Lots to Do, Always!
On May 25th, I was the photographer & part videographer for a wedding by an old staff member: Vogly Registre. I spent days after editing the photos & video and then gave them to her. She loved it, said I had a gift, and considered me a professional. Nice!
Hello there, I hope God has been moving in your life as much as He has in mine this past month. Here are a few things that have been going on.
There are no professional wedding photographers in Haiti, so it’s a blessing to the couples as much as a fundraiser for me to work at weddings. I already have another wedding job coming up in August.
From May 26 to June 2nd, I spent time with 2 producers from LA who came to make commercials for a non-profit solar organization called Clean Compassion.
I introduced them to locations and people, hosted interviews for them ranging from tailors to the mayor of the city, and got to see my equipment put to good use in their hands.
I also got to finish a project I had to rebuild from near scratch when my hardrive crashed last month. You can watch it below, you’ll be missing out if you don’t!
It’s going to be the key promotional to getting students for future DTS’s and it’s NO exaggeration of what this year’s DTS outreach was like! Another video will be coming out next month sharing more details about what DTS in Haiti is.
Contacts are really your bread & butter in the film industry, and this week was a great time connecting with two professional film producers. They loved seeing what I do and wanted to stay in contact.
May 25
May 26 - June 2
June 2 - June 9
On June 10th, I went out and got some shots of some of the 5th section flooding going on and what YWAM was doing to fix it. It was pretty fun, and no doubt useable for a possible future sequel to “The Spirits of Poverty” documentary.
June 7
June 12
And now I’m spending time with my grandma in Norway to film her Christian-walk teachings that she travels around the world to share, as well as benefit from it and receive spiritual direction from her. It will be the first time she’s done a video series for it and I’m privileged that she was able to provide for me to be there to film it. Norway is right now in it's summer solstice, which means the sun never sets!
Message of the Month
That’s a phrase often heard in filmmaking and recently spoken by the producers who came down last week. The same goes for our Christian life. Is loving God to much work? It certainly was for me when I first started it. In honesty, devotions are still an off & on thing. What I discovered this last week though is that I’ve come to love personal character and discipleship. I’ve let God be my mentor for so long, I’ve gotten past the ‘milk’ that Paul talks about and now getting into the ‘solid foods’ of the Holy Spirit. The Christian walk is no longer ‘too much work’.
If you’ve been following me on Facebook then you probably heard my laptop harddrive crashed recently and I had to rebuild a few projects. I still haven’t recovered the dozens of teaching documents I had, but no matter. Not long after it happened, I let God do whatever He wanted to me and this strange connection was made. I cannot describe the feeling except ‘humility’ descended on me. I was full of joy, and found the patience to rebuild one of the lost projects. It wasn’t too much work anymore. For three days this joy trickled into me, so long as I kept the door to the Holy Spirit open. God re-aligned my perspective a bit so that I could love my work. That project got finished only an hour before it premiered for the DTS love feast on June 7. It’s now on Youtube. It’s the video embedded above.
Filmmaking schools often like to say they’re teaching 90% of their students just how to be expert film critics, since only 10% actually stick around in film. Why? Most end up with a desk job involving long hours and little pay. It’s not what they dreamed it to be, and so they leave. This saying can also can be applied to Christian life. A lot of people get stuck with long devotional hours and dry ministry times. Over time, they drop out of relationship with God and never get into the ‘solid foods’ of Christian character because it’s not what they dreamed it to be. I’ve been fundraising for money and spending long days editing projects with technology that likes to make its own decisions. Sometimes filming is not what I dreamed it to be, but I stick with it for its moments. By the way, I need to practice my parenting skills, because when the computers throw tantrums, sometimes I do too.
Point is, if you don’t love your work, you won’t stick around for the ‘solid foods’. Instead, most people like to become that ‘expert film critic’ or I should say ‘expert Christian critic’ that we all gossip about or teach against. The sad truth is, those people (and I hope it isn’t you!) are stuck unable to love God when they’ve committed their whole life to Him. The secret is simply choosing to love your relationship with God enough to stick with it.
Sometimes in life we like to make ourselves miserable. We eventually get over it and come to terms that life isn’t about us. We stop hoarding our love. I constantly re-discover that love actually keeps growing with each act, it only dies when I decide to stop giving. Holding back is based on fear of not enough. The cure for that is simple but hard: get over it and give.
So the point is, it’s a privilege to be a Christian. It’s always too much work, but once you love it you can’t leave it. I can’t leave God, He’s too cool. The presence of humility, love, patience, justice and more speak in a way that surpasses words, and I’m not good with words. So be the 10% who stick around long enough to fall in love with your walk. That’s my media missionary message for today.
“It’s too much work if you don’t love it…”