acknowledges the place and says, "I guess this is the Atrium."

I remember being confused. I, as the writer, had no idea what my character was talking about. I asked all my friends that day, in dumbfoundedness, "What's the Atrium? Why is it capitalized? Why is there a sword there?" None of them could answer me...

Every time I added to that story, it felt that way. I was merely an observer chronicling events that were - somehow - happening.

(Speaking of, did you ever have the idea that all imagined things actually do exist? That the imaginer merely has some kind of psychic tether to some alternate timeline/universe/plane? I did...)

But then I had to finish the story.

All of a sudden, all of these individual scenes had to be tied together. All of the strange dream sequences that involved a small theophany had to be put into the sense of the story. Enemies that were mere shadows needed motivation. And there had to be an ending.

I felt so uncomfortable forcing that story to a conclusion. It lacked all of the reality that the rest of it held in my mind. I tied scenes together that, intuitively, I knew did not belong together. I jumped to thematic conclusions that source material received with coldness.

Since turning that project in, I have not even looked at the final product. It felt dirty, polluted. Like I had sewn together a Frankenstein's monster. There was no way to pull out the good pieces from the bad without ruining them.

But this weekend was different. As I explored a character, I found myself exploring a place. And with that place came events. Backstory. Presuppositions that I knew were there all along were explained simply and elegantly. It was... amazing.

No.

Perhaps divine. It is easy to see why, for so long, the creative spark was regarded as some kind of god.

Perhaps these moments are gifts that God gives to us creatives. We spend so much mental energy trying to tell meaningful stories, but so often, we grasp at straws trying to make sense of a world whose purpose has been so veiled. But God, in his grace, awakens that intuitive grasp that we have of the hidden structures of reality and we truly discover something that has never existed.

Summer.

Naturally, my last post indicating that I'd post more was a complete fabrication. Summer has been busier than I expected, oddly enough.

Here are some things that I've learned:

1. Don't stress out so much when you don't have a job. I was asked to do some temporary(ish) work at my school to help keep afloat. It was great. It got me up in the morning, gave me money, and I still had time for youth ministry. I ended up being offered the full time job that started a few weeks ago. For all my early summer worrying about having a job, God knew that I would have one. Instead of worrying, being irritable, and panicking every few minutes, I need to trust God and know that I'll be okay.
2. I am capable of sitting down and re-setting a vision for my life. I've set goals, made a plan, and, so far, the plan is working(ish).
3. I still love theatre. I love the act of creating a character, of burying myself beneath someone else for a short time. In that, I am thankful to honor my God.
4. God is good. I had numerous conversations over the summer with people who are in a doubt-y place in their faith. What struck me is that we were still talking about it. If I really wanted to leave the faith, something kept bringing me back. God keeps drawing us to himself, even when it seems like he may not even exist. And the fact that he draws us to himself means that he is good.

So far, the fall has been thus:

1. Wake up.
2. Go to work.
3. Eat dinner from 6:00 to 7:00.
4. Go to rehearsal until 10:30.
5. Go home and sleep.
6. Repeat.

As awful as it sounds (I literally have 10 - 12 free hours a week.), it has been fantastic. I have found so much life in moving, keeping productive, and being creative. I have the increasing sense that I need to look forward - to keep writing, designing, learning, and making myself a better possible employee.

So, hopefully, fall will be full of that.

Answered Prayer.

I wrote the seeds of this in my Moleskine yesterday. It was cool, so I thought I'd share.

Today, God answered prayer. I prayed last night at 2am that, if he wanted me at Sunday morning prayer (at 6:30am, no less), he would wake me up with energy before my alarm went off. I went to bed not really wanting to get up in the morning, but trusting that if Jesus really wanted me there, he'd get me there. I went to bed with my alarm set for 6:25am, knowing full well that I might get up, stare at it in bewilderment, then shut it off and go back to sleep.

I woke up at 6:20am awake and ready to go. In fact, I made sure my roommates didn't ignore their alarms.

The time ended up being very, very good. The scripture lined up with other things God has been sort of showing me lately - things I'm still exploring.

At church, I worshiped well. I had, for the first time in a long time, something specific to praise and thank him for. It feels good to praise God for something that he has done - for a specific answer to prayer.

But how cool would it be to worship him based on who he is - for his attributes - rather than just for what he had done? It's something I'm familiar with these days, but it is so intellectual for me. How great would it be to worship him with the same emotion and intensity despite what visible actions he had taken recently - just for his grace, his omnipotence, his love?

Jared is a peach!

Jared Ransom brought me back my journal! It was left in his love nest (that he just cleaned for his honey. Awww....).

Just an update.

87 Views, baby!

So... I am officially done with Fall semester 2007. Only thing left to do is turn it all in.

Also, Reflections... has 87 views. Does anyone else think that's kinda weird? Sweet, though. Theoretically, people like it. Even if the lighting's kinda dim.

I guess we should have just fixed it in post.

This is way less interesting without gestures

So the small story of how I got home is thus:

I picked up Daniel, the American Spanish missionary kid from Calvin who I was giving a ride home, and headed east on I-96. Little did I know that a terrible secret lay beneath the hood of my car...

Earlier that day, I had tried to do my usual (Dad-commanded) check up routine on the car... the oil, the transmission fluid, the tire pressure, etc... but I could not get the hood to pop up. I've had this problem before, though. Usually, it's not a big deal. I hit it a few times, kick it, pop it from the inside again and it works. This time, it didn't. Okay, no big deal. It'll come up when I hit a bump. As I filled up my tank and drove around campus that day, it didn't, though. Hm. Oh well. I guess it's stuck.

Anyway, I pick up Daniel and start heading home. We're trying to me amiable and get along when all of a sudden, BAM! I look up and I suddenly can't see. Luckily, we were in the right lane, so I pull into the shoulder and evaluate the situation.

Have you seen Tommy Boy? That part when their hood flies up into the windshield? Yeah. That happened. And it was bent.

So we get outside and try to put it back down only to find that it's so bent it won't close. Okay. Now what? Well, I had some straps... So that's what we did. We strapped that hood down tight. In the rain and cold. Ick.

So there's that. We keep heading south. Eventually, my right windshield wiper flipped upside down and did nothing, so I pulled over and yanked it off. Now I'm driving 60 miles an hour, in the dark, with a hood that could come up at any moment and one wiper that doesn't work. And then the other wiper started smearing rather than wiping... I officially drove the most unsafe car I've ever driven in my life. I pulled over and got a wiper to get by and went the rest of the way home safely.

Yesterday, my dad and I banged the hood out until it could close (We even greased the clasp so it'll pop up again.). So now all I need is a new windshield, a new wiper, and there's something wrong with the sunroof...

But! It runs.

Good news!

So all that internal locus of control stuff might actually work. Especially when others are playing along.

The CEO I was going to email today? Yeah. Totally emailed him.

He totally replied within 6 hours of my email. With good news. Possible internship news.

It still may be early for me to get my hopes up, especially since I don't exactly have any marketable skills - not even as a code monkey. But! There is hope.

So if you could continue to pray for me, friends (heck, even enemies. It'd be good for both of us.), I would be greatly appreciative.

(Yep, no idea what to title this.)

Everything is perfect right now.

Well, except that my life isn't at the end of its story. Which, I guess, is good.

Act 3 is coming, friends. But until then, we must fight the good fight.