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.)

Directing.

Man, remember the good old days when I'd post on this blog every day?  Those were really good times.  We had some laughs, shared some stories, discussed some hot-button issues...  It was really something.

And then, on the little side-bar to the right, "Directing a short film" appeared.  My life has been consumed.

I swear I'll go back to regular updates sometime after the first of the year.

So far, I have found directing to be a very enjoyable experience.  I've been blessed to be surrounded by an incredibly talented team, so my stress level has been relatively low.  We start principal photography on Sunday and I'm really excited to start working with actors and seeing this script come to life.

See you all on the other side, where I will continue the Minecraft chronicles and respond to a couple articles I've read in the last couple weeks.

Blogging challenge.

I've been thinking some recently.  About lots of things.  About imagination and drive.  About dreams and will.  About discipline, passion, and skills.  And writing.  I've been thinking about writing a good amount. 

This quote from Ira Glass went the rounds on Facebook recently: 

Like so many things on the internet, I've seen it before, but I'm at a place in my life where I needed to be reminded that I am, in fact, a creative.

Unfortunately, like many creatives, I am also a perfectionist.  I rarely start something unless I know it'll be just right.  I have probably three or four drafts in my Blogger queue right now that seemed like such good ideas at the time, but weren't right yet.  Who knows how many more ideas I've had but have let slip away because they weren't quite good enough.

Daggum it, though, Ira's right.  I need to do a lot of work.  If I even dream of being a new media academic someday, I need to write.  If I want to design interactive narratives, I need to write.  If I want to respect myself in a few years, I need to write. 

So starting tomorrow, I issue myself a blogging challenge.  I will write something on this blog every day for a month.  The topics may be as diverse as narrative theory, game design, theology, community, television, relationships, music, or finances.  But something will go up here every day until November 26. 

Good luck to us both.

GDC 2011.

After a quick trip to Meijer to pick up trail mix (a must have for the very long days of a CA at GDC...), I will be off to the 2011 Game Developer's Conference.

I'm pumped.

Let's talk about video games there, okay guys? That'll be fun, yeah?

I promise to bring back stories.

It's been a long time.

Oh hey, blog. Nice to see you again.

There's been some changes.

First (and most obviously), I changed the template. Isn't it lovely?

Second (and most importantly), I updated my portfolio page. You may now flood my inbox, job offers.

Thirdly (and most unlikely), I'm going to try to write on this thing a bit more. GDC is coming up and there's plenty going on in the game industry to talk about (in addition to my own, clearly inspired ramblings). I've already got quite a few articles buzzing around in my head that will likely find their way onto a keyboard in the coming days and weeks.

Anyway. We'll see.

P.S. If you haven't checked out my roommate and I's blog, you can click the link at the top of the page. That'll take you to the other blog that holds the podcasts.

P.P.S. I also added another doo-hicky to the sidebar on the right. Now, there's a little thing telling people what I'm working on. Because it's been quite a lot and will continue to be quite a bit.

Hello world (again).

Dear Blogosphere,

It's been a long time, hasn't it? How have you been? I've been good. Pretty busy, but good. In fact, far too busy-feeling for a guy who is, technically, unemployed. What's the deal with that, Blogosphere?

Anyway, just thought I'd drop a line and see how you're doing. I'm hoping we can hang out a little more in the coming weeks and months. I've been doing a little bit of studying that bears some sharing, some games I've been playing, and I do have that 250 words a day to write... Suffice to say, Blogosphere, I'm really bad at the whole Web 2.0, social networking, interactive content thing. Although our friend Facebook has been less neglected than you have been, I haven't even kept up with that! And don't get me started about The Twitter.

So here's to a renewed relationship (hopefully),

~Kemp

New Years.

I know I'm quite a bit late on the New Years' bandwagon, but I really wanted to do one of these posts (like everyone else in the world [that I read, at least]).

I'm still not finished processing through preparing for the year, but I wanted to chronicle what I've got (sort of like how Mr. Ransom did it; I'll do a follow up with some more specifics [mostly for myself and my records]) Here are some of my thoughts so far:

It's my senior year. That has so many ridiculous ramifications that it's... ridiculous. It is literally impossible to predict what my life will be like past June. Lord willing, I'll be in California doing a sweet internship. Or I could be in Grand Rapids, living with Buddy and Kyle for a bit doing... something. Or I could be in Albuquerque, living with someone and doing... something. Or I could be in Florida... You get the picture.

I have really gotten a lot of inspiration from the various blogs I've been reading and the movies I've been watching. God is really trying to tell me something. I think the credits song of Yes Man says it best: "It's time to man up." Of all my priorities and goals, it's time to actually start doing. Anything.

I want to establish my lifestyle this year. This has a lot to do with my reading on The Simple Dollar and The Art of Manliness, in addition to my convictions about how Jesus would have us live. There are so many dreams I have for the future, but they almost all involve how I live.

One of the things that I don't think I can commit to this year (but want to as soon as possible) is to spend one hour a day learning one thing for one year. (Again, I refer to the Simple Dollar link above.) There are so many skills and knowledge I want to have. For example:

• Learn French well enough to be conversational. Enough to watch a movie, for instance.
• Read music and play piano.
• Perform basic car repair.
• Draw locations and characters (for concept art).
• Program in C++ or C#
• Write. From blog-style to articles to screenplays to prose to...
• Photography.
• Cooking.
• Physics. I love physics and wish I could learn more.

I think I'll end this rambling and unfocused post with a question: If you could spend one hour a day practicing one thing (knowledge or skill) for one year, what would it be?

(Possible) woops.

So I linked this blog with my Facebook notes. Now my thoughts are really open for all the world to see. Possibly even on their news feeds (until I change that).

Why?

Because I'll hopefully be updating this more as the semester starts and I start giving myself a words per day routine.

Because I want to be a better writer and the only way to do that is to write and let people read it.

Because I sometimes have thoughts I want to share with people and gain their thoughts from but my blog doesn't get much traffic.

Because I'm tired and my decision making probably isn't the best.

Goodnight, world.

One of *those* posts.

This is going to be just another one of those posts trying to motivate myself into updating again. Sometimes they end up being an actual update, too.

So... newsworthy stuff...

I suppose by now all of you have seen Facebook. I am indeed "in a relationship." (It still weirds me out when I see it.) I guess that's kind of newsworthy.

Heidi's pretty cool, I guess.

So that's the update. Maybe there will be deeper thoughts to come.

I'm safe

I am now safely in my home in tropical Medina, Ohio, just so ya'll know.

But the trip was not without its share of adventures, let me tell you.

Or rather, you can ask me later. Or I'll update tomorrow. I'm tired now.