Map of this department of Honduras, originally from English Wikipedia. See permalink for more details. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:HondurasGraciasaDios.png&oldid=129060977 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My wife decided to write another newsletter to inform those who generously support our work in La Mosquitia of all the wonderful activities we have been involving ourselves with. I thought I’d post it here too, so those of you who read my blog can enjoy it.  For the record, there actually ARE two ways to spell La Mosquitia.  Is it any wonder my wife doesn’t use the same spelling I do?

Dear Friends,

Greetings once again from La Moskitia! It has been a long time since I have written you. So much is happening here and I find it hard to do justice in such a short format. Our ministry here is nothing short of miraculous, in my opinion, because I know what God had to work with, (and believe me when I say it was not much). The longer I serve here as a missionary, and see Christ’s mercy in my life, and the lives of those around me the more I am amazed at what he has done.
As a little girl of about eight or so, I would have dreams of children coming to my great-granny’s door at night, and me opening it up, and letting them in. These children were dirty, and hungry, and very poor. I would bathe them in these dreams and feed them and care for them. Little did I know that God was putting His desires in my heart, and it wouldn’t be until I was in my twenties that these desires would come to pass.
I have always been the type of person who likes to live life outside the box. After my year in Teen Challenge I came out with a new found knowledge of who Jesus Christ is, what He did for me, and what He expects of me. To whom much is given, much is required. I had a deep burden to share the love of Christ with others who perhaps have never known, like I had discovered, what God’s purpose was for them.
I first came to Honduras on a short term mission trip, for a couple of weeks, and knew with all my heart that I wanted to come back. I found it hard to believe the contrast a couple of hours in an airplane could make. It quickly became very apparent to me all that I had taken for granted, food, clean water, medicine, clothes and shoes, once I had seen children who were starving, and sick, naked, and dirty. It started with just one child at a time; one bath, one bottle, one teaspoon of medicine. I did not think that what I was doing was making much of a difference, but that one smile, seeing that one child gain weight and laugh, and run and play made all the difference for me.
I tried to go back to the states and live and be content. I was now married, with two small boys. All reason told me to stay and work in the states and forget about going back to a remote place in Honduras. Forget about the children starving, the disease, and the hopelessness. I would have a hard time forgetting when we went to functions where the leftovers were thrown away, or when I saw the amount of money people would spend to get a little pleasure in life, knowing how much that same amount of money could have done to change a small child’s world. I had a hard time going to Wal-Mart and seeing people so obese that they could no longer walk down the aisles and had to use electric carts to shop while remembering that there were three year old children who had never walked because their skinny, malnourished little legs couldn’t support their weight. I had a hard time deciphering whether we were blessed in the USA or just selfish, or both?
My life felt so small, and meaningless when I was back home, and i began to ask myself “is this what life is all about?” Roger and I were given the opportunity to go back to Honduras and live as a family in 1997, and serve on the mission field. Bubu was two years old, and Christian was five months old. Looking back at how we started out I am amazed that we survived! I see pictures of our old home, and read old letters, and you could say, starting out, we did not have a pot to piss in, literally! It was a few months before Roger could get our bathroom working as he had to hand dig the septic, and build us a bathroom! However I remember lying on the floor, praying and weeping because of how blessed we were!
I would visit the villagers in their homes seeing how they were surviving one day to the next and realize that we were actually rich in comparison, knowing our faith was paltry when measured by the faith it took these people to survive one day to the next. It amazed me that they could be happy, and laugh and sing when they had nothing; NOTHING!
Later, after moving to Puerto Lempira, we rented our hot little cement gray house for the first five years, me volunteering in the local government hospital the only one in this entire state. Support started to come in, and we were able to feed more children, and send them out for medical care, and provide education to them. We were attending a local church that supported our ministry with their prayers and encouragement.
Our daughter was born here, Victoria Jo Engle, who has dual citizenship. We watched her grow along with other babies we took in to our home. She was not always pleased with these other babies who fought for our attention. One day right after she learned to walk she put one little girl in a yellow Tonka truck, and walked her in the rain down the road and left her there. When we realized the baby was missing we asked Victoria where she was, and she looked at us knowingly and said “baby apu” which is Miskito for ‘no more baby’!
I was happy with what we were doing, but it felt so small in comparison to the need around us. We were given the opportunity to merge with Tom Brian, a dentist from Allen, Texas and his ministry, Send Hope. Our vision was to build a home for children who were handicapped or facing other medical difficulties and give them treatment and education while discipling them.
House of Hope opened in 2005 and boy did it change our lives! Since then I am no longer called by my name, but the people refer to me as Mama-Miriki (American Mother). What a privilege it is to be called somebody’s mother when you’re not really their mother, much less a whole town! It is very humbling to have people twice your age call you their mother. So many people here have so many needs, and when you do the littlest thing to try and help them, be it food, or medical care, that is how they show you their gratitude.
The home quickly filled up, not only with handicapped children, but with children who were orphaned, abused, neglected, and abandoned. We offered housing to malnourished children who were literally dying of hunger, and when they had recuperated we sent them home and kept them in our outpatient care where the parents who were able, volunteered a few hours to receive food to feed their children. We have 162 children in that program to date.
One family of nine already had two children die from starvation, and three more were dying. We housed the three, and brought them back up to their normal weight, (the little boy, Nicolas, is actually overweight now), and we were able to send two of the three home, with the hopes of sending the last little girl home soon. They are all doing very well.
We have provided hundreds of surgeries, both orthopedic and plastic, to children who otherwise would have had to live life with severe deformities. We have also sent other children to hospitals for surgeries that have saved their lives.
Young American volunteers come to work for us, and help us run House of Hope, and help with the care of the children. They are hard workers who are very unselfish, and I am so blessed to be able to share the vision with them and also by their contributions. Teams of Americans also come on shorter trips to work with us and bring us supplies for the children and the ministry. They contribute in many ways. Some teach, others do housework, maintenance, baby-sit, etc. These groups bring us encouragement as well as support.
As the ministry grew, I began to get more engaged with the handicapped lobster divers that are in wheelchairs. Send Hope ships wheelchairs, crutches, adult diapers, and carts that they can use their hands to propel forward. Getting to know some of these men who have families they cannot support and even some whose families have abandoned them saddened me. I started visiting more with them and noticed that they do work with their hands repairing shoes, sewing, and making jewelry.
So with a little patience, and God touching the Mayor’s heart to give us our little storefront rent-free, we now have Artesanias Esperanza which means Hope Arts and Crafts in Spanish. After almost two years, it is still the only arts and crafts store in this state and it is the only place artists can sell their wares on consignment. I will never forget the night when a group of American visitors bought about $250.00 worth of rolled paper bead necklaces after we first started making them. I drove at night because i was so excited to give the divers their first profit and when I arrived, there they were bent over a table in the candlelight in their wheelchairs rolling more beads. They were so happy to get that money.
Maybe a year and a half ago a neighbor of mine stopped me to ask me for her help in fixing her house up. She complained that the rain was coming in, and wetting the children, and that the thieves kept breaking in to steal what little she did have while they were sleeping. I felt so badly for her, but I really did not have finances to help her fix that house up. It was nothing more than a little shack with cardboard, plastic and misshapen pieces of wood for walls.
Roger and I were trying to finish our own house, which was taking longer than we had counted on, and we did not have any spare money to be able to put toward even a need as great as hers. I prayed and thought to myself “why does God let me see these needs if I am not going to be able to meet them?” I didn’t realize that all He wanted me to do was ask Him and wait patiently to see how He was going to work. Now I know as sad as I was at this family’s plight, God was letting me feel just a taste of what he must feel all the time when he looks down, and he sees his children suffering.
Later that year Habitat for Humanity decided to come to La Moskitia and work with Send Hope. I became involved in that project too. Now my job is to look for poor families who qualify for homes and help them prepare the necessary documents so they can receive a safe, sturdy home. Guess who got a new home; my little neighbor friend, and her twelve children! I was a little dismayed at how little the houses were. To me they were no bigger than a large room, but when one family saw it finished they remarked how big it was! It truly is all in your point of view!
God continues to stretch me, and open my eyes to the raw human need here. Sometimes I do not know how He plans on ever using me to meet such needs, but He has a plan even when i do not. I started visiting the prison here years ago when I was in nursing school. I befriended some of the prisoners, and continued to go back. Sometimes I will do a bible lesson, or share a testimony but most of the time I just go to visit and bring them things they can use. Twelve to fourteen men are locked in a room that can’t be more than 10’x12’ (a normal bedroom in an American house) from 4:00 PM until dawn. It is hot with no air conditioning; and two to four men have to sleep on the cold concrete floor with no mattress. Needless to say, it is over-packed. The kitchen consists of a black, smoke-charred room with an open fire, a few large pots and large hand-carved wooden spoons to cook with.
I have a burden for these men who have been imprisoned both in body and in spirit because of sin. I imagine my own brothers or sons there, and it would break my heart. Their crime has already received its punishment so I try to bring them some good news, that God loves them and has not forgotten about them. Several years ago we were able to provide a new well that they can drink from and we have also been able to help with new mattresses. We are shortly going to be receiving some nylon twine they can use to make fishing nets that can be sold for a nice profit. Among other things, we plan on using this profit to help the prison improve its conditions so that the men have more of their basic needs met. In our minds we have already begun calling the project Fishers of Men and those who are given the privilege to work will also need to attend a weekly bible study Roger is starting this month. Please keep this in your prayers; they will be needed, trust me!
Roger and I want to say thank you for your financial support as well as your prayers. None of this could ever have happened for us or the people we are here serving if it were not for your support. Truly you are our partners, and we pray you will share in our rewards as well. An additional word of gratitude goes out to those who have given so generously toward the finishing of our house. It isn’t quite finished yet, but we are living in it and we thank you from the bottoms of our hearts.
Blessings to you all,
Roger and Katrina Engle (and the Engle kids!)

Related articles

• I Can’t Turn Away! (frontlinedispatch.wordpress.com)
• Honduras murders: Where life is cheap and funerals are free (oladapokolawole.com)

Image via Wikipedia

I’m twisted inside at what’s happening here.

We gave in to the mob though their cause was unclear.

As they’d hoped, we averted our eyes and went on

keeping time to the sound of their merciless drum.

Now we’re over that cliff.  Who knew lemmings could fly?

Oh, they can’t?  I guess that’s why we’re so contrite.

We hit bottom and turned to each other in hope.

Then we realize we’d given them all of our rope

thinking they’d make a noose for themselves.  They hung us

out to dry, on a limb, on a hook, or a truss.

Now here we swing while they dance down below

and they’ve brought us their broken ideals in tow.

“What shall we do?” we all scream in despair

as we dangle here just like a brace of march hares.

Well, we probably should learn to cooperate,

get ourselves off of this hook post-haste.

But we just throw blame.  You blame me.  I blame you.

We keep fighting.  There’s nothing at all we can do.

So the marchers go, pockets full of change.

“Your objections are bigoted” they will explain.

What’s the answer?  We know we should all just consent

to the plan of our forefathers’ first document.

Constitutional law, as you know does not fail

unless the balances tell you the check’s in the mail.

Related articles

• A Revolutionary Tale… (secretsi.wordpress.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Some of you know I’m a missionary in Honduras.  From time to time we get visitors from the United States and other countries.  They come here to help the people here with whatever skills they have available.  Some are engineers or know how to build stuff and they come to build for people here.  Some are doctors and they come to offer free medical treatment to people here who can’t afford it otherwise.  They all have giving hearts and want to share their lives with people less fortunate than themselves.  On occasion, however, they are challenged by family members or friends, acquaintances or neighbors about the fact that there are poor people in the United States that could use their help, so why go to a foreign country to do what it is they feel the need or responsibility to do?

Recently I met a dentist who came here to offer free dental care to people suffering with rotten teeth and such.   There is no local dentist here, so it is a very much needed service.  While eating at a dinner in honor of the team on their last night here, I sat and talked with him and he told me the following story.  The story poignantly stressed the difference in the needs here and the needs there, in the United States.  I asked him to write it down and send it to me when he got back home and he agreed to do so.  So this is kind of a guest post by my new friend, Thomas Gelhaus, D.D.S.

Who Are the Poor?
Written by: Tom Gelhaus, D.D.S.

For the past 20 years I’ve been spending my ‘vacations’ in South and Central America. They’re working vacations….fixing teeth on people who otherwise don’t have access to care. Occassionally I’ve been asked why I do that….why don’t I just help the poor in the United States. (actually I do even more charity work in my own office in north central Wisconsin)

I struggle a bit in answering that question. It really isn’t easy to understand without visiting ‘3rd World‘ countries in person. So I try to explain it in this way…..

My wife and all 4 of my children have accompanied me on many trips. They know first hand what I do and what conditions I encounter. My kids also know about the less fortunate in the United States since they’ve participated in humanitarian efforts here as well.

When President Clinton was in office he made the effort to visit the 3 poorest areas of the United States. Two were Pine Ridge in South Dakota and the Appalachia  area. Coincidentally I had children working in both areas that year.

When my daughter returned from her spring break humanitarian mission in Appalachia,  I asked her ‘how did it compare to Guatemala?’, where she had been with me twice before. Her answer was that she helped a family who needed house repairs but she said the poor in the U.S. would be among the rich in Guatemala. They had housing (not fancy) but also clean water, food, education, enough clothes etc.….which the Guatemalans did not have. The average person in the world doesn’t have clean water or many of the things we take for granted. In fact the average person in the U.S. is in the top 1 to 3 % of the worlds wealthiest.

We think we are middle class but actually are richer than 99% of others on earth.

I think of the ‘occupy Wallstreet’ movement. Those are really the top 1% doing the protesting….the rich protesting the richer.

I wish I could take everyone in the U.S. with me on a trip…..

Related articles

• Dentist Salary (celebritynetworth.com)
• Country Profiles: Guatemala (socyberty.com)
• Governor’s Office of Appalachia, Connect Ohio, & Chesapeake Energy Launch Connect Appalachia Broadband Initiative (prweb.com)
• 3 Reasons to Consider Medical Tourism (money.usnews.com)
• $5 Gas is High, But the Price is Much Higher in Many Foreign Countries (ibtimes.com)
• Illegal in America (ucucc.wordpress.com)
• The Takeaway: Appalachia’s Rapidly Rising Aging Population (aarp.org)
• “Stranger with a Camera”: Death and Documentaries in Appalachia (and What It Has to Do with Africa) via John Edwin Mason (documentingappalachia.wordpress.com)
• Guatemala pres: Drug war requires more than arms (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• You want data on inequality? (snohomishobserver.com)
• Ferran Adrià Disapproves of Your Coffee (thedailymeal.com)
• Coal Corporations: Destroying Appalachia (pineconemary.wordpress.com)
• The Ideology, Education, And Region Of The Top One Percent (thinkprogress.org)
• Foreign Aid and Violence in Honduras – Real Solutions (trutherator.wordpress.com)
• Letters: U.S. Policy on Honduras: Views of Two Diplomats (nytimes.com)

There’s no prize involved, but it’s nice to know that I’m one of the top three, right?   Enjoy the competition and the finalists’ stories.  I liked all three, but I was partial to one.

Related articles

• Story Competition (misadventuresinlamosquitia.wordpress.com)
• Do you want to read a story…? (conversationalwordsmith.wordpress.com)
• Flash Fiction: Three Brothers – An Unfortunate Tale (fantasyinmotion.wordpress.com)
• Friendly Encouragement (misadventuresinlamosquitia.wordpress.com)
• Flash Fiction Flash Fiction And More Flash Fiction (pittsburghflashfictiongazette.com)
• 2012 Flash Fiction Competition on Book It! (barnsleywriters.wordpress.com)
• Flash Fiction – Harder than it Looks (madhattermiscellany.wordpress.com)
• Enter the Max McTrue Flash Fiction Contest (examiner.com)
• An evening with Rufus DeWolfe (penntonic.wordpress.com)
• Friday Flash – “Pilgrimage” (kbnelson.wordpress.com)
• A Meditation On Writing Flash Fiction (pittsburghflashfictiongazette.com)
• Amazing answer to our Prayers for Wendy and Bob (freedomborn.wordpress.com)
• Giveaway Reminder (inspiredbyelizabeth.wordpress.com)
• Wordless Wednesday…It’s Leap Year! (nolagirlatheart.wordpress.com)
• Final Reflections for the Week (twc301garcia.wordpress.com)
• More calling of Awesome, come in Awesome… (agencyg1r1.wordpress.com)

So I figured it would be helpful for new bloggers if they new how to post a blogroll on their sidebar.  Here goes nothing:

How To Add A Blogroll To Your Blog

The first thing you have to do if you want to post a blogroll in your sidebar is, well…  you have to have a sidebar.  It took me a while to figure out why I didn’t have a sidebar, but in essence it was simply the theme WordPress had automatically started me with.  It had a place at the bottom of the page and it had left right and center settings for anything I wanted to put there, but no sidebar.  So you have to change your theme.

This may not be too difficult if you’re new to WordPress, because you can just pick one you like, making sure it has a sidebar, and then edit any colored fonts you may have used in posts.  For me it was difficult because I had almost 50 posts that I would potentially have to edit for colored fonts if I chose the wrong theme.  (There were also quite a few frilly themes that had flowers and pieces of candy and such for place markers, which being a guy I decided I didn’t need.)  I went through all the potential blog themes and decided on this nice Choco theme that sort of reminds me of a field notebook or something.  It’s manly enough to bolster my “macho-ness” and still has a bit of creative flair to it.

After you’ve decided on a theme and set up all the options you want for it you’ll be able to add a blogroll.  You’ll still have trouble if you go to your Dash Board and look for it, though.  There is no heading in the left column menu for “Blogroll”.  What you want to do first is make a list of all the people or websites you want to include in your blogroll.  Consider it your personal hall of fame.  This is where you give honor to all your blogging or webmaster heroes.  Don’t just include every website in your browser’s history.  This is a coveted place of honor that people are constantly attempting to acquire.  Be selective.  My guideline is that unless someone appears in my Top Recent Commenters section in the Stats page for my blog, they don’t get put on the blogroll.  (There may be a couple of exceptions to this, but that’s my norm.)  Most bloggers seem to use a personal rule of only including blogs in their blogroll that will inspire their readers or compliment the content of their own blog.  I think that’s a good rule too.

Once you have a list compiled with not only the URL‘s, but also the name that appears at the top of the page when you navigate there, Go to the Dash Board of your blog and click on the Links/Add New option.  It looks like this:

Add New Link (to your blogroll)

It’s going to take you to a form that you’ll have to fill out, but it’s not as complicated as it looks.   You can actually fill in everything on the form for each link you add, but at this point I’m only going to show you what you need to know to have that blogroll showing in your sidebar.

Now, The first thing you’ll want to do is add the name of the blog and then the URL goes in the next field right underneath the name.  The name should appear the same as it does on the website you’re referring the reader to, but if you want to be funny or play a practical joke or if you’re trying to help a campaign to boost search results for that website, you can change that name to whatever is appropriate for your purposes.

One last thing to do before you can add this link and move on to the next.  You need to scroll down to the Categories box and choose categories for your link.  In this case you can choose only the Blogroll category.  Add more categories if you feel they are appropriate, but Blogroll is the only one you’ll need now.

Okay, the link is ready to add to your blogroll.  Go to the top, right-hand corner of your screen and make sure the check box “Keep this link private” is not filled in and then click the “Add Link”  button.  The screen will reload and you’ll have the opportunity to add all the links in your list in one session without having to keep navigating back to the Add New Link page.  Once you’ve added all the links you want on your blogroll you can then post it so the world can see it.

Now To Post Your Blogroll

Your blogroll is a widget, so in order to post it you’ll have to go to the widgets page under Appearance on the menu to the left side of your dashboard.   Just click on the link and it will take you to a wonderful page where you can pimp your blog out really nicely.  There are widgets for calendars, images, videos and more, but today we only need one, the one titled “Links”.

Before you do anything else, look at the right side of your screen and you’ll see a layout of your sidebar.  If you already have other widgets on there, figure out where you want your blogroll to appear in the order.  Count from the top and figure out the numbered position it will have.  This matters in a minute, so remember it or write it down.

The widget we want for posting you blogroll is in the middle of the page when you first arrive there.  You don’t need to scroll down much. It simply says “Links”, which is why I had so much trouble figuring out how to do this.  (I should add that underneath it is a description, that I originally didn’t see, that tells you this is where your blogroll is going to be.) When you find that, click “Add”, which is going to open a widget configuration screen for you.

Okay, you’ll need to select Blogroll for your first field and then you can select/deselect the other options as you see fit.  The second field allows you to choose the sorting parameters for your blogroll, determining which URL appears at the top, etc…  The bottom box is for you to select how many links you want to show.  This only matters when your blogroll gets big and you don’t want to fill your sidebar with it.  Still, it’s nice to know how to decrease the size when you need to.  Once you’ve posted this widget you can always go to the widgets screen and select it from the sidebar and edit whatever settings you want.

This is below the  first box and it determines where your blogroll appears.  If you have more than one sidebar, you can decide which one to put it in.  Since I only have one, it was a no-brainer.  Once you’ve selected which sidebar you want it on, select the numbered position I told you to remember from the widget screen.  Then click on “Save Widget”  Congratulations!  You now have a widget on your sidebar!  Go to your main blog page and admire it.

I hope this helped you.  Cheers until next time!

Related articles

• Meta-MetaBlog: Goedel’s Blog (G) (a little puzzle) (errorstatistics.com)
• My Blogroll (misadventuresinlamosquitia.wordpress.com)
• Using Blogrolls to Expand your Link Prospecting Lists (distilled.net)
• How do you decide which WordPress theme to use? (debsanswers.wordpress.com)
• NaBloPoMo March 2012 Blogroll (blogher.com)
• New Blogs Added to the Blogroll (eastasiablog.wordpress.com)
• Site Update: Further update to Testimonials (thenakedlistener.wordpress.com)
• More people for the blogroll (cosytravels.wordpress.com)
• [Blogosphere] Blog-rolling! (geeky-guide.com)
• Your Topical Blogs… so far! (sjsujmcmcom63.wordpress.com)
• Changes to the Blogroll (panhandleprep.wordpress.com)
• My oddly famous blogroll widget (playervsdeveloper.blogspot.com)
• Latest blogroll additions (flyfreshandyoung.wordpress.com)
• Additions to the blogroll (navigatingcyberloss.wordpress.com)
• Updates to the extended blogroll (weightmaven.org)
• check my blogroll… (lifebegins45.wordpress.com)

I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately, as some of you already know, discouragement has reared its ugly head in my life.  I’ve been so busy with painting and construction work that it has been nearly impossible to do anything towards my WIP or my blog.  Thanks to a few of my friends who comment regularly here, I’ve had a better outlook about it for the past couple days.

I know I should schedule myself to write a little each day, but schedules are not my best friends.  I’m the guy who never sticks to a schedule and so I avoid making them.  I even made a daily routine “guideline” once and titled it exactly that, because I was asked to write a schedule.  It looked like a schedule and even had times on it, but it wasn’t one because I had titled it something else.  I still didn’t stick to it.

You see, to me writing is a passion thing.  It’s something I have to be in the mood to do or it ends up just being mediocre.  So, when I have a ton of other stuff to do and can’t just drop it all to go write when my fickle muses come to flirt, I don’t get much writing done.

What puts you in the doldrums?  What discourages you?  Is it external distractions of life or is it some dark psychological stimuli that gets to you once in a while?  Most importantly, what’s your muse?  What gets your creative juices flowing?   What makes you feel as though you could write for a week without stopping?

Related articles

• Far From a Finished Draft (lizakane.me)

Image via Wikipedia

I owe the inspiration for tonight’s blog post to a fellow blogger, Ellie Mack.  She gave me some encouragement do to my somewhat piteous post last night and It inspired me to write about how friends can sometimes help us to pull up our bootstraps and get back to it.

Have you ever felt like you just had so many ideas spinning through your head and yet couldn’t get them written?  That’s how I feel now.  I have three great ideas for novels that two of the three are no more than a page of notes each, right now.  I also have a lot of ideas about how I want to improve this blog by organizing it better, enhancing the EOS quality of it and writing more posts about writing and fewer posts about the random junk I originally started throwing on here in my new blogger zeal.  I also have a few ideas about writing articles for e-zines and some poems I need to write.  I love writing flash fiction too, but that’s just for fun and practice.

As if all that weren’t enough to be roiling around in my cranial cavity, I just received a shipment of 20 gallons of paint and need to paint my house.  My brother-in-law is going to be visiting with his family in two weeks and I want the place to really shine when he gets here.  (He’s a retired Colonel and my wife is always eager to bless him with good impressions of how we’re doing.)

I have a lot on my plate, but all I can think about is writing my first novel.  It’s a great idea for a novel, too.  My wife literally dreamed it up.  She does that.  She dreams full plots with a beginning, a middle and an end.  (I read somewhere that Stephen King dreamed the plots for some of his best novels.)  The only thing she doesn’t always have is a good twist at the end, but we are both very imaginative, so we can develop that as we go.  I think I have the twist I want for this one, anyway.

So I let my blog stagnate for two weeks and now I’m feeling guilty.  Here I am trying to establish an online presence so that everyone will possibly look forward to reading my work when I produce it and then I leave everyone in the lurch for two whole weeks?  Not acceptable.  But Ellie cheered me right up!  So I decided to write about the power of encouragement.

It’s not just some kind words you throw out there and forget about.  Real encouragement comes from the heart of one person and lifts up the heart of another.  There are so many things we can say to one another and yet most of us usually don’t choose encouraging words.  If you don’t agree, look at the comment section of any online news site.   You’ll most likely see that about seventy-five percent of the comments are negative.

I once heard the statement that “life is pain and anyone who tells you different is either lying or selling something.” I don’t think it has to be that way.  Our words have power and they produce results.  Just think what a different place the world would be if each of us made a choice to encourage at least one person every day.

I thank God daily for a wife who encourages me to write.  I am also thankful for the encouragement of friends like Alex and Laura.  They are friends of mine who never seem to have anything negative to say to me or about me.  Now believe me, if they wanted to find negative things to say about me they certainly could, but they don’t.  You see?  That’s what makes a difference in people’s lives.  In fact, they and my wife were the main ones encouraging me to publish The Lost Flip Flop and The Honeybee Fiasco, my two short stories, published on Amazon.com.  Another is coming soon and I feel so much better now that I’m doing something with my writing talent.

Encourage someone today and see how much better you feel too.  Trust me, you won’t be sorry you did so.

Related articles

• My Blog is in the Doldrums (misadventuresinlamosquitia.wordpress.com)
• Please pass the tissues emotional writing happening here. (usaukwoods.wordpress.com)
• Flash Fiction (digiteacher.wordpress.com)
• Why I Blog: 5 Real Good Reasons (fluffandbrasstacks.wordpress.com)
• A Meditation On Writing Flash Fiction (pittsburghflashfictiongazette.com)
• A blogger’s mantra… (lethoperise.wordpress.com)
• Timelines and Tools (causticunderground.wordpress.com)
• Commenting: A Followup (theaberrantpen.wordpress.com)
• Friday Flash – “Change of Plans” (kbnelson.wordpress.com)
• Flash Fiction February: A Pile of Prompts (unsanityfiles.wordpress.com)
• A Defining Moment (thewriternubbin.wordpress.com)
• There’s Not a Speck of Blogging Advice in this Post (So Why Read it?) (awritersquery.wordpress.com)
• Writing Novels & An Autobiography (bone33.wordpress.com)
• Confessions of a Bloggerholic (fatimanaveed.wordpress.com)
• Flash Fiction: Three Brothers – An Unfortunate Tale (fantasyinmotion.wordpress.com)
• Dumbed Down Blogging: Yes or No? (fluffandbrasstacks.wordpress.com)
• CPR for the Soul (makeitplainontablets.wordpress.com)
• 7 Powerful Ways to End Your Next Blog Post (problogger.net)
• Words of Encouragement (gratefulconvert.com)
• Friend me, Follow me, Like me or don’t the choice is always yours (mauriciopolack.wordpress.com)

Well, I have been very busy lately with building projects and writing my novel and have basically neglected my blog.  I do apologize to those of you who look forward to hearing from me daily.  I’ll try to do a better job of keeping the blog current.  Lately it’s been too much like work and I hate rowing.

I had an idea this past week that I am hoping you will all respond to and maybe we can work together to get the momentum going again.  Here’s the idea.  Let’s make a list of all the different writing challenges and prompts we know of.  It doesn’t matter if it’s poetry or prose, short or long.  I’m interested in hearing about your favorite weekly or monthly writing challenges.  I like flash fiction and poetry, but feel free to stretch our imaginations.  If you know about a writing challenge, let’s hear about it here.  (10 extra points if it’s on a WordPress blog)

List

100WCGU is a 100 word challenge for grown ups based on the one for schools.  It is held weekly.  There is a text prompt of some type given.

Related articles

• Video: Fear of Men, “Doldrums” (thefader.com)
• Writing in the doldrums (advancedreportingspring12.wordpress.com)
• Doldrums :: Careful Now (gorillavsbear.net)
• Adrift at Sea on HMS Doldrums (k8edid.wordpress.com)
• VIDEO: Camper’s Team New Zealand, Week 1 Leg 1 in review, Volvo Ocean Race (3news.co.nz)
• Doldrums (peoplesadvocacycouncil.wordpress.com)
• Week Two-Three: Doldrums Already? (indigospider.wordpress.com)
• Doldrums: It’s Not a Place; It’s a State of Mind (snoringdogstudio.wordpress.com)
• Winter Doldrums (mikevictorinophotography.wordpress.com)

Reblogged from The Velociwritetor:

I have had a personal love affair with thesauruses — yes, its an acceptable plural form of that word besides “thesauri,” which sounds weirder. It all started when my godfather gave me a scrabble set. Along with the set, he gave me a thesaurus. With the weird, dinosaur-sounding name, my curiosity got the better of me, so I took the hardbound book and read it.

Read more… 635 more words

I'm willing to follow along and take part in the Metaphosaurus project. How about you? I think this is actually a worthy idea for a new type of reference for writers of all types.

~1 FOR THIS PLENIPOTENTIARY-JUDGE: David-Wynn: Miller’s-KNOWLEDGE OF THESE CORRECT-SENTENCE-STRUCTURES-COMMUNICATION-PARSE-SYNTAX-GRAMMAR=(C.-S.-S.-C.-P.-S.-G.) IS WITH THE CLAIMS BY THE QUANTUM-PARSE-SYNTAX-GRAMMAR-NOW-TIME-WRITTEN-COMMUNICATION-FACTS AS THE DOCUMENT-CLOSED-CONTRACT-DUTY-FEDERAL-JUDGE-AUTHORITY: TITLE~42: D.-C.-C.-S.-~1986 WITH THE KNOWLEDGE OF A FRAUD-SYNTAX-GRAMMAR-CONFESSION AND WITH AN AUTHORITY OF THE STOPPING AND: CORRECTING.

I remember looking for websites that could tell me how to get my writing better noticed and I ended up reading an article about some guy who threatened to “arrest” the mayor of his town.  Somehow I found this website, which appears to be linked to the first nut-job in some way.

Apparently there’s some kind of movement called Sovereign Citizens that somehow or other have reasoned it out that they are not subject to the laws of our country.  This fella, David Wynn Miller must be some kind of leader of these Sovereign Citizens, but it’s hard to tell because his whole website reads like the above excerpt.

I used to make up new languages with my cousins every summer when I was a kid.  We would mix around letters in the alphabet or make up new words to mean the ones we already knew.  It was fun, but we were kids.  I wonder if this is some sort of schizoid fantasy reminiscent of his home-made languages from his childhood.