As In a Mirror

Whew! My brother and good friend, The Brick Buster, is a builder, musician, writer, ETC.! He has recently posted a STORY CHALLENGE! If you enter, you write a story on a topic of your choice (length of choice, too!) Wow. Over the years, I have made up some very querky CORNY ones akin to the yarns the mountain men of old would tell. I have also written the scripts and directed some videos me and my siblings have made. My mother has posted some such videos here. Funny thing is, a long time ago I thought of writing something akin to a novel or screenplay, with a plot something like this:

Four teenagers are on a missions trip on a tributary on the Amazon river; the main objective is medical, like maybe there was some sort of disaster there recently. While there, they discover a lot about the jungle, the people, and missions history. Just as things are becoming normal and scheduled, the kids meet a native from an unknown village, who brings in a small boy with a serious eye problem. Then during procedures, the group is surprised to find that this Indian, Juao, speaks English!

Upon inquiring Juao, the teenagers find a clue to a long time mystery of a missionary who disappeared during extremely violent guerilla days many years prior. Could she be alive? Unable to resist further investigation, the teenagers set out with Juao, determined to get answers, and hopefully solve the mystery that has baffled missionaries and detectives. But what they will discover is far more than they could have imagined.

It is supposed to be a mystery story, that focuses on the worldwide church and their purpose and the ways they accomplish it, but mostly on these questions: Is everyone called to be a missionary? How do you evangelize a foreign people? How do you know when to leap into dangerous territory? Are indigenous peoples capable of handling not only the gospel, but medicine, surgery, hospitals, literature, technology? How do we live every day with the purpose to make Jesus known? How do we know when to move on, or to stop when we are not getting through? What about when tragedy strikes, and everyone is watching you? And most of all, what is it that drives a man to give up all that is dear to him to live with danger and displeasure as a reality?

Now this is a BIG project, especially considering it is fiction. And that I am also working on a RESEARCH PAPER!! That is right, ladies and gentlemen, so I will hereby bid thee farewell that I might commence to make sufficient progress in this undertaking.

OH! But first, you gotta tell me what you think about the story. And pay the Brick Buster a visit, would ya?