Min Ho and the boonie dog; A Saipanese retelling of Balaam and the donkey.

Min Ho was a young man who lived in San Antonio village. He was not just any young man, for you see he had a special ability. When Min Ho would say a blessing on somebody, they would begin to prosper. And when he would say a curse on them, they would face many hardships. Because of his special ability, many important people would ask him for help during political elections and sporting events.

One day, the mayor of Kagman village sent messengers to Min Ho. The messengers told him that the people of Garapan village had been the final vote in support of a new law that made it illegal to chew beetle nut or play poker. This made the Kagman mayor very angry and so he wanted Min Ho to put a curse on the people of Garapan. Min Ho told the messengers that he couldn't go, because God liked the people of Garapan and wouldn't let him curse them. The men left but the next day, more men came who were even more important than the ones before. They said that if Min Ho would go with them, the mayor of Kagman would give him a full set of tools and all the cereal he could ask for. Knowing that these two things were very hard to come by and rather expensive on the island of Saipan, Min Ho finally agreed.

He packed his bag, and set off with his trusty boonie dog for company; You see, Min Ho NEVER went anywhere without his boonie dog. It was his favorite, and had always been a loyal friend (as boonie dogs go).

After going a ways down Beach road towards Garapan, Min Ho's boonie dog turned off the road and went running towards the ocean! Annoyed, Min Ho beat his dog and told him he was a bad dog and that he should never do that again. After another little ways, the boonie dog turned around in the road and bit Min Ho's leg! Angry, Min Ho spanked the dog again and made great threats and snide remarks about his lineage. They continued on until they came to a police sobriety and seatbelt roadblock checkpoint thing blocking all but one lane of traffic. Min Ho's boonie dog at this point simply stopped in the middle and blocked him from going any further. Furious, Min Ho really let him have it this time. "You flea bitten mutt with scrambled DNA why have you stopped in the road blocking my path?!?!" The dog turned to Min Ho and started to speak. "Master" he said.. "have I not been your faithful boonie dog all these years? Haven't I avoided the dogs with mange, even though they were all cousins of mine? Haven't I brought you many dead rats and left them on your doorstep so thoughtfully? Why do you now beat me so?"

Suddenlly, Min Ho's eyes were opened and he say a shining angel standing in the path in front of his dog. The angel said to him "Hey batt, your dog is trying to save your life. I would have killed you these three times but he turned you away from my sword".

Ashamed, Min Ho bowed down and said "What am I to do then?". The angel told him to continue on, but to only say what God wanted him to say. So he and his boonie dog proceeded towards Garapan.

When they arrived, the mayor from Kagman met them there. They went to Winchell's Donuts and the mayor invited Min Ho to curse the people of Garapan. But when Min Ho started to speak, this is what he said:

"May the people of Garapan have few cockroaches in their homes, and may all their food stamps never run out".

Angrily the mayor told Min Ho he would give him another chance, and he better get it right next time. They went up to the top of Mt. Topachou, and again the mayor told Min Ho to curse the people of Garapan. What he said instead, was:

"May all the potholes in Garapan be filled, and let the dead frogs on the road be eaten quickly so they don't stink for very long".

Enraged, the mayor of Kagman said to Min Ho: "ONE LAST TIME! I HAVE BROUGHT YOU TO CURSE THESE PEOPLE AND YOU ONLY BLESS THEM! You have one more chance to get it right." Min Ho tried explaining that if God didn't want him to curse the people of Garapan, then he simply couldn't; but it was to no avail.

Finally, they arrived at their third destination: the DFS shops. Surrounded by Japanese tourists buying Louis Vuitton, Coach, and Rolex accessories, the Kagman Mayor said "See?! Look at all these people spending too much money on junk they don't need! This area is no good! Maybe now you can curse them?!" But predictably, all Min Ho could say was:

"Let always the children of Garapan not injure themselves when they're playing with machetes, and may the bumpers never again rust off of another pickup truck."

Needless to say, the Kagman mayor was incensed. He instructed Min Ho to return home to San Antonio and never step foot in Kagman again, and stormed off to water his secret garden of beetle nut palms.


EPILOGUE

Due to overwhelming support a new law was passed that reinstated the legality of playing poker and chewing beetle nut and they all lived happily ever after.

Depiction

Man I need to post here more often.

This past Friday we had a vespers for grades 7-10 at my apartment! We had been talking about doing this for a while and finally just did it haha. It was cool to have something for just the older kids, who sometimes feel a little ...meh just suffice it to say that it's hard to do a chapel for all ages, so you usually wind up leaning towards the ones who will be the most distracting if not tended to. Which is the little kids. So Friday we had the older kids over, gave em haystacks (this was great fun since most of them didn't know what to make of food that required some assembly.. most just wound up with chips and several of the toppings on the side as dip).. Then I spoke to them for a half hour or so about finding out Gods purpose for your life. After that we played some Bible games, kind of sherades, which were also funny because some of them don't really know the Bible so their depiction of stories were a little bit off at times haha. Anyway. So yea I had a house full of joy :)

Sabbath we went to the church at the southern end of the island, Kagman church. They meet in a rented business building. Nice people, good fellowship dinner :p

Sunday we went to Managaha (a small island off the western side of Saipan) for the day! I dug a hole in hot pursuit of a crab (who ultimately evaded me, pesky bugger), was chased and bitten by a surprisingly aggressive trigger fish, and swam out to where the reef dropped off into the deep ocean. I felt fear there. It was odd.. The water just got cold and dark. The unknown. I found a big yellow starfish, about a foot and a half in diameter which was pretty sweet.

Gotta go, more later

Exploring

I had a jones for some adventure this past Sabbath so while the girls took NAPS, I drove up to the bansi cliffs parking lot with machete and water bottle in hand to where I had seen a trail head off into the tall grass/ jungle. I was certain that great adventure awaited. Probably have to kill a tiger or fight quicksand or something. Anyway, I walk this trail for about 15 minutes, whacking at passing butterflies and various flora and fauna, and soon began to hear strange sounds from somewhere in the thick foliage. Being unable to identify them, I pressed on. Soon, the tril broke into a clearing, and there was a boat. A big boat in fact. There in the middle of the jungle. Of course I clamored up into it and sadly, found nothing of much intrest except a large garden spider. Beyond the boat, there was a big building. A long building. So of course I walked up to go exploring it. However, as I turned into the front door, i see ahead of me a long corridor running the length of the building. Filling the hallway was the bulky profile of a bull. Somewhat surprised and concerned at the prospect of angering a large bull in the middle of the jungle alone, I uttered some choice expletives and hastened along down the path. After a few hundred yards, the trail finally broke to what I was looking for all along- the ocean. But it wasn't really the way I was expecting it. It looked like the surface of the moon or something. It was a place where the lava had flowed right down to the water when the island was formed and there was no coral reef to stop the waves, so they were large and violent. I walked out along the water for a ways which was very slow goiing because the lava rock was so jagged and sharp. A little ways from the trail there were two Japanese gun placements, leftovers from WWII. The guns were rusted away, but the concrete and coral rock structures were mostly intact. Very cool. As I walked farther in that desolate place, I saw some fishing poles. A little past that, I suddenly saw a small asian man waving hello and saying something in Korean. I made my way over to where he was, and suddenly he disappeared from view. A little further and I saw where he had gone- him and two friends (Kim, Lin, and ...Juan haha) were having a picnic of the octopus they had just caught and beer. They offered me some octopus and said "SASHIMI!" and now I very much regret not trying it because it would have made this post that much more interesting. I sat with them a while and chatted, turns out one of them lives in my 'village' (San Antonio). Eventually I headed home, and as it turns out my concern over the bull was ungrounded because as I passed the house a man was shooing them out and back down the path.

Lesson learned from the day? If I ever meet a couple of Korean guys in the middle of nowhere and they offer me something to eat, I think I'll say yes.

Meanwhile...

This past weekend was PYC (Pacific Youth for Christ). I'll be honest, I wasn't too crazy about it at first. It was going to be a lot of seminars and whatnot and I was thinking how I would rather stay home or go to the beach or elsewhere. Nevertheless, I gathered myself together and went all four days (long wknd). I'll skip through the regular parts, which were good, to be sure. The speakers were all great and the seminars informative, that's all well and good. The significant part wasn't until later, the last day. We were told that we would be going out into the community door to door as coll-porters trying to get people to sign up for Bible studies and invite them to the free health fair the church and clinic were running that afternoon. Now. There are not many things that make me unsettled. Those of you that know me know that the things I'm genuinely made uncomfortable by could probably be counted on one hand. One of those things is going door to door trying to get people to take Bible studies because truth is, I've always felt like you should be very familiar with the Bible or a little more 'regular' of a Christian to do that. I'm not regular, and I'll admit that there are things that I'm not sure about in the Bible. However, I was the driver and ... overseer... of a bunch of kids and if I was going to run them, I figured I should participate and be the example. We go to the first house, say our lines and whatnot, and the lady invites us in, asks a ton of questions, and signed up for Bible studies. It was really amazing because we had a lot more then after that. And, the other groups had the same thing (I had divided the kids into groups of 2 or 3). It was awesome.

Later when I was talking to my friend Cecilia about this, she told me that at the collegiate Bible study Friday night they had been praying for me. Friday night in Maryland is Saturday afternoon in the Pacific. So while they were praying for me, we were having great success with our afternoons work. Pretty cool, huh?

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Edit: As I thought about this post later I realized an amusing if glaring error. The last day of the program was Monday, not Saturday as stated. Thus, the time of the Bible study groups prayer and our going door to door do not in fact line up. Nevertheless, I reckon that God can hold on to the power of prayer and release it at a later date, wouldn't you say? :p Cecilia, they still counted! I apologize for the mistake. It is due to my being somewhat exhausted by the weekend and not keeping my facts straight!

On the bottom

A few meaningful things:

One of the 8th grade kids came to me and asked some probing questions about the bible and spirituality and Christian lifestyle. It's cool to see that their religion/ Bible class is having an effect. Please pray for me that I will be able to answer their questions, or at least point them in the right direction :)

The other day a few of the kids saw my water bottle and asked if they could draw on it. I said yes, but said they had to do it on the bottom (I had no idea what they might write haha). I didn't even think about it until later that night when I happened to pick it up and look at it, one of them had written "Mr. D is awesome!".

I have drawings covering my refrigerator from the little 1st and 2nd graders. They sit there in aftercare and draw me pictures of their house and rainbows and hearts and whatnot; I'm running out of space.

Hugs from kindergarteners. All of them. At the same time.

There are other things that have moved me, and as I think of them later I'll try to edit them into this post. Usually though, too many things happen in a day to remember them all later. I can see Christ at work here. Please continue to pray for the school and all of us who work to make it a success.