Just a little food for thought

I am a serial procrastinator. I admit it...maybe with this admission I can get a sense of closure and begin the healing and changing process. lol please who am I kidding, not myself. I will try and update more (yup, there's no saving me, I am already gone). Work is kicking my butt and giving me sleepless sunday nights. Every sunday I turn into an insomniac, I am so scared of what monday can bring. Oh well, I do not want to dwell on work now. I still need to conclude my personal testimony but for now to explain it better I have something I would like to share with you guys. I found it on this site called truthorficiton.com. If you have never been its where you go if you want to verify all the chain mail you ever received and read astounded at the miracle, beauty or craziness of the story. It's a very useful and inspiring site, they have the chain mail, e- rumour whatever it is in its original version (as in how it was circulated). If it's false they'll tell you the extent of their investigations, if it's true they'll put the source as well as the original story and if it can't be verified well they'll tell you that also. Some of them have hilarious taglines, the funniest tagline is one from our very own Nigeria (under the religous/spiritual category). So here's a story I got from there...all hundred percent true (well according to them anyway). It seems pretty long so I will post in two parts.

The Son of a Slain Missionary Finds Redemption in Timbuktu-Truth!

Summary of the eRumor:
A missionary pilot whose father was martyred for his faith finds himself in jeopardy at what feels like the end of the world. He has a chance encounter with a man whose own faith was powerfully affected by his father's death.

The Truth:
TruthOrFiction.com has had a lot of inquiries about whether this is a true story of inspirational fiction. It is a real story from the pen of Stephen Saint, the missionary pilot son of pioneer missionary pilot Nate Saint. Nate was one of five missionaries killed in Ecuador in the 1950's by stone age Indians they were trying to reach. It became one of the most famous missionary events of the century. Nate Saint's death occurred when Stephen was a child, and in this candid article, he talks about the question that had lingered in his mind of why did his dad have to die? In part, he gets the answer in a remote corner of the earth.

A real example of the eRumor as it has appeared on the Internet:
For years, I'd thought Timbuktu was just a made-up name for "the ends of the
earth." When I found out it was a real place in Africa, I developed an
inexplicable fasci-nation for it. It was in 1986 on a fact-finding trip to
West Africa for Missionary Aviation Fellowship that this fascination became
an irresistible urge.

Timbuktu wasn't on my itinerary, but I knew I had to go there. Once I
arrived, I discovered I was in trouble. I'd hitched a ride from Bamako,
Mali, 500 miles away on the only seat left on a Navajo six-seater air-plane
chartered by UNICEF.

Two of their doctors were in Timbuktu and might fly back on the return
flight, which meant I'd be bumped, but I decided to take the chance. Now
here I was, standing by the plane on the windswept outskirts of the famous
Berber outpost.

There was not a spot of true green any-where in the desolate brown Saharan
land-scape. Dust blew across the sky, blotting out the sun as I squinted in
the 110-degree heat, trying to make out the mud-walled buildings of the
village of 20,000. The pilot approached me as I started for town. He
reported that the doctors were on their way and I'd have to find another ride
to Bamako.

"Try the marketplace. Someone there might have a truck. But be careful," he
said. "Westerners don't last long in the desert if the truck breaks down,
which often hap-pens."

I didn't relish the thought of being stranded, but perhaps it was fitting
that I should wind up like this, surrounded by the Sahara. Since I arrived
in Africa the strain of the harsh environment and severe suffer-ing of the
starving peoples had left me feel-ing lost in a spiritual and emotional
desert. The open-air marketplace in the center of town was crowded. Men and
women wore flowing robes and turbans as protection against the sun. Most of
the Berbers' robes were dark blue, with 30 feet of material in their turbans
alone. The men were well armed with scimitars and knives. I felt eyes were
watching me suspiciously. Suspicion was understandable in Timbuktu.
Nothing could be trusted here. These people had once been prosperous and
self-sufficient. Now even their land had turned against them. Drought had
turned rich grasslands to desert. Unrelenting sun and windstorms had nearly
annihilated all ani-mal life. People were dying by the thou-sands.
I went from person to person trying to find someone who spoke English, until
I finally came across a local gendarme who understood my broken French. "I
need a truck," I said. "I need to go to Bamako."

Eyes widened in his shaded face. "No truck," he shrugged. Then he added,
"No road. Only sand." By now, my presence was causing a sensation in the
marketplace. I was surrounded by at least a dozen small children, jumping
and dancing, begging for coins and souvenirs. The situation was ex-treme, I
knew. I tried to think calmly. What am I to do?

Suddenly I had a powerful desire to talk to my father. Certainly he had
known what it was like to be a foreigner in a strange land.

But my father, Nate Saint, was dead. He was one of five missionary men
killed by Auca Indians in the jungles of Ecuador in 1956. I was a month shy
of my fifth birth-day at the time, and my memories of him were almost like
movie clips: a lanky, in-tense man with a serious goal and a quick wit. He
was a dedicated jungle pilot, flying missionaries and medical personnel in
his Piper Family Cruiser.

Even after his death he was a presence in my life. I'd felt the need to talk
with my father before, especially since I'd married and become a father
myself. But in recent weeks this need had become urgent. For one thing, I
was new to relief work. But it was more than that. I needed Dad to help
answer my new questions of faith. In Mali, for the first time in my life, I
was sur-rounded by people who didn't share my faith, who were, in fact,
hostile to the Chris-tian faith, locals and Western relief workers alike.
In a way it was a parallel to the situation Dad had faced in Ecuador. How
often I'd said the same thing Dad would have said among the Indians who
killed him: "My God is real. He's a personal God who lives inside me, with
whom I have a very special, one-on-one relationship."

And yet the question lingered in my mind: Did my father have to die? All my
life, people had spoken of Dad with respect; he was a man willing to die for
his faith. But at the same time I couldn't help but think the murders were
capricious, an acci-dent of bad timing.

Dad and his colleagues landed just as a small band of Auca men were in a bad
mood for reasons that had nothing to do with faith or Americans. If Dad's
plane had landed one day later, the massacre may not have happened. Couldn't
there have been another way? It made little impact on the Aucas that I could
see. To them it was just one more killing n a history of killings.