The Holidays

BUSY! I have gone off and neglected my dear readers (the few of you that are still hanging on for some glint of intelligent discourse, I apologize.) First things first. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I had a great Christmas and we got snow!... on the Second day of Christmas. Here is a picture of the aforementioned snow and Yamato on our mythical rope swing. That is Leander down on the ground, probably wondering what the tensile strength of that rope is (note for dad: I tested the swing first before sending my roommate flying over the void. The rope is actually four strands tied into a double loop with a overhand on a bite around a very stout tree limb, for it to fail, at least two strands would have to break.) We had much festivity and merry making for Christmas. There was a community party with a gift exchange an an impromptu Christmas pageant complete with costumes and a Virgin Mary with some shaky credentials (a married pastor from Ghana we call Uncle Timothy.) Robert and I even had our stockings hanging in my room for Christmas morning (thanks mom!)

Speaking of Robert, I had my first visitor here at ARI. Robert, my elder brother, stopped by on his way home from Korea where he taught English for the last year. He stayed for a week and we got to spend Christmas together then go on a journey to the North Island of Hokkaido (kind of Japan's version of Alaska.) We traveled by train and overnight ferry and had a roaring good time. To keep ourselves occupied we would talk, read or play one of our many games of Rummy. The weather stayed with us on the boat and met us in Hokkaido so we had snow and ice for three days, a lot for a couple of boys from West Texas. In Hokkaido we stayed on a farm run by Raymond Epp, a friend of ARI who came to lecture a few weeks ago. He invited me out to visit and offered us a place to stay. He has four sons between 2 and 14 and we had a lot of fun playing guitars and banging pots and pans, their mother even joined in and hit a plastic bucket with us. Ray is an organic farmer with a CSA (community Supported Agriculture) program near Sapporo. He is a Mennonite farmer interested in local economies and peace making through food, so we had some great conversations, and some even better food. Here is a picture of his middle son at our Sunday morning home church service. We did not get to stay for very long because of train and ferry schedules but our trip was definitely worthwhile and exciting.

We made it back to ARI for one more night before we had to get Robert to the airport. Now that the numbers have dwindled at ARI we stave off loneliness by eating a LOT of great food and lingering over the meals to talk and share stories. It is a new feel to the place but a nice small community. On the to do list is create an ARI version of Monopoly, knit a scarf, and sew my new tarp that I got for Christmas. Very exciting.

I have been learning some great lessons on loving people and being open to share time and a smile. Whenever I get tired or jaded about life I just sit back and remeber that the greatest commandments were to love your God and love your neighbor. When I come back to that center everything is easier to deal with. There is a lot of stuff going on in our lives, and in our world, if we can come back around to caring about those around us it seems more manageable. One of my good friends had a quote on her facebook wall that she got from Storypeople.com, it went something like this, "maybe love your enemies is too hard at first, let's start with 'don't bite' and go on from there." I have liked this quote since I read it several years ago. It helps me re-center when I think too hard about all the big problems and the frustrating moments in life. So for now, let's just start with not biting, and see where it gets us headed. Peace and Love.

Mike

So, the participants graduated this weekend which means that after 9 months of studying, traveling, and farming they are going back to their home communities to share their learning and excitement. They have a lot of challenges in front of them, and some of their new ideas are going to be met with hostility, but they are good people with a lot of will power. We now have over 1,100 graduates spread across the globe working so that we may live together.

It is sad to see them leaving. I have grown so close with these folks from so many different lands. We have gotten to laugh together more than our share, and shared the good work of food and life. As they leave a few at a time there is a hope that we might see each other somewhere some how. Several of them live on islands or near the coast, I am plotting a sailing trip to include stops at their various countries and saying hi, doing a little farming, and checking on their projects.

We spent the last night in men's dorm singing songs and recording videos for posterity. I will be adding them on Youtube as I get them edited, I will put links on here as well. I have been slacking on the pictures lately because I have been collecting video footage and trying to compile it into workable movies. I have a rough cut of a working video that was requested by one of my advisors at Mission personnel. So, David this one is for you...


Peace and Love

Mike

The weather has been anything but constant this week. It kind of reminds me of the swings we have in West Texas. At the beginning of the week it was cold and wet. By Wednesday it was sunny and beautiful. It has started to get a little cooler but nothing like last week. They say that it will snow sometime in the next few months.

This afternoon we took a community outing and drove to the mountains for snow viewing. Most of the participants have never seen the snow. Everything went splendid and we had a great day... except that there was no snow. We drove to a conference center that is historically snow covered, but today it was nice and green. Instead of romping through the snow we got a tour of the facilities and a buffet style lunch. It was disappointing for all, but to every cloud there is a lining. We loaded back into the buses and headed farther up the road. After much winding and weaving we pulled into a parking lot and walked down a side trail to a 30 ft stretch of three day old snow. It was awesome. Madness ensued, snow was flying everywhere. I loved it, so much excitement for a small pleasure.

Speaking of snow, apparently College Station is inundated with it right now. Who would have thought? I keep getting asked about Texas and how hot it is over there. I can't help but laugh that our southern desert state is colder right now than it is here. I know why it is cold, and that it can get very cold, but trying to explain that to someone that has never been there except through movies and T.V. is difficult. For those of you who are reading this from a warm room in a snow filled play land, please enjoy.

I hope all is well, and that your lives are merry. Feel free to leave your love. Peace, Love, and deep fried food for all.

Mike

My Experience with Death

We sent 58 birds to the freezers yesterday. It took all day to kill, cut, and clean the two-year-old layers that inhabited the F2 pen.

I don't know how to explain how I felt during the blood bath. I don't think I have prayed that much in a long time. My head swam as my thoughts try to order themselves. I have always eaten meat, it is what I do, but I had never fully understood the depth of that choice until this moment, and it all came rushing up at once. The arguments for and against, the stories I’ve heard, the books I have read. Yet, none of it made sense, so I cut, that is what you do, you cut.

It is a strange thing taking a life so personally. I am standing there, in a slatted room, with a chicken in one hand, a knife in the other, my skin trying to crawl off my back, and a queasy feeling in my stomach. Butchering puts you face to face with your eating habits, shows you the cost of your life on earth, and questions your disconnected notions about food and where it comes from. Rationally I understand that in order that I may eat meat an actual animal has to sacrifice its life. Emotionally though, as the bird and I make eye contact, there is a deep regret. At this point I just tell the bird in a soothing voice that it will be over soon. I have been repeating this phrase as a sort of mantra all day as we caught the birds in their pen, transported them to the slaughterhouse, and pulled their compatriots one by one out of the crate.

The first round of chickens were the hardest. At ARI we do not chop of the head or wring the neck, instead we slice the jugular veins in order to bleed out the bird and minimize the damage to the meat. They say that it is humane, and the birds don't actually feel much. I don't believe them. Once the cuts are made (a process that involves inserting a blade into the neck behind the airway and severing the jugular veins along the neck bone) the birds are turned upside down and put into a metal funnel to allow them to bleed out. There is usually some "involuntary" muscle contractions as the bird’s body comes to terms with its fate. After some time we move them into hot water then a de-feathering contraption before plucking and butchering the rest of what is now very definitely a carcass. At the end we have something that looks very much like what you would find in your local grocery store.

By the end of the day I was drained. I had not realized how emotionally demanding the whole process was until it was over. I ambled up the hill to my dorm where I laid in my hammock for several minutes collecting my thoughts, pondering life and my place in the grand scheme. I was surprised by how often my thoughts turned to God during this process. It seemed that I was in a state of constant prayer, trying to come to terms with our entwined fates, the chicken that would be my dinner. Two days later, I am still processing my thoughts.

I don’t like to write stories that are sad or discouraging. I don’t want you to think that I am sad or miserable. I just wanted to share my experience, that you might see more clearly what I see, and understand more fully my experiences. Thank you for taking the time to walk with me in my journey. I hope that you are well fed and happy. Peace and Love.

Mike

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I don't have a whole lot of
time to write in this post so I have added some pictures to speak for me.

As you can see to the left, it is getting cold, evidenced by the monkey warming himself by the heater. I got to visit a school last week and play games with 2 classes of 4th graders. Did you know that they have unicycles at Japanese schools? It is an integral part of their recess time. We hiked up to a waterfall this weekend, it was the third largest waterfall in Japan. While we were there we spent some time in a tunnel waiting for an elevator to go to a lookout. After the lookout we hiked across the river and then up to the top of the falls. There were some great views of the farmland around the river that fed the waterfall. Good times were had by all.

Since Thanksgiving is not a national holiday in Japan, a group of us will be celebrating our own version of a Thanksgiving feast Saturday night. It is good to have a group here to share time with over a roasted turkey. Unfortunately due to a scheduling error on my part I am foregoing an opportunity to go rock climbing, but I know the rock will be there a lot longer than the home made chess pie.

Since it is Thanksgiving my roommate and I made a video for you last night. It is not high quality but it is the second such video I have produced. I hope you enjoy it. With that I will leave you to view some pictures and the video. Keep checking back, I would like to discuss some of the spiritual aspects of this journey. I hope you are all full and happy.

Peace and Love
Mike

The participants just got back from a two week tour of Western Japan so there has been much music and merry making tonight. We played guitar for about two hours before everyone ran out of energy. There is a Tom Wait's song called I Don't Wanna Grow Up, and it has been stuck in my head for some time now. Towards the end I looked up the above mentioned song and played it for the group. When I played the recording some of the folks asked if it was me singing (Tom Waits has a very raspy voice, as if he was raised on Whiskey and Cigarettes, and apparently so do I (aka my AC/DC voice)) So I decided I should just sing it and claim the song as my own.

It is rainy here at ARI and the trees are dripping water. This morning I was going to try to travel to Utsunomya to the Anglican Church (a 40 minute train ride, and the closes to ARI.) I could not find the directions and I was running late so it was suggested that I wait until next week. Instead I spent some time with my BCP and went searching for sermons from familiar priests online. I settled on a sermon by Father Mike formerly of San Angelo and currently located in Arizona. He used a story about his daughter's early arrival into this world to discuss preparedness and the coming of Advent, very nice. I then found a podcast that my good friend Ryan Kuratko was involved with, it was a post from December last year but it was great to hear his thoughts on Mary's reaction to the news that she would have a baby. These words of wisdom, coupled with a conversation with my roommate about church and community, were very comforting to a young Texan so far from home.

This afternoon we went rambling through the woods around ARI and into town because it was too wet for bikes. I found an old logging road and followed it up into the hills. I decided to take a non-path back and spent some time bushwhacking my way to civilization. It reminded me of my time in British Columbia and my heart was happy. I have been doing some personal study on simplicity and attitudes we can adapt for our life that will help us be more aware of our connection wide web of nature. It has been an enlightening mental journey and I have been able to evaluate my natural patterns and perceptions of life from a distance. I am learning a lot about my life and how I want to fit into this world. One of the books I am reading was published a few decades ago, but its discssions are very relevant to todays issues. It is called Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, a study of economics as if people mattered. It talks about our recent engrained acceptance of greed and jealousy as nescessary components of a "healthy economic system," and the current assumption that unlimited growth is possible in a finite world. Heavy implications but the alternatives he brings up are enlightened and promising.

Because the participants were gone for two weeks I got to spend a lot of time in the kitchen "training" for the winter when we would have to cook more often. This weekend I introduced several of the community member to the now world famous Heavy Cake. Of course as luck would have it I burned the whole thing by putting too much trust in the oven. After some doctoring and a heavy dose of icing we salvaged most of the cake. One of the volunteers was so impressed he thought the burned layer was actually a third type of chocolate. Good times. Last night I made southern style biscuits from the Perini cookbook and they went over very well with scrambled eggs. I am making my way through the kitchen and learning a lot of the standard dishes, mainly miso soup, scrambled eggs, sauteed veggies, and rice. I have gotten some good response and mild acceptance, so I consider it an overall success. Food is obviously a big part of our lives here so it is fun to be involved in all aspects of the process.

Last week, after some consultation, we decided we should put up a rope swing. In keeping with the Austin Greenbelt style my roommate and I decided it should be over a drop so you could really get the feeling of air under your feet. So we found a good sturdy tree overhanging a hill, and in less than half of an hour we had a very sturdy swing set up. We have only used it a few times and gotten a weary acceptance by the staff. Now that the participants are back we will see how it goes, I think they will enjoy it as much as I do.

Faith is a funny thing here. ARI is built and largely funded by religious groups. Every day we pray before meals and in the mornings, there is a very boisterous prayer group on Monday nights, and a shuttle to churches close by on Sundays. Most of the participants have faith traditions, some more fundamental than others. My peers, the volunteers, are a typical young adult crowd with mixed opinions and hesitant affiliations. It is fun to discuss religion and ideas of faith with the community members. We have a variety of opinions and experiences. I have shared when asked and tried to keep my mouth shut re it was prudent. It is sometimes difficult to feel like a missionary in this dormitory environment, and I often find myself saying "ok I am here, tell me what you want now." As could be expected the answer is hard to discern and mostly interpreted as love your neighbor and try to be nice. So here I sit, thousands of miles from home with with my veggies and chickens, doing what I can. I can only trust that I am supposed to be here and that by living my life and sharing it with others, I will contribute something to the lives of those that I encounter.

I hope you are all well, and that your lives are full of joy and good food. Peace Love and Merriment.

Mike

One Month

Well, I have been here for a month now. I was trying to decide when I would call it a month officially. Thursday was the end of the fourth week, Saturday was the first day of the new month, Sunday was the anniversary by date, but by the time I actually got around to posting a blog about it I was already into month two and behind schedule by a day. Some things never change.

I feel like I am growing and learning here. I am thinking a lot and asking myself all kinds of questions. There are so many amazing and varied things in this world, and so many people with different ideas and dreams. Our community is diverse but we all have the same concerns about our families, our communities and the future. We are all separated from people we love in a new home trying to learn to live together. Some of my fellows are getting reports from home about turmoil or unrest. There governments are split or under attack, or even attacking. When they leave this place in a little more than a month they will have to go home and to hostile governments and business interests that don't have any love for rural leaders that would encourage the masses to stand up for themselves and take back their lives and their food. Or their countries are split in a struggle for power, a struggle that is leaving their families in harms way. But while we are here, we are safe and inspired. I pray that these wonderful people will be able to take what they have learned here back home with them and share the love and compassion that they so ably display here.

Our weather is changing, and the temperature is dropping. We have harvested a lot of food and begun planting some of our winter crops. The food is wonderful and warm. I always look forward to meal time.

Speaking of food, I have had some culinary adventures both inside and out of ARI. I have eaten fried crickets served as a snack during dinner. We regularly get a side of baby fish in a crunchy sweet sauce, the was a restaraunt where you pick sushi from a conveyor belt, fresh sashimi at my roomates house, fish guts served in a kind of gravy, cow guts that are regularly served with beer to cure hangovers, the largest bowls of Ramen noodles I have ever seen , and a myriad of variations along these themes. To tell you the truth I haven't find much that I don't like to eat. I am getting especially adept at using chopsticks .

This weekend we got to go fishing at a little river aout 40 minutes away. We used little worms from the bottom of the rocks as bait and caught 31 fish in about 45 minutes, I have included a picture of one of the largest of our catch. We brought them back to ARI with us and they got cooked up with some of our farm raised fish and served a dinner, whole.

As a recap for the month, I have gotten very acquainted with our chickens, harvested rice, climbed three mountains, started learning Japanese, gone fishing, visited Tokyo, dried my clothes on the roof, soaked in an Onsen (hot spring) , adopted three bicycles, eaten crickets, and eaten sushi from a conveyor belt.

Thank you for all of your support. I hope you enjoy these little updates. I will add more pictures later. If you click on the pictures it will take you to a full size version and my online photo folder. Peace, Love and good food for all.

Mike

"What do we gain by all of our hard work? I have seen what difficult things God demands of us. God makes everything happen at the right time. Yet none of us can ever fully understand all he has done, and he puts questions in our minds about the past and the future. I know the best thing we can do is always enjoy life, because God's gift to us is the happiness we get from our food and drink and from the work we do.
Everywhere on earth I saw violence and injustice instead of fairness and justice. So I told myself that God has set a time and a place for everything. He will judge everyone, both the wicked and the good. I know that God is testing us to show us that we are merely animals. Like animals we breathe and die, and we are no better off than they are. It just doesn't make sense. All living creatures go to the same place. We are made from the earth and we return to the earth. Who really knows if our spirits go up and the spirits of animals go down into the earth? We were meant to enjoy our work, and that's the best thing we can do. We can never know the future." Ecclesiates 3:9-13 16-22

We had a prayer meeting tonight. It was my first time to attend so I was in for a surprise. We start with a verse like the one mentioned above and then we have a mass prayer. Being from a strong liturgical background I assumed some form of organized prayer , what I got was truly a mass prayer where everyone prayed in their own language, at their own pace, about whatever was on the hearts. I had never experienced anything quite like it, all I could think about was the disciples speaking in tongues to the crowd. It was great.

I have been thinking a lot lately about power, greed, injustice, and violence. You might say I have been consumed by the concern about these problems and their presence in the world. When we read this passage tonight it struck me that things haven't changed, I have just been aware of them more recently.

It does not make it feel any better knowing that there are so many terrible things going on in the world and I can do little about them. However, there is some peace in knowing that I can do my little part, in my little community to make our lives a little more peaceful and a little more happy, and try to share and spread the love to those around me through work, food, and smiles. It is funny how food plays such a central roll in our lives, but only in the last 6 months have I realized how much it could effect us.

Peace and love

Mike

Rod's speech

Here is a copy of a speech that was given Booth the HTC last weekend. I enjoyed the speech and asked if I could post a copy on my blog. Enjoy.

HTC OPENING CEREMONY ADDRESS – Rod Booth, October 11, 2008

INTRODUCTION:

a) Welcome to the 36^th annual Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration of the Asian Rural Institute. We’ve been doing this every year since 1973 when this place was founded. My name is Rod Booth, currently a volunteer here at ARI.

b) My 1^st HTC was 15 years ago in 1993. I think we have some people here whose first HTC was 35 years ago! Who here was at the first? … How many have been to 10 or more? ….For how many is this their first? …. We welcome you all, and hope you will have a great day of new experiences, entertainment, and bargains!

c) Giving thanks for the harvest, as we’ve just done here, is as old as human civilization itself.

d) If I was home in Canada this weekend we would have the family together: there would be roast turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie. Our church would be decorated with vegetables and stocks of corn, pumpkins and squash – probably a few cans from the supermarket, which is where a lot of kids now think food comes from! My Sikh neighbours will be filling the air with aroma of curry and sound of bangrha music as they celebrate Baisakhi.

e) We had that Deuteronomy reading. For our Jewish neighbors this weekend is Sukkot, their harvest tradition. You saw all the different countries represented here in our ARI community. We are a multi-cultural, multi-faith community of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto – all of which have their own variations of harvest celebration. As you probably have your own family and faith traditions.

f) What joins us today is our common understanding of the critical link between FOOD and LIFE. Here at ARI we actually call our farm work Food-Life, and in this celebration we come to celebrate that link and express our gratitude for another year of harvest.

1) THAT ALL MAY EAT AND BE FILLED

a) In 2007 ARI hosted a symposium called “Peace From the Soil”. It looked at the problem of violence and war in our world and concluded: “Peace begins within and peace is possible when there is food on the table. Peace within a human being, peace of mind, and peace within a community, all require that basic needs are met so that there is security of life and livelihood, and the opportunity for physical, mental and spiritual health.

b) I’d say out of a lifetime in broadcast journalism, in refugee camps and marginalized communities in over 70 different countries, that peace is possible ONLY when there is food on the table. Which I think is the point of that familiar Bible story which was read for us, Jesus’ Feeding of the 5000.

c) If I had a text today if would be that one little line: “they all ate and were filled”. Biblical Scholars vary in their interpretations of that story: the conservatives say it happened exactly as it says – a miracle of reproduction; liberals refer to the little boy who gave his all (2 loaves, 5 fishes) and so shamed everyone else into opening their bag lunches - a miracle of sharing if you like! The disciples wanted to send the people away, Jesus wasn’t having any part of it; for him, in God’s world, ALL people deserve to be fed.

2) SO HOW ARE WE DOING ON THAT SCORE?

a) Not so Good. In 1996 the world’s governments pledged to reduce the level of world hunger by 50% by the year 2015. Well we’re more than half way there, and the numbers have gone UP, not DOWN. More of the world’s people are hungry in 2008 than was the case in 1996.

b) 12.6% of the people living on this earth, 854 million of them, suffer from malnutrition – 30 million of them die of it each year.

c) We added another 50 million to that total in 2007 alone when the price of the three basic food staples, rice, wheat and corn, all doubled - pricing those foods out of range for millions of the world’s peoples.

d) In Mexico, where tortillas are a staple of life, people are going hungry because their corn is being sent instead to America to make fuel for automobiles!

3) AN UNSUSTAINABLE GLOBAL FOOD SYSTEM

The bottom line is that we have evolved a world food system based on the consumption of two non-renewable resources:

a) The first one is oil – which has also managed to double in price within the last year. Dean Freudenberger who addressed our AFARI annual meeting last June warned that the vise-grip connection between agricultural productivity and fossil fuels is a ticking time- bomb. “Whether its the fuel that runs the tractor, powers the irrigation systems, dries the grains, ships to markets, or manufactures the fertilizers (which incidentally have tripled in price in one year) – modern Westernized agriculture is resting upon a base of cheap, available fossil fuel. It’s not a question of “if” but “when” this fuel becomes so expensive that the entire system will implode”. There is reason to think that “when” has already arrived.

b) But the second non-renewable resource which we are consuming is less obvious – it is the world’s supply of arable soil … that essential ingredient in which we grow all the food for man and beast alike.

c) More than half the earth’s surface (7/10) is covered by water, only 3/10 is dry land.

One of those10ths is too hot, a second is too cold, leaving only 1/10^th of the earth’s surface that is arable for range lands or cropping. How do you feed 7 - heading on 10 - billion people on that?

d) And there are three critical things we’re doing to that arable 10%:

1) - We’re paving it over. My country is no different from yours. 50 years ago Tokyo to Yokhama was a mix of villages, towns and farms. Today it is one endless city … all who live there dependant on someone else, somewhere else, providing them with food. - Japan now imports more than half its food needs.

- China is buying up farmland in Africa which it will crop to feed its people. Not good news for Africa’s already undernourished millions.

- In my country greedy developers work with equally short-sighted politicians to remove ever more land from the Agricultural Reserve.

2) - We’re abusing it through mono-cropping. 150 years ago when my mother’s grand- parents sod-busted the Kansas prairie, the buffalo grass root system went down 16 inches in the ground – holding water, nutrients, everything needed to sustain life. They made their first house out of those sod bricks. Then they and everyone else plowed it up to plant wheat. Then came drought, then winds, and that good fertile soil literally blew away.

- Even today for every bushel of grain the US Midwest produces, it looses two bushels of top soil. Every 20 minutes the equivalent of 50 train-cars full of top soil washes down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico.

3) - We’re killing it with chemicals. In Thailand last month I visited one of our ARI grads who after he inherited his father’s commercially-farmed paddy field, it took him 10 years of composting and vermiculture to reclaim the land sufficiently to grow anything on it.

I - In Kenya I visited an ARI-trained farmer who was doing integrated organic agriculture. All around him his neighbors had bought into the government/fertilizer company mono- cropping program growing corn. The price of corn fell, they could no longer afford the company’s seeds or its fertilizers, and their reliance on pesticides and herbicides had killed many of their soil’s essential micro-organisms.

4) CARING FOR GOD’S CREATION

a) One of the things you learn here at ARI, with its emphasis on organic, integrated agriculture, is the incredible interconnectedness of the whole of nature – of which we humans are but a part.

b) I think we’ve missed the point of that Psalm we read earlier in this service: how we’ve been given dominion over the works of God’s hands. We’ve tended to think that means the world is ours to dominate and control. We’re having to realize that the real issue is our responsibility for being good stewards of God’s creation. We’ve been given our skills and ability to CARE FOR the Creation, not to destroy it.

6) CONCLUSION

a) It’s because ARI believes that, teaches that, lives that, that I and the others who volunteer to be part of this community do so happily and willingly.

- It’s why a staff who work long hours for modest pay, continue to do so faithfully.

- Its why participants from all over Asia, Africa and the Pacific, come each year – leaving behind for 9 months family, loved ones, jobs – working and learning so they can take home skills that will help their own people to better, more fulfilling lives.

b) And its because of that that so many of you come year after year to participate in this Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration and to lend your support to the work of ARI, helping to make this a world in which we can truly “live together”.

c) God be with us in our rejoicing, and may we be with Him in caring for the world he has entrusted into our keeping.

Time to Catch Up

There has been much goings on since my last post. I will try to start posting regularly in order to address things as they happen. As it is for now you will have to suffer with a rough outline of the last week.

The Thanksgiving Celebration went off splendidly with large crowds, great weather, and a lot of food. At final count I was involved in 7 performances including some impromptu country songs to start off the second day. We raised some money for a local library and the profits from food sales are going to help with projects for next years celebration.

As I mentioned earlier we have had several new additions to the farm. Our third sow has had a litter of piglets, apparently there are two more in waiting. I got to see the newest litter when they were only a few hours old. I want one.

Yesterday the Japanese chapter of Second Harvest dropped off some expired food for us to feed to the pigs. Second Harvest is a program started in the US to minimize food waste at restaurants, grocery stores, and farmers markets by collecting the edible left overs and passing them on to less fortunate people who can put them to use on the dinner table. It is a very neat program which I would encourage you to check out.

This weekend we had about 15 Americans at ARI 10 of them were members of the American Friends of ARI (AFARI) which is a support organization based in the states that does a lot for fundraising for ARI, there were two English Teachers and a few volunteers. It was kind of crazy we were almost the majority nationality, second to the Japanese. One of the Americans is a former employee of ARI and is now working with a non-profit in Seattle. We have had some great conversations about non-profits and entrepreneurial management so they can be self-supporting.

I have started reading a book called Small is Beautiful written in the 60's about the effects of our current economic model. I have only read a few chapters but the concepts he discusses seems well thought out and sincere, I might have more about some of those ideas in later posts. I also read a book on American Militarism.

On Wednesday I went to my first Japanese class! It was a lot of information very quickly, but I feel like I can do tis. Once I figure out how to order things to be sent here I think I am going to order Rosetta Stone as a supplement. The native speakers here are also very helpful and work with me in my meager efforts.

The two weeks I have spent here so far have been wonderful. I can't believe all of the activity that has happened. I promise I will update more often. Thank you for following along. Don't forget to leave some love. Peace Love and Godd Food to all.

Mike

Old McDonald

In previous posts I might have made reference to Food-Life Work here at ARI, for foodlife I am assigned to the chicken houses. We have two chicken houses, each with around 200 chickens, and we recently got 200 chicks (minus two that were tragically smooshed in a tragic newspaper accident,) which makes about 598 chickens at ARI. So every morning I am greeted by a face like this: well about 200 faces, and they are all hungry, very hungry. This morning I was in there before the food turning the floor (think compost) and they surrounded me and held me for ransom until the food came. The chickens can be very persuasive.

This weekend is our big Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration and we are all very busy. The HTC is an open house we throw for the community in celebration of this years plentiful food. So we are expecting between 750 and 1000 people to come through each day. All day we have been getting tents ready, cooking food, practicing for our performances, and decorating. There have been lots of new volunteers for the weekend and local community members bringing in food and items to sell. I have now met little old church ladies from Japan and let me tell you, they are the same as the little old church ladies from back home, smiling helpful, burdened with thrift goods and they come en masse.

Tomorrow morning I have a feeling that the top is going to blow off here, it will look like a volcano erupted and we are all going to be running around trying to put on the final touches before the guests arrive. My day will start at 5:30 in the kitchen, someone needs help grinding something and I got to volunteer, as such things go.

On another note, along with the chickens we have two cows and lots of pigs. One of the mama pigs (pictured here) had 15 piglets a few weeks ago, and another mama pig started having babies last night, as far as I know she is done now but I don't know the final count.

So, life is in full swing here and we are rolling along at full tilt. I want to leave you with a few of the thoughts that have been floating through my head, the idea that we are built for work, and only through work can we be truly fulfilled. If there is no toil how then can you appreciate joy? I think at times we feel bored or anxious because our bodies are lacking the satisfaction of work. As I work during the days here I can reflect on the merits of labor. It occurs to me that by growing our food and working this land we are taking part in an inherent act. I try to think about how this could be applied in a normal life back home and can't get beyond the fact that it should be applied back home throughout my life. The gratification I get from working to produce the food we eat is amazing. There is a song here that was written by a volunteer in 1988 I think it speaks well to us, here is an excerpt "Until the day we can feed ourselves, we never will be free." I leave you with those thoughts, do with them what you will. Peace and Love and good good feelings.

Mike

HAHA

Well, this weekend is a big weekend, the annual Harvest Thanksgiving Festival here at ARI. We are spending the entire week getting ready for two days of food and entertainment for the community. We are cleaning the property for an open house, harvesting food and preparing lists for the regional dishes and desserts we will be cooking, and of course rehearsing our singing and dancing for the stage shows. I have been here for 4 days and tonight I was pulled into my fourth act for this weekend. So far I am the vocals for Hotel California, a guitar player for a skit, a dancer in our rendition of Footloose, and an "interactive" curtain holder for a skit. We stayed up until midnight playing guitar in the dorm getting ready for Hotel California, and today we practiced Footloose for at least an hour, I was pulled down there under the impression that we were just going to try it and next thing I know they are talking about stage cues and partners. Such is the life I guess.

I am having a lot of fun. The community here is so welcoming I feel like I have been here for weeks. I am learning some Japanese and hope to go to my first official lesson tomorrow night, it might not be as hard as I initially expected. There is a library in the main building with a surprising collection of books. I met the librarian on Friday and told her that my mom is a librarian and I loved reading. She couldn't believe I love books, who would have thought? Well I checked out a book called Small is Beautiful, a Japanese phrase book, and Addicted to War about our countries militarism. They are proving to be provocative books.

Sunday morning I was woken up at 4:50 and invited to go climb a mountain. I piled into a small car with four others and we drove an hour into Nikko National Park. By 6:15 we were on our way up the trail. As we climbed it was explained to me that we were actually going to climb three peaks that day. It was great, besides being very tired I got to see some amazing views. The area we were in had already started changing colors so the foliage was beautiful. Have you ever noticed how the trees in Japanese gardens always look so manicured? Well, apparently that is how God does things in Japan because everywhere there were these georgeous trees that looked like someone had been tending them for years, it was enough to inspire some magnificent gardens. The third peak we climbed was an active volcano complete with steam vents spewing sulfur into the autumn air. At the top you could very clearly see the 200m (notice the metric system being used here) crater left over from the last eruption. After all the climbing up we rode an air trolley back down the mountain (think James Bond when jaws bites through the cable in Europe.) That day left me very drained, but I have recovered well.

Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers. I am calling it a night. I will keep you posted.

Peace and Love,

Mike

I feel like so much has happened in the last three days that it is overwhelming me, so if I don't put it down now it will never escape the recesses of my mind. I finally made it, I am in Japan!

The travel was long and arduous, I won't bore you all with details but it involved 3 planes, a train, a bus, and a van and totaled almost 24 hours. I arrived in the evening after dinner worn out but excited. The first night was hard because I knew I should sleep but my internal clock was broken, so I stayed up with several of the other guys from my dorm talking and getting to know one another. The next morning I had the option to sleep in until breakfast but I was scared I would not wake up on my own. So, I decided that the best option would be to wake up at 6:30 and work a full day with the rest of the group. The ARI schedul is pretty consistent and follows this pattern:

6:30 Morning Exercises
6:45 Cleaning the buildings
7:00 Food Life Work 1hr
8:15 Breakfast
9:00 Group Meeting
9:30 Morning Activities (read work)
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Afternoon Activities (see above)
4:30 Food Life Work 1hr
6:30 Dinner
9:30 Night Patrol (Community Buildings locked)
repeat

The guys in the dorm usually have an impromptu gathering upstairs talking late into the night with classic rock playing from one of several laptops.

So, my first morning at ARI I was cleaning toilets at 6:45 then feeding chickens at 7:00. It was a great start. However it got better after that. I arrived in time for the Rice Harvest when the whole community comes together to harvest. It was great fun but very tiring. This gave me an opportunity to meet a lot of community members that I might not have met so soon had we all been working under the normal schedule.

I am going to have to cut this short, they are closing up the computer area for the night. I will add more tomorrow. I love you all, have a great day, and don't forget to leave your love in comments, they make my day.


Peace and Love
Mike

And So We Begin

Well folks, the long awaited visa has arrived and is in my possession. Which means I can set a departure date, October 1st. I am talking to the travel agents right now arranging my flight details. I went out and got some important work clothes today and my new camera arrived in the mail this week. It is finally happening and it is kind of scary fast now. My mild mannered meandering has to come to a halt as the pleasant packing and preparations begins. I still haven't finished cleaning my room yet but rest assured that it should be completed before departure.

You haven't left yet?

Nope. I get that question a lot though. It seems like I have been getting ready to go for a while now. The truth is I was getting ready to go for a while, then I kind of zoned out while the paperwork was dragging on, but I am now getting ready to go again.
I just received an email from Mr. Yawata in Japan who has been ushering my paperwork through the system. He told me that my Certificate of Eligibility has been completed and it is in the mail to me. Once I have the Certificate I can take it to the Japanese Consulate in Houston and they will issue me a Visa for Japan. So, this brings me close to a departure date.
In the morning I will be on the phone with the consulate office and our travel agent and I should have an idea of when I will fly to Japan. This is an exciting break in the story and I wanted to share it here with those who suffer through my droughts of communication and actually check what I have to say.
Last week I spent some time in Tennessee visiting Oree. While I was there she took me kayaking on the Ocoee River, this is the one that she guides rafts down and it is incredibly exciting. I made it all the way down without embarrassing anyone and had a great time. The water was huge! There are somewhere around 25 different rapids on the Ocoee ranging from class 3 to class 4 they have names like Table Saw, Diamond Splitter, Double Suck, and Broken Nose. At the end there is a giant wave called the Hell Hole where we stopped to surf for a little while. I had a great time.
That trip has to be the highlight of my summer. I have spent a lot of time traveling around Texas to visit friends, get shots, and go to weddings. I spent a week in Amarillo working at Happy camp. I went to Ft. Worth for a Japanese Encephalitis Vaccine, College Station for a Wedding, Austin for two more shots. During these travels I have ridden 8 different mountain bike trails across the state, visited with some great friends, gone to the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, TX, and seen Austin at least 6 times. I am about done with a car for a little while it will be nice to use trains and my own two feet.
This is all I have for now. Be looking for more updates more frequently as I move into this next life phase. Peace and Love.

That We May Live Together

I have a little bit of information for you here. I warn you it is not much but it has helped me to figure out where I will be located on the island. The main island of Japan is Hanshu. I will be in the Kanto region which also contains Tokyo. There are seven prefectures in Kanto and of these Tochigi is located on the northern end. Inside the Tochigi prefecture is a small city called Nasushiobara. I will be working at the Asian Rural institute on the outskirts of Nasushiobara. I know this is a lot of names but it helped me finally settle where I would be in relation to Tokyo. I found a video on Youtube that shows some of the activities and life at ARI. I hope this offers some more insight.

6/2/08

I arrived in New York yesterday afternoon. As part of our conference they had us find our way to the retreat center using the bus system through the city. The weather was great and I was not pressed for time so I had a nice afternoon traveling through downtown to Staten Island where we are staying.

There are about 25 people here from across the country, varying ages and backgrounds. One of the couples even has a son who lives in Tokyo so I might look him up when I get there. The group has a great mix and we are all clicking very well. It is hard to find a time when we are not laughing.

I spoke with the McConnells today, they are the couple that I will be replacing at ARI. Andy and I talked for almost an hour about their experience. I feel like I have a better grasp on what to expect, very long days. He said it is a great chance to lose weight, even if you don't want to.

6/3/08
We talked about insurance. Insurance and cross cultural communication. The good news is I will be taken care of if something were to happen. This evening we watched Romero. Oscar Romero was an Archbishop in El Salvador in the late 70's through 1979, he got involved in the civil rights movement in that country and was murdered for his convictions. It is an eye-opening and frightening story of the struggle for equality against a power hungry elite. We were informed that it is not a good idea to become martyrs during our YASC service period. I hope you understand.

Summer

It is definitely summer in West Texas now, we broke 100 degrees the other day and it is staying in the nineties for the rest of the week.
I finished at A&M on May 9th which was a lot of fun, that Sunday May 11th I spoke at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in College Station and got a great response. On Tuesday I drove home to Abilene, after a few debacles including a walking stint for gas, I made it in time to meet with the Heavenly Rest Vestry. Wednesday night 3AM found me in the Greyhound Station on my way to Lubbock. I arrived around 8AM and my girlfriend Oree Walkup picked me up at the bus station at which time I went pack to the Walkup homestead and slept for a few hours. That afternoon I got to visit with our bishop for about an hour about my mission and what life had in store for both of us.
Oree and I drove down to Abilene on Friday after a good visit with her family. On Saturday she headed to North Carolina with my sister for their inaugural season at the Nantahala Outdoor Center. Oree is going to be a raft guide while Katie is working in the reservations office.
Since then I have been in Abilene talking with people about my upcoming journey, avoiding packing, and riding my mountain bike at the Buck Creek Trails. I have raised almost half of my required $10,000 mission budget, I will be speaking at Heavenly Rest on Sunday, and I would like to go visit some more of the churches in our Diocese before I leave for the mission conference in New York.
Thank you for your interest, I will be updating more frequently in the coming weeks. I appreciate the support I have gotten and look forward to sharing with you as this journey unfolds.

Progress

Things are moving along here. I have been officially assigned to the Asian Rural Institute (ARI) in central Japan, you can find there website in my links section. It is an ecumenically (multi-faith) run training farm. They teach grass-roots community leaders from Southeast Asia and Africa how to work the land in a sustainable manner and empower their communities. Everyone on the farm participates in the daily chores and "foodwork" and 80% of our food actually comes from our farm. I am really excited about this opportunity it coincides with my current interests and I think it is a healthy and empowering way to work in the world.

My fundraising efforts are making a slow but promising start. I have raised $1500 of my $10,000 missionary budget so far, with appointments to talk to the congregation at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in College Station and Heavenly Rest in Abilene. I hope to make stops at a few smaller churches in Albany and Calvert to extend an opportunity for them to take part in my mission.

This afternoon I am heading down to a little spot on the Brazos River called Hidalgo Falls to do some whitewater playboating in a kayak with a few friends. It is a really neat little bend in the river that drops about 6 feet over a quarter of a mile. When the water is up we can spend hours surfing on the waves.

Thanks for you interest.

EarthVision

Washington, D.C. the Student Conservation Association's 50th Anniversary
I am at a 3 day conference on conservation and the future of the environment. I have been doing a lot of talking and networking with some very exciting people. Here is a taste of what has been happening; I had conversations with several influential leaders in the Park service, networked with an editor from Backpacker Magazine and the President of the SCA about trail protection and the size of the organizations that are working for them, met several leaders in the green park design field, I met a woman who is campaigning for a pumps to parks initiative creating abandoned gas stations into green spaces, I met a good friend of one of my mentors and discussed community gardening, heard a keynote address by a motivational newscaster, heard several professors talk about climate change. Basically I have heard a lot of good things and met some neat people, an had some good conversations. If you are concerned about our future and the state of the environment have faith you are not alone. Talk to someone, talk to me, or even write down your thoughts. I have found some books to check out, Organizing social change, Radical Simplicity, Bury the Chains, as well as a few websites to check out The Sundance Channel, Dartmouth dining and sustainability, live-the-solution.com. And the list goes on. It has been great. I have recently realized how much I enjoy talking to people and sharing ideas, it is amazing how small ideas can blow up. I am going to sign off for now. Look for more soon.

First run

I am nearing the end of my college career. As I wrap up my schoolwork (and start my english class) I look to the future. I have been accepted by the Mission Personnel Office of the Episcopal church as a Young Adult Service Corps (YASC) volunteer. I will spend a year overseas in service, struggling to understand new cultures, learn from new people, and build relationships in God's love.

This week I have started my concerted fund raising efforts. It is a daunting task but God always seems to come through. In a recent conversation I was reminded that God is a God of abundance, we should not worry about the money it will come when it is ready.

Lately I have become extremely interested in sustainability and even more recently gardening or urban agriculture. I have always had an affinity to digging holes and this has manifested itself in new and wonderful ways. In high school I got to work with a paleontology club digging up bones in the desert. Multiple service projects and mission trips have offered a multitude of opportunities. Over the years our church camp has had a mudpit that the willing have dug for the masses. Most recently I have had the opportunity to help work the gardens at St. Thomas Episcopal church and Fr. Bill's house. Looking back now it seems to me that God has been grooming me to dig holes for years I just never realized it until now.

We have not gotten an official confirmation yet but word on the street is that I will be working with a large sustainable organic teaching farm called ARI located in Japan. ARI brings leaders from third world communities in for 6 months to a year and teaches them how to make sustainable agriculture work in their areas. When they leave they have a strong knowledge base, resources, and understanding to go home and spread the knowledge. ARI is an ecumenical community that has hosted 2 YASC volunteers in the past.

Going into this program I had thought that I would be placed in South America or Africa doing eco tourism or digging wells, but during my interview we started talking about Japan. Now I don't know about you but that was not the first thing I thought of when I thought of mission. But the more I found out about the program and thought about it I realized that it was the perfect fit. Today I am excited about the prospect and what God has in store for me. I hope you will join me in my mission through prayer and encouragement. Thank you for taking the time to read my posts.