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abacys · 5 years ago

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7 Days to Die - Play Conditioning

I’ve been thinking about 7 Days to Die a fair amount recently. I got the game in mid-to-late 2016, shortly before the Alpha 15 build was released. I enjoyed it for a while, but after a couple of days, I moved on to other games, as I am wont to do. However, last year, I decided to revisit it and try out surviving on my own again. While I was wandering around the world, my father happened to ask what the game was like. He used to play his fair share of video games, but hadn’t stuck to anything much in recent years. He had tried out some games here and there, Civilization VI comes to mind, but never played for very long. I mentioned a few aspects of the game I thought he would find interesting and recommended that he try it out. Now I have over one hundred and fifty hours in the game, he has banked almost nine hundred, and various family members and friends have spent hundreds or even thousands of hours playing. This has left me wondering what exactly it was that had pulled them so far into this experience that other games had lacked.

The first time you play a new game plays a large role in how you will interact with it as you get further in. The experience at the beginning of the game will contextualize the rest of your time playing. This concept is an element of game design known as Play Conditioning, invented by Harris Brewis, also known as HBomberguy.

First, I should explain what 7 Days to Die is. 7DtD is a post-apocalyptic, open-world survival horror game published by The Fun Pimps, released in 2013. From some statements made by the developers, it is revealed that the third world war has devastated the earth, with nuclear weapons destroying most traces of civilization. In the fallout, a virus of unknown origin has spread, bringing the dead back to life as zombies. Your task is to survive in this increasingly hostile environment. The game takes place in Navezgane, a fictitious county in Arizona, known as “one of the last true Edens on Earth.”

Now, let’s take a look a way that the first hour of gameplay might play out.

You wake up in a forest near a road that has a frame of a car and various pieces of trash strewn about. you are greeted with a note with a threat written on it, a few basic supplies, and a short set of tutorial quests to get you started. You get to work on completing the quests.

The sun is now higher in the sky, and the tweets of the of the birds has quieted down.

After you complete the quests, you're pointed in the direction of the nearest trading post, but are otherwise left to your own devices, free to do what you want in the world. Unfortunately, that feeling doesn’t last.

You quickly notice that you only have one can of food and water, which do not seem to recover much. As it is the first day of the game, there are two options to to get more. They are to try to make it to the trading post or scavenge for supplies in various locations throughout the land. You take the second option, as you have nothing to purchase food with.

The sun is now directly overhead, and you can now hear wind whistling through the trees.

Upon finding a house, you enter and try to find food to prepare for the coming days. Encountering a few zombies, you to take damage and start bleeding. After beating them back, you use the only bandage you have. This recovers some of your lost health, brings the maximum back up from where it had fallen, and stops your bleeding. Now there is no way of recovering lost health other than waiting, and nothing that can help you if you start bleeding again. You gather some of the supplies now that the area is clear, and obtain some food, water, a cooking pot, and a painkiller in case you have to get into another fight. You set out to find some weaponry in order to be able to manage future encounters more safely.

The bright sunlight has given way to the dimmer yellows and oranges, and you can now hear crickets start to chirp.

You come across a new house, and spot a few boxes on the roof. You go through the building, dispatching the zombies inside with caution. Recovering lost health with the painkillers generates a lot of thirst, requiring you to drink more of your water. After making your way through the building, you end up on top with the stockpile of goods, and a large group of enemies protecting it. Fighting proves difficult, causing an infection and more wounds that you will have to deal with when you get more medicine. Luckily, you can now loot the containers they are guarding, providing you with a better club and bow, and a little more food to tide you over.

While you walk to the trader, an ominous noise plays, and the clock at the top of the screen strikes 22:00.

It’s now night, and you spent the whole day focusing on gathering supplies. This is when you find out the consequence of not staying indoors. Zombies now are faster and stronger, and you don’t have shelter to deal with them. Running away from the nearby zombies that have picked up on you existing takes a lot of time and stamina, increasing your hunger and thirst, making it harder to continue running. Trying to fight them is punishing, causing you to lose a significant portion of health. Now crouching around, trying to sneak past all of the enemies that are around you, there is little that you can do to avoid the feeling that you are powerless until the next day. Any sound you make can draw zombies to you. Trying to go to a new house will just put you in close quarters with more enemies. The only thing now is to sit and wait in the darkness, preparing to run at any time that something notices you. Besides that, you just watch the clock.

After a painfully long amount of time, you hear a tune play, marking 4:00 and the end of the night. You survived though the first full day. However, now you are infected, wounded, starving, thirsty, and without shelter.

Not only does this set a mood for the game, but it also trains the player on how they should play the game by punishing prioritizing the wrong things. The game gives them the base concepts of what they need to survive in the quests, such as getting weapons, clothing, a place to stay, and a way to make food, but don’t enforce those concepts too strongly, allowing for more player freedom. That doesn’t mean that every option the player can take is a good one. Many things they can do, like going into places they are not prepared to enter or engaging in too many fights, will kill them. If they don’t find shelter, they will be in a very dangerous position come nightfall. If they don’t get ample amounts of food an water, they will be less equipped to deal with the tasks they need to handle, or they will just die of starvation or dehydration. The game teaches the player to strike a balance of their needs by making it tangibly more difficult to play and showing what is needed to fix that added difficulty. Every time that the player starts over, or continues past a difficult period of survival provides more knowledge on what they should do to survive, but the first steps give them a baseline of get food, water, and shelter, while avoiding many of the unnecessary risks that you can take. Making the game more difficult or killing the player work as great deterrents to careless play, and showing the steps on how to avoid that help to train the player on what they should do to survive, while not just stating it outright, giving them more of a feeling of actual personal growth and learning to survive in a harsh world.

Even if this is only one aspect of how someone comes to interact with a game, I still think it is very important to how people come to interact with it. There are other things I may come to talk about in the future regarding this, as there are many other things that I believe contribute to the interest this game pulled to those I know. If you can, I would check out the game yourself to see what I mean, and I hope that this admittedly long piece of writing provided some food for thought about these concepts.

#game analysis #7 days to die #play conditioning #7dtd #analysis #game tone #tone #mood #zombies #survival horror #survival #open world #post-apocalyptic

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tanadrin · 5 years ago

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Reordberend

(part 21 of ?; first; previous; next)

(BTW, as of this update, Reordberend is, by my count, a little over 45k words long, putting it in the territory of a shortish novel. That also makes it one of the longest SF stories I’ve ever written. It’s not the most popular thing I’ve ever posted on Tumblr, but it has gotten a steady trickle of notes. Knowing there are people out there who enjoy your work, even if it’s fairly niche, is the best motivation there is to keep writing. Thank you for reading!)

Katherine Alice Green The Guest Room in the Village Hall The High Settlement McMurdo Dry Valleys ANTARCTICA

to Dr. Eunice Valerie Gordon Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 IRELAND

Dear Dr. Gordon,

I am writing yet another letter I won’t be able to send, which, I realize might make me seem like kind of a crazy person. The only defense I can plead, I guess, is that the perpetual darkness of the winters here does funny things to you if you’re not used to it, and I’ve had a lot of down time lately that I need to do something productive with. I have already written to my parents, to a couple of friends, and to my cat, which leaves only you. And these letters seem to have a way of focusing my thoughts, so maybe it’s not an entirely useless exercise.

Where to begin? Well, first of all, I’m alive. That may come as a surprise. It occured to me not long after I was marooned here that perhaps nobody knows that. No one has come looking for me, and why would they? If any rescue parties did go looking for the Albatross, I doubt they’d come this far south. Not in winter. But I did in fact survive the ship going down. I don’t think anybody else did. The Dry Valleys People didn’t find anyone else on the shore, alive or dead. I try not to think about that too much, but, to be honest, it still has me kind of fucked up.

Oh, that’s the other things. I’ve made contact with the Dry Valleys People. I am, as the return address indicates, currently living with them. They have welcomed me, rather reluctantly, and I’ll be able to remain at least until the first sunrise of spring. This was not necessarily a widely popular decision, and I’ve come to learn that the political situation among the DVP is rather complicated. They have always guarded their isolation and their independence, and they’re keen to keep guarding it in the future, but there are some among them who worry how long that will really be possible. I think this is something Dr. Wright foresaw, and tried to warn them about in the letter he sent with me. But as you might expect, this is something a large part of their community doesn’t want to hear or even think about, and my presence here is definitely fraught.

As for my original mission… well, it’s an unqualified success, despite the difficulties. I’ve learned a lot. The language, to start with. You won’t believe this, but they speak Old English here. No, not thee and thou and maketh yon Old English. Not Chaucer, even. Older. From their books and what they’ve told me, their ancestors used the West Saxon dialect of Old English, as spoken about the year 1000 AD, as the basis for the language they taught their children. Dr. Wright knew this, of course. That’s how he was able to communicate them and win their trust; he showed an affinity for the same history and the same long-term perspective they cared about. If it seems weird that a bunch of people would move to Antarctica, forsake almost every modern convenience, and deliberately teach their kids a dead language that would be useless in the wider world, well, all I can say I guess is that humans have done a lot of weird shit for a lot of weird reasons throughout history. I think I am beginning to understand why the ancestors of the DVP did what they did. Some of them have tried to explain it to me, but there is a gap in our worldviews here that is difficult to bridge.

One of the DVP that I have befriended is a poet named Leofric. His sister, Leofe, taught me the language, but I’ve learned a lot more about their literature from him. It’s primarily an oral literature, although they do write some of it down. They like long, semi-narrative poetry that draws heavily on the imagery of the natural world, and I would say that it owes something to the ancient Anglo-Saxon poetry they keep in their books, except that, of course, the environment here is nothing like the environment of England one thousand years ago. But there are still some poetic traditions they have inherited from those earlier examples. For instance, their world is harsh, and unforgiving, and from a certain angle looks like a world in decline. The ancient English (so I am told) were surrounded by great Roman ruins they spoke of as being the work of metaphorical giants; here, they have the ruins of two hundred years of scientific and industrial exploration of the Antarctic coast. And their world, too, is enclosed by a vast cold sea, although this one has penguins in it at least.

Aside from the language, the founders of the DVP don’t seem to have intended to recreate medieval English society. There are no kings. There is a semi-formal system of village headship by seniority, but the social hierarchy is very flat. Marriage, inheritance, and choice of occupation all take place on fairly egalitarian terms, and their strictest taboos surround the sharing of labor and resources, not sexuality or religion. I wonder how much of their customs are the result of gradual cultural evolution, or some deliberate effort at creating a planned community. There are lots of funny Utopian experimental communities out there, but most tend to fail after a generation. In a way, this one couldn’t fail, because they had no way to leave Antarctica. They had to make it work. Is this what a real utopian project looks like after six or seven generations?

But honestly, one of the most fascinating aspects of the DVP is their material culture. As you might expect, their day-to-day existence is profoundly shaped by the environment they live in. Their houses are all heavy stone, designed to trap scarce heat, and arranged around the village halls as a windbreak against the dry katabatic gales that sweep the McMurdo Valleys clear of ice. Despite this being one of the driest locations on Earth, it’s still a better habitat for them than the glaciers of the Antarctic lowlands, or the rough, icy terrain of the mountains--here, you can actually build, and you don’t need skis and snowshoes to get around. But, as a consequence, much of their most important infrastructure is underground.

I don’t know if the ancestral DVP brought the right tools with them or if they scavenged them once here, but they have accumulated a small stockpile of laser borers, ultrasonic chisels, and crystalsteel digging equipment that they use to carve out underground chambers in the hills as meeting places and ritual sites. But they don’t do their agriculture there; that happens in networks of buried trenches just below the villages, where they grow cold-resistant mosses and lichens to supplement a meat-based diet, and what seems to be a form of genegineered fibergrass they use to weave their clothing and tapestries, and to make books.

Their art is very beautiful. Their coats, books, and tapestries--even their stone carvings--all depict elaborate lineate forms of plants and animals, inherited I suppose from ancestral memory, since none of the organisms in question are found in Antarctica. They also make images depicting the mountains, of course, and the sea, and the animals that live on the coast; even some of the coastal settlements, as seen from far off. They’re often abstracted, but these images are geographically grounded: they’re not just “generic mountains” or “generic coastline,” they’re specific mountains, specific coastlines, and they add up--if you are exposed to them every day of your life growing up--to something like a conceptual map of all of Victoria Land. It seems that if you dropped an average adult DVP individual anywhere from Oates Land to the Queen Elizabeth Range, they could probably find their way home, even during the dark months of winter.

(Oh! And the dark months! You’d think they’d be depressing, but I never imagined in my life I would see such a sight as the aurora australis, or even the clear polar stars! I can’t describe it to you. Maybe Leofric could, if I could do justice to his verse.)

They’re very communitarian, and great emphasis is placed on making sure no one goes without, but the price of that is, apparently, extremely elaborate dispute-resolution mechanisms; for a culture without courts, government, or attorneys, they are remarkably bureaucratic. Each physical object seems to have its own laws attached to it. Some may be shared by all objects of that type--for instance, if you need an electric firestarter, you always go to the house windward of yours to ask if they have one. If they don’t, you go to the next, and so on; firestarters pass from house to house, as needed, but only in one direction. Other objects may have completely unique rules. There is a knife with an elaborately carved handle meant to be used only by left-handed people. I don’t know why; nobody I asked knew, either. But that was the custom, and it was scrupulously obeyed. As a rule, the more elaborately decorated an object, the more particular the rules associated with it, but the elaboration of the object doesn’t seem to connote anything about the rules. It only marks it out as somehow special. The rules themselves are transmitted orally. All of these rules at bottom are about making sure that resources are evenly distributed--making sure nobody has to walk too far in bitterly cold weather to find a firestarter, for instance--and even the ones that don’t make sense now probably were created for good reason. For instance, the southpaw knife. Their knives for carving meat all have handles that curve in one way, to help separate flesh from bone, and I suspect that one is the result of a left-handed steelsmith getting fed up with with tools he couldn’t use very well. The blade is that of a carving-knife, though the handle attached to it is straight. The handle was probably later replaced when it broke, and somebody needed the knife for a different purpose--but the custom attached to it remained the same.

This system of sharing is, if anything, even more scrupulously observed when there’s a windfall. We went on a salvage expedition a month ago and brought back some much-needed supplies, and they spent days working out what would go where, first to each village and then, once we got back to the High Settlement, each house in each village--and even then, this was just what went to who first. Anything that’s not a finite supply, like food, will get passed from house to house. Leofric tells me that a few years ago, a whale--an entire blue whale, actually--beached itself to the north, and they had to have a weeklong assembly (on the beach, next to the whale, natch) to decide what do with every scrap of meat and bone. They still talk about the arguments that went down at the Whale Parliament sometimes (for which their word is hwaelthing, by the way. Literally it means exactly what it looks like: “whale-thing.”). Funny thing is, they also very carefully manage arguments in these discussions. That’s not normally the case--if two people have an argument and what to physically fight each other about it, that’s considered their business. But when it comes to disputes about food or metal or tools, everybody is very keen to show how Not Mad they are, even if they’re actually seething about it on the inside. And if voices get raised, people get hustled aside, and the whole matter is dropped completely until everybody has a chance to calm down. This looks like a system that was either deliberately designed to keep fights from breaking out and feelings getting permanently hurt, or one that sprung up after some nasty experiences of actual fights. I suspect the latter. It’s all very informal, but there’s a lot of social pressure that enforces it. The price for division and discord in an environment this hard to live in would be death, and I think all their social institutions are built around that reality.

I will admit, this has not been the easiest experience. I mean, there’s the almost dying part, and the part where all my cybernetics are broken, and I had a bad bout of something flulike a few weeks ago and almost died again, but I don’t actually mean the physical hardship. It is a more isolating experience than I thought it would be, being the lone outsider in such a close-knit community. Everyone knows everybody and everything, except me. They all have their own jokes and stories and long-running feuds, and they can communicate a great deal to one another with just a glance, and I’m left wondering what just happened when everybody laughs at something, or a fight breaks out. I have struggled sometimes to learn the language. I mean, I’ve had no other choice, and it’s amazing what you can learn when your survival depends on it, but even now I still sometimes find myself struggling to communicate ideas, or staying silent even when there is something I might want to say, just because I can’t find the words. It’s infuriating not being able to express yourself well, and maybe for good reason I sometimes think they all see me as this hapless idiot who almost got herself killed, who they have to put up with until the spring as a result.

Okay, I mean, I kind of am that. But I am also genuinely interested in their society, in the DVP as individuals, in their stories and their history. But I feel like the best I can hope for is being kind of a mascot. Or a well-meaning but dim-witted pet. A Labrador or something.

Not that I haven’t made friends. I would say Leofric is a friend. The salvagers--Eadwig and Andrac--they’re friends. And I seem to have won at least the grudging toleration of the ones like Aelfric who initially wanted to leave me to die. But sometimes I think I’ve made a connection, somehow bridged the unbridgeable gulf between my life experience and the world of the DVP, only to find out I’ve done no such thing. I thought Leofe was a friend; but now she’s not speaking to me, and she’s left the High Settlement for one of the other valleys. I don’t know why, and the others just shrug when I ask them.

Ugh. This is turning into whining. Now I know I’ll never send it. Sorry. It’s been a long day. It’s amazing how tired you can get when your muscles can’t rely on your augs to help them do shit.

But I need to find a way to bridge that gap. I mean really bridge it. Because I feel like I’m starting to understand something the DVP aren’t ready to hear. Their ancestors came to Antarctica at a time when the rest of the world wasn’t much interested in it. It was a wasteland, so sure, let’s treat it as an international, shared territory. Nobody goes there but scientists and the occasional tourist. And during the Collapse, not even that--Antarctica was truly empty for the first time in a hundred and fifty years when the ancestors of the DVP came to its shores. But it isn’t anymore. And it won’t ever be a real wasteland again. Every year the mining consortia move a little further down the Transantarctic Mountains. Every year a new outpost pops up on the coast, more ships come to Port Alexander, more icebreakers cut through the polar sea. Antarctica is warmer now that it’s been at any time in the past. Heck, without some global warming, I don’t think the Dry Valleys would be habitable. But that means more exposed rock, more open ground to build on, more people coming to the continent to work on the mining platforms or the offshore factories, and one day, I think, they’re going to come here.

What will the DVP do when that happens? This isn’t North Sentinel Island, which nobody ever goes to because there’s no reason. There’s gold in the hills here--the DVP make jewelry out of it--and maybe other precious metals, and you could build a geothermal station on Mount Erebus and power a small town, if you wanted to build some autofactories. The Antarctic Authority exists to promote “science and industry,” but with a big emphasis on industry. And by science they mostly mean, like, watching penguins bone and building telescopes at the South Pole. Not soft stuff like anthropology. And certainly not protecting three valleys full of cessionist oddballs whose parents had an unreasonable fondness for dead languages.

I think Dr. Wright knew this. I think maybe he tried to warn the DVP when he was here, but back then the danger was even further away. And it’s hard to get people to pay attention to danger that seems far away, even if it might be an existential threat. And when dealing with that danger would require you to completely change the only life you’d ever known… well, that’s a hard sell. The DVP don’t really like change. I can’t blame them. But one day things are going to change here, and if they’re not prepared for it, it could get really ugly, really fast. It’s one thing to shut yourself away when the world is ignoring you. It’s another when the world comes knocking.

If I think I can persuade them, I’m going to talk to the elders here, Aelfric and Wulf. Some of the DVP have had very fleeting contact with outsiders before me. I think one of them should come with me in the spring, as a sort of emissary. I’m not sure who they should talk to, yet. Maybe the Authority. Maybe somebody in Port Alexander’s local government? Or maybe we should just try to tell their story directly to the world. That might bring the DVP more attention than they’d like, but better a little good attention now than a lot of bad attention later. I would have asked Leofe--she’s smart, she’s tough, she could handle the culture shock--but that’s not an option now. Something to think about, anyway.

Well. I hope this letter finds the imaginary version of you well, my love to the imaginary family &c, hope the undergrads aren’t giving you too much trouble this year. If for some reason you do find this letter--like I freeze to death on my way to the weather station in September and they find this document on my corpse--please forgive my stubbornness, my insistence on going on this stupid trip, and any worry I’ve caused you as a result. And if I really am dead, please tell everybody I died doing something badass, like, I dunno, fighting a polar bear. I guess those are extinct and they never lived in Antarctica anyway, but something along those lines. Make it good.

All the best,

Kate

#tanadrin's fiction #*blows party horn*#sorry for the epistolary chapter #but it's a great way to do gratuitous expository worldbuilding

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toldnews-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/return-of-the-cat-man-of-aleppo/

Return of the cat man of Aleppo

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Media captionMeet the cat man of Aleppo

The cat man of Aleppo, Mohammad Aljaleel, touched the hearts of millions when his sanctuary featured in a BBC video in 2016 (above). He had to leave the city when it fell to Syrian government forces, but he’s now back – in an area nearby – and helping children as well as animals, reports Diana Darke.

Just weeks after the video was filmed, Mohammad Aljaleel (known to everyone as Alaa) watched helplessly as his cat sanctuary was first bombed, then chlorine-gassed, during the intense final stages of the siege of Aleppo.

Most of his 180 cats were lost or killed. Like thousands of other civilians he was trapped in the eastern half of the city under continuous bombardment from Russian and Syrian fighter jets.

As the siege tightened, he was forced from one Aleppo district to another, witnessing unimaginable scenes of devastation. Yet throughout, he continued to look after the few surviving cats and to rescue people injured in the bombing, driving them to underground hospitals.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption The evacuation of east Aleppo in December 2016

When the city fell in December 2016, he left in a convoy, his van crammed full of injured people and the last six cats from the sanctuary.

“I’ve always felt it’s my duty and my pleasure to help people and animals whenever they need help,” Alaa says. “I believe that whoever does this will be the happiest person in the world, besides being lucky in his life.”

After a brief recuperation in Turkey, he smuggled himself back into Syria – bringing a Turkish cat with him for company – and established a new cat sanctuary, bigger and better than the first one, in Kafr Naha, a village in opposition-held countryside west of Aleppo.

Using the same crowdfunding model employed successfully in east Aleppo, funds were sent in by cat-lovers from all over the world via Facebook and Twitter.

But Alaa has always worked for the benefit of the community, as well as the cats themselves.

In Aleppo, he and his team of helpers bought generators, dug wells and stockpiled food. Even at the height of the bombing, they ran animal welfare courses for children, to develop their empathy. They also set up a playground next to the sanctuary where children could briefly escape from the apocalyptic events taking place all around them.

Image caption Alaa and a cat called Ernesto

The new sanctuary has expanded to include an orphanage, a kindergarten and a veterinary clinic. Alaa and his team resemble a small development agency, providing services that government and international charities cannot or will not. He strongly believes that helping children to look after vulnerable animals teaches them the importance of kindness to all living creatures, and helps to heal their own war traumas.

“Children and animals are the big losers in the Syrian war,” he says. “It’s the adults who so often behave badly.”

As a boy growing up in Aleppo, Alaa had always looked after cats, spurring his friends to do likewise, even though keeping cats and dogs as pets is not customary in Syria or the rest of the Arab world.

Image copyright Getty Images

He started working aged 13, as an electrician, but also turned his hand to many other jobs – painter, decorator, IT expert, satellite-dish installer… he even traded toys between Lebanon and Syria.

He worked hard and he learned how to get things done. “May the dust turn to gold in your hands, Alaa,” his mother used to say.

His dream was to become a fireman like his father and work in search and rescue, but such jobs were handed out only to those with connections, and the connection through his father was not enough. So for years his applications were rejected.

Image caption The sanctuary’s vet, Dr Youssef

“Of course I would never have wished for a war in order to make my dream come true. I wish I could have achieved these things without the suffering I have seen,” he says.

“God blessed me by putting me in a position where I could help people by being a rescue man, but in my worst nightmares I never imagined a war like this for my people or for my country, or even for a single animal.”

During the siege in Aleppo he used to visit both Christian and Muslim old people’s homes, distributing food. Extremist groups such as al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra regularly chided him, calling him a kaafir, an unbeliever, but he continued regardless.

Image copyright Getty Images

“Our Prophet Muhammad was good to everybody. He spoke with all Christians and Jews. I believe in Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, because all of them had a noble aim. I’m a Muslim, but I am not a fanatic. I just take from religion everything that’s good and that I can learn things from,” Alaa says.

Despite the difficulties he has endured, Alaa has always maintained a wicked sense of humour. At the new sanctuary, a tabby called Maxi the Marketing King is chief fundraiser, soliciting “green kisses” in the form of dollar bills via social media accounts.

Image caption Maxi, chief fundraiser

Alaa wears a T-shirt with “Maxi’s Slave” written on it, and gets ticked off for smoking too much or for not cooking gourmet meals. He admits his shortcomings. “We submit to Maxi’s authority as the ruler of his kingdom. But even with Maxi’s leadership it wasn’t easy to launch the new sanctuary,” he says.

This is an understatement. The rebel-held area where Alaa now lives is semi-lawless and when powerful gangs realised he was receiving funds for the sanctuary, they attempted to kidnap him. He was no longer being bombed, but his life was still at risk.

As well as cats, the new sanctuary has dogs, monkeys, rabbits, a chicken that thinks it’s a cat, and an Arabian thoroughbred horse.

“There are so few thoroughbred horses left inside Syria now that I worry about finding him a mare to breed with. I plan to perform the role of a traditional Syrian mother and try to find him a wife, so that he can have children and start building up the population of thoroughbred horses in Syria again,” Alaa says.

Image caption An injured fox, rescued by the sanctuary…

All the animals have names, generally awarded by Alaa. An aggressive black-and-white cat who came to the sanctuary, stole food and terrified all the other cats was nicknamed al-Baghdadi, after the Iraqi leader of Islamic State (IS).

“Of course, this cat was a million times better than that evil murderer al-Baghdadi, but this name came to mind because his presence in the sanctuary coincided with the arrival of IS gangs in Aleppo,” Alaa says.

Image caption … a cockerel that behaves like a cat…

A large ginger tomcat was given a Trump hairstyle and christened The Orange President of the Sanctuary. A pair of speedy acrobatic cats were called Sukhoi 25 and Sukhoi 26, after Russian fighter jets.

“They’re old planes, but effective enough for the job required of them in Syria. We always knew when the Russians were coming to bomb us because of their very loud engine noise. We’d shout: ‘Watch out! A Sukhoi is coming!'”

Alaa’s reputation inside Syria has travelled far and wide, and the government is well aware of his activities.

Image caption … and a resident bird of prey

In 2017 he was called by the Magic World Zoo, south of Aleppo, which asked desperately for his help to feed the neglected lions, tigers and bears – which he did, despite the dangers of the journey which involved passing through Jabhat al-Nusra checkpoints. While there, he discovered he had been recommended by the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture.

“It was funny that the ministry knew about us and was handing over responsibility for the zoo animals to us,” he says. “The Magic World Zoo gave me a lot of headaches.”

Alaa was eventually able to negotiate a solution for the animals with a charity called Four Paws, which arranged for the animals that hadn’t died to be transported out of Syria to new homes in Belgium, the Netherlands and Jordan.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption One of the rescued tigers, in transit through Turkey

In the new sanctuary he looks after 105 children, of whom 85 are “orphans” (in Syria the word covers children who have lost a breadwinner, as well as those who have lost both parents). Only 11 children actually sleep in the orphanage at present, because it isn’t finished, but all receive education, food and clothes, for which Alaa pays 25 euros per month.

The biggest risk is the instability in the region. Clashes break out periodically, as it’s close to the border with Idlib province, which is controlled by rebel groups who often fight each other. No-one knows what will happen next to that part of Syria and who will end up in charge.

“I blame all fighting parties equally – no matter who they are or why they say they’re fighting – for the killing of civilians,” Alaa says.

“We are rebuilding our communities and my role in that is to rebuild my sanctuary for cats. Friendship between animals is a great thing and we should learn from them. I’ll stay with them no matter what happens.

“It seems the world cannot solve wars and conflicts these days. That’s why there are now so many refugees around the world, but especially here in the Middle East.

“I do not want to be a refugee. I want to stay in my country, in Syria. I want to help people in any way I can.”

Diana Darke is the author, with Alaa Aljaleel, of The Last Sanctuary in Aleppo.

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Image copyright Lisa Mann

Lots of people love the birds in their garden, but it’s rare for that affection to be reciprocated. One young girl in Seattle is luckier than most. She feeds the crows in her garden – and they bring her gifts in return.

Read: The girl who gets gifts from birds (February 2015)

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benjamingarden · 5 years ago

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How We Paid Off Our Debt With Meal Planning

Credit cards are something I grew up with. They were a normal part of life. My parents used them for just about everything and I learned to do the same. The problem is that the debt adds up. Quick. And before you know it the amount you owe seems insurmountable to pay off anytime soon. Add to that college loans, vehicle payments, and a mortgage and, well, you are working to pay your monthly payments. Years ago when we found ourselves with a large amount of credit card debt and a little left on an auto loan (combined total was just over $10,000) we were struggling with where to find the money to pay it off. With moderate living expenses, we were just making it week-to-week. My husband temporarily picked up a part-time job in addition to his full-time job (until we realized he made hardly anything once taxes were paid....), and I worked full-time while finishing up my college degree. We had tracked two months of our spending (what a scary and time-consuming exercise but so worthwhile), made the usual cuts, (eating out, coffee/snacks purchased out, limiting activities to free activities, creating a clothing budget, etc.) but it didn't leave us with enough to put extra toward our credit cards to make much of an impact. I stared and stared at our new-to-us budget. One thing that continued to jump out at me was the amount we were spending at the grocery store. But HOW do you cut it? I tried the couponing thing but struggled with both the time to make good use of them and finding coupons for what we were eating. I tried following store sales, but made the crucial mistake of also purchasing all of our additional groceries (which were in no way the lowest prices) at the same store for convenience. I had also tried meal planning and just couldn't stick with it. So I began looking back through my notes, reading the books again that were inspiring me to pay off the debt and I decided that I had to not only give meal planning a try again, but I had to figure out what my stumbling blocks were and fix them. ASAP! I was determined to do this and so I did. And it was difficult. Some days I wanted to throw my hands up in the air and revert back to what I knew best. Spending money without a budget. Some days I wanted to just go buy new clothes and shoes to make myself feel better. But I didn't, and I kept on trying. So, back to meal planning I went and found that I just needed to keep plugging away at it and eventually it would become habit and, therefore, much easier. And it did. Being debt-free allows you options. It also allows you to live in the present. I've previously written about debt holding you in the past because you are paying for the past, rather than allowing you to live in the now or prepare for the future. Debt forces us to stay in jobs we don't like because of the security of the paycheck, and keeps us from living the life we really want. Although debt is sometimes used to try to live that life we dream about, reality soon sets in when we realize how many years it will take to pay it off and how much our current lifestyle is now impacted because of the spending of the past. Figuring out how to live life without the use of any credit card is, by far, the best decision we've ever made. Regardless of how difficult it's been at times.

A Few Things I Learned About Myself (and Meal Planning)

I had to just do it. Regardless of what I came up with for excuses as to why it didn't work or wouldn't work, I just had to do it.

I followed to a tee what I could find for an outline of a meal plan. I could see what may or may not work for us, but I told myself to just do it the way it was written for a few weeks before making adjustments. What I found was that some of what I thought I wanted to change I now had appreciation for and kept it in place.

When we didn't want to eat what was scheduled, or I had accidentally forgotten to purchase an ingredient (or two) for that nights meal, we ate it anyway. No more throwing our hands in the air and defaulting to take-out. Nope, we knew we would live through it and so we ate what was planned.

I fought against having a cash budget for grocery shopping but it wasn't until I finally gave in and converted that I met my budget - every. single. week.

It was just the two of us, so I asked my husband every week when meal planning for the following week, for ideas. This way, if he was less than thrilled with a meal choice he knew he had the ability to offer a different suggestion but didn't. It encouraged him to participate.

On that same note, I've always tried to throw in one of his favorite meals and one of my favorite meals each week. Also, if either of us really does not like a particular meal any longer, it either gets adjusted (if that works) or gets dropped from the rotation.

How We Freed Up Extra Money From Our Already Tight Budget I've written complete posts about the process of meal planning which you can find here and here. Rather than rewriting all of that, instead I'll share how some of the specifics of meal planning worked in our financial favor. (more on this in an upcoming "How To Cut Your Grocery Bill In Half" post) I'm embarrassed to tell you, but before this process we were (easily) spending $140.00 - $200.00 per week on groceries and take-out. For two people. Initially I aimed to cut our weekly budget to $100.00 per week but quickly found I could shave off more, allowing even more money toward our outstanding credit card debt. I settled on $60.00 per week. (food items only - excludes paper towels or toiletries) Some weeks were easier than others but I'm so happy we were able to do that. I bring back the strict $60.00 per week anytime we are trying to save extra money, in fact I just did it a few years ago. Because we now grow quite a large garden in summer and put up much of the excess for use throughout the year, without trying our new "normal" budget now is between $60.00 and $80.00 per week.

I meal planned one week at a time. Some elect to meal plan for a month at a time, but it was too much time for me to work with and felt overwhelming, so I worked on the next week every single week.

Shopping my pantry first was key. Trying to plan meals around what you already have on hand, even if it's just a few items, will definitely save you money.

Shopping store sales was the next big money saver. I rarely used/use coupons. I made time to shop at more than one store and, therefore, take advantage of lower prices. For example, I rarely shop at Price Chopper, one of our larger grocery stores, because their prices on the foods we eat are higher than most other stores. But I added them into our store rotation if they had items on sale that I could incorporate into our meals, or, if they had rock-bottom pricing on items I could stockpile.

Freeing up $5- $10/week for stockpiling was crucial for long-term success. What I found was if I increased my weekly budget for the first month to $70.00/week and used at least $10.00/week just for stockpiling, then I would have some items in our pantry and freezer to use going forward. I was then able to lower my budget on month 2 back to $60.00/week and still dedicate $5-$10.00/week toward stockpiling because I was pulling more food from our now well-stocked pantry and freezer.

In that one month I was able to stock up on some seriously discounted ground beef, chicken quarters, and bought a huge bulk bag of rice as well as a selection of inexpensive frozen vegetables. I was able to use these items for the next couple of months to reduce our weekly expenses as I worked at stocking up on additional items. This became a cycle of stocking up when items were at rock-bottom and shopping not necessarily for the next week's menu, but for stocking up as well. My pantry and freezer became an integral part of our ability to save and eat inexpensively.

We ate out 1-2 times per month so we didn't feel deprived. They were pre-determined times so I was able to plan much of the remainder of the week's meals from our pantry and freezer.

We didn't expect to eat a lot of organic foods or gourmet meals (although if you look for sales and cook with cheaper ingredients we found that we often could get organic). There are some ingredients I just wouldn't buy if I couldn't find the organic version cheap enough (celery, potatoes, strawberries, etc.) or items I wouldn't buy if I couldn't get rock-bottom pricing (cold cereal) and many new recipes I elected not to try because of their list of expensive ingredients.

We ate some meatless meals although my husband was/is not a fan. So, I learned to make meat a side and veggies the main part of the meal. Using meat in dishes alongside rice, pasta, or quinoa also helps because you can reduce, significantly, how much meat you use. I did not cook soup (a notoriously cheaper option) for dinners because he just wouldn't eat it.

I learned to use only inexpensive cuts of meats. And I almost always use any bones to make my own broth (use your slow-cooker, it's easy and hands-free). I also used primarily in-season fruit and veggies as well as frozen veggies. Both were usually the cheapest options.

I eventually built a rotation of 30-40 meals that we liked and fit within our budget. I did so by trying one new recipe every couple of weeks. This way we were still trying something new but it wasn't killing our budget.

We used up our leftovers and sometimes cooked to intentionally get leftovers. My husband was previously completely against leftovers but I eventually found he would eat them for lunch, not dinner. So I began planning them in that manner.

Our Budget & Debt Payoff Structure So the first thing we did was to stop using the credit cards. The next task, which I really did not want to do (but quickly realized it was essential) was we tracked ALL of our spending for two months. All of it. Every check, every charge (debit), every dollar and every penny spent as cash. All of it. I put everything into categories so we could see what we spend. Although I wasn't really surprised, I was upset, I guess, to see the total dollars we spent in some categories. The next step was to implement a budget. Oh how I hated it. And oh how I, after finally getting used to it, wished I'd always had it. We used a zero-based budget. Basically, it's a budget that takes the total income you make and allocates every single dollar to some bill or category until you're left with a $0.00 at the end. It essentially gives every dollar a name/job. (Dave Ramsey has a brief description here) It looks like this: Total Monthly Income -minus- Expenses (bills, necessities, tax, etc.) = $0.00 All of our extra money was thrown at our debt. Every. Single. Dollar. It initially felt like this was going to take FOREVER..... but eventually, once we started making some headway, we could see it working. And that made us try even harder and make even more cuts wherever we could. We used a cash budget for categories we were typically overspending in. Groceries, Eating Out, Fun, & Clothing were our basic categories. When you use cash and don't allow yourself to use a debit/credit card as back-up, you are not only more aware of what you're spending your money on but you are now prevented from over-spending. We followed Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. The baby steps we used to pay off debt were: save $1,000 for our emergency starter fund and then pay off all debt (except mortgage) using the snowball method.

Where We Are Today

We no longer use a structured budget. Wait, what??? No, we don't spend mindlessly, instead what we've found is that we don't spend much at all so there's no need to budget. As I've written about previously, one of the benefits I didn't anticipate from our debt journey was I found this little concept called contentment.

We've reduced our needs and wants. And we've been able to properly identify which is which, unlike earlier in our journey.

We think through all of our purchases, leaning toward frugality and trying to make do with what we have. If we do have a moment of "I would like this" we add it to our online cart and think about it for a day or two, or, if it's at a brick-and-mortar store, think about it for a day or two before taking the plunge. There is much more thought now than there ever was about spending money. We also try to pre-plan our large purchases and save up for them (furniture, new tires for a vehicle, etc.). If absolutely needed, we will use money from our emergency fund to fund an actual emergency (auto repair or appliance replacement).

When we were looking for a home in the country (our current home) to purchase, we only looked at those well below what we were approved for. Well, I take that back. I gave in to my husband's request after looking at a TON of disgusting homes in our self-appointed budget and we looked at one within the amount we were approved for. I felt like I was getting hives just walking around the property. The property was absolutely beautiful complete with a stream and bridge but the home still needed work, even though we would be close to maxing out our mortgage approval. Honestly, all I could think about was the monthly payment. If we hadn't made the choice we ultimately made, we would not have been able to start our business or work for ourselves until the mortgage was paid off.

We are working feverishly at paying off our mortgage. We've had obstacles like everyone, so just when you feel like you're getting somewhere a bump in the road appears. We've learned that there's always a way around it and that it's always temporary.

We started and grew a business completely debt-free. It wasn't easy, we were both working full-time while doing it, but it is sooooo worth it.

We live (well) on a lot less than we'd thought would be comfortable for us. This has allowed us to work for ourselves and keep our business small as we'd hoped to do.

We grow a lot of our own vegetables. Preserving excess for use throughout the year is a big part of our summer and fall. Additionally, we raise chickens for eggs. Selling the excess pays for the chickens expenses so, ultimately, we consume the eggs for no cost, just our labor only. We try to purchase our remaining produce and meats locally as well. Using meat as a side or not the main ingredient makes it easier to afford to do this.

I meal plan monthly instead of weekly or, as I've written about our recent change, don't meal plan at all. Stockpiling and preserving are such a regular part of our lives now that it's a lot easier to plan ahead regularly.

We still use cash envelopes for 2 categories: food and chickens. The food is mostly because I want to ensure we never go back to mindless spending on this. Most meals are made from scratch at home although we do eat out once every month or two. The chickens envelope is because we sell their eggs and what we make goes to pay for their expenses so I keep it separate.

We don't have credit cards. We did end up opening one a few years after our debt was paid off as a "just in case" card. We had not yet built up a proper emergency fund. Then, when Oliver needed emergency surgery #2, we leaned on the card. We didn't rack up too much before we realized we were doing the exact same thing again. We cut it up, paid it off within a few months, and have never taken another again.

We would love to hear your own tips and tricks for paying off your debt and living frugally and debt-free! Additional Resources Here are a few resources that may be helpful to you if you are on your own debt-paying and/or expense reduction journey. Books: The Total Money Makeover The Total Money Makeover Workbook The Tightwad Gazette America's Cheapest Family Cut Your Grocery Bill In Half Your Money Or Your Life Dining On A Dime Cookbook (affiliate links) Websites/Blogs (financial/frugality/homemaking): Dave Ramsey The Budget Mom Frugalwoods No Getting Off This Train Frugal Farm Wife Our Simple & Meaningful Life Down To Earth Maple Hill 101 The Fundamental Home Our Next Life One Frugal Girl

How We Paid Off Our Debt With Meal Planning was originally posted by My Favorite Chicken Blogs(benjamingardening)

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marilynngmesalo · 6 years ago

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2 killed as Venezuelan aid convoys meet fierce resistance

2 killed as Venezuelan aid convoys meet fierce resistance 2 killed as Venezuelan aid convoys meet fierce resistance https://ift.tt/2EuotsZ

CUCUTA, Colombia — A U.S.-backed campaign to force President Nicolas Maduro from power met strong resistance Saturday from Venezuelan security forces who fired tear gas on protesters trying to deliver humanitarian aid from Colombia and Brazil, leaving two people dead and some 300 injured.

Throughout the turbulent day, as police and protesters squared off on two bridges connecting Venezuela to Colombia, opposition leader Juan Guaido made repeated calls for the military to join him in the fight against Maduro’s “dictatorship.” Colombian authorities said more than 60 soldiers answered his call, deserting their posts in often-gripping fashion, though most were lower in rank and didn’t appear to dent the higher command’s continued loyalty to Maduro’s socialist government.

In one dramatic high point, a group of activists led by exiled lawmakers managed to escort three flatbed trucks of aid past the halfway point into Venezuela when they were repelled by security forces. In a flash the cargo caught fire, with some eyewitnesses claiming the National Guardsmen doused a tarp covering the boxes with gas before setting it on fire. As a black cloud rose above, the activists — protecting their faces from the fumes with vinegar-soaked cloths — unloaded the boxes by hand in a human chain stretching back to the Colombian side of the bridge.

Officers of the Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Police take cover behind their shields from a shower of rocks as they block the Simon Bolivar International Bridge in La Parada near Cucuta, Colombia, on the border with Venezuela, Saturday, Feb. 23, 2019.

“They burned the aid and fired on their own people,” said 39-year-old David Hernandez, who was hit in the forehead with a tear gas canister that left a bloody wound and growing welt. “That’s the definition of dictatorship.”

For weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and its regional allies have been amassing emergency food and medical supplies on three of Venezuela’s borders with the aim of launching a “humanitarian avalanche.” It comes exactly one month after Guaido, in a direct challenge to Maduro’s rule, declared himself interim president at an outdoor rally.

Even as the 35-year-old lawmaker has won the backing of more than 50 governments around the world, he’s so far been unable to cause a major rift inside the military — Maduro’s last-remaining plank of support in a country ravaged by hyperinflation and widespread shortages.

Amid the standoff, Guaido was turning to diplomatic actions.

As night fell, he refrained from asking supporters to continue risking their lives and make another attempt to break the government’s barricades. Instead, he said he would meet U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence on Monday in Colombia’s capital at an emergency meeting of mostly conservative Latin American governments to discuss Venezuela’s crisis.

But he did make one last appeal to troops.

“How many of you national guardsmen have a sick mother? How many have kids in school without food,” he said, standing alongside a warehouse in the Colombian city of Cucuta where 600 tons of mostly U.S.-supplied boxes of food and medicine have been stockpiled. “You don’t owe any obedience to a sadist…who celebrates the denial of humanitarian aid the country needs.”

Guaido later tweeted that he had decided to “propose in a formal manner to the international community that we keep all options open to liberate this country which struggles and will keep on struggling.”

A demonstrator is given first aid after he was hit in the head with a tear gas canister fired from the Venezuelan side of the border by the Bolivarian National Police, at the Tienditas International Bridge near Cucuta, Colombia, Saturday, Feb. 23, 2019, on the border with Venezuela.

Earlier, Maduro struck a defiant tone, breaking diplomatic relations with Colombia, accusing its “fascist” government of serving as a staging ground for a U.S.-led effort to oust him from power and possibly a military invasion.

“My patience has run out,” Maduro said, speaking at a massive rally of red-shirted supporters in Caracas and giving Colombian diplomats 24 hours to leave the country.

Clashes started Saturday well before Guaido straddled a semi-truck and waved to supporters in a ceremonial send-off of the aid convoy from Cucuta. In the Venezuelan border town of Urena, residents began removing yellow metal barricades and barbed wire blocking the Santander bridge. Some were masked youth who threw rocks and later commandeered a city bus and set it afire.

“We’re tired. There’s no work, nothing,” Andreina Montanez, 31, said as she sat on a curb recovering from the sting of tear gas used to disperse the crowd.

The single mom said she lost her job as a seamstress in December and had to console her 10-year-old daughter’s fears that she would be left orphaned when she decided to join Saturday’s protest.

“I told her I had to go out on the streets because there’s no bread,” she said. “But still, these soldiers are scary. It’s like they’re hunting us.”

At the Simon Bolivar bridge, a group of aid volunteers in blue vests calmly walked up to a police line and shook officers’ hands, appealing for them to join their fight.

But the goodwill was fleeting and a few hours later the volunteers were driven back with tear gas, triggering a stampede.

At least 60 members of security forces, most of them lower-ranked soldiers, deserted and took refuge inside Colombia, according to migration officials. One was a National Guard major. Colombian officials said 285 people were injured, most left with wounds caused by tear gas and metal pellets that Venezuelan security forces fired.

A video provided by Colombian authorities shows three soldiers at the Simon Bolivar bridge wading through a crowd with their assault rifles and pistols held above their heads in a sign of surrender. The young soldiers were then ordered to lie face down on the ground as migration officials urged angry onlookers to keep a safe distance.

“I’ve spent days thinking about this,” said one of the soldiers, whose identity was not immediately known. He called on his comrades to join him: “There is a lot of discontent inside the forces, but also lots of fear.”

Guaido, who has offered amnesty to soldiers who join the opposition’s fight, applauded their bravery, saying it was a sign that support for Maduro was crumbling. Later, he greeted five of the military members, who in turn offered a salute, calling the opposition leader Venezuela’s “constitutional president” and their commander in chief.

“They aren’t deserters,” Guaido said. “They’ve decided to put themselves on the side of the people and the constitution. … The arrival of liberty and democracy to Venezuela can’t be detained.”

Analysts warn that there may be no clear victor and humanitarian groups have criticized the opposition as using the aid as a political weapon.

“Today marked a further blow to the Maduro regime, but perhaps not the final blow that Guaido, the U.S. and Colombia were hoping for,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “Threats and ultimatums from Washington directed to the generals may not be the best way to get them to flip. In fact, they are likely to have the opposite effect.”

International leaders including U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres are appealing for the sides to avoid violence. But at least two people were killed and another 21 injured in the town of Santa Elena de Uairen, near the border with Brazil, according to local health officials.

The opposition planned to hold three simultaneous aid pushes on Saturday. Aside from Colombia, they also had hoped to deliver humanitarian assistance by sea and through Venezuela’s remote border with Brazil, which Maduro ordered closed.

A man covers his face with a cap as he walks past a fire during a protest at the border between Brazil and Venezuela, Saturday, Feb.23, 2019.

Amid the sometimes-chaotic and hard-to-verify flow of information, opposition lawmakers and Guaido said the first shipment of humanitarian aid had crossed into Venezuela from Brazil — although reports from the ground revealed that two trucks carrying the aid had only inched up to the border itself.

Dueling demonstrations also took place in the capital. Government opponents, waving American flags and one of them dressed like Captain America in a nod to the Trump administration’s prominent role cornering Maduro, headed toward an air base. With the opposition mostly mobilized along the border, a much larger mass of red-shirted government supporters, some of them on motorcycles, filled streets downtown.

Venezuela’s military has served as the traditional arbiter of political disputes in the South American country, and in recent weeks, top leaders have pledged their unwavering loyalty to Maduro.

But that hasn’t discouraged young protesters like Juan David Candiales.

The 17-year-old said he sneaked out of his family’s home in Venezuela last week to help bring in the aid. Despite being shot four times in the leg with metal pellets, he raced back to the burned aid trucks late Saturday to square off with National Guardsmen one more time.

“I have to keep going back — because this is the country where I was born and it pains me,” he said. “If we can be here all night we will be here all night. I’m not going home until humanitarian aid is let into Venezuela.”

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gracewithducks · 6 years ago

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There is your heart (Matthew 6:19-24)

For the first few years of our marriage, Mike and I didn’t have a budget. We know, vaguely, that budgeting is important – but we didn’t bother. And as a result, just about every month, we found ourselves looking at the bank account and wondering, “Where did all our money go?” We would scramble and scrounge to pay our bills and rely far too heavily on credit cards.

When we finally did learn to budget, we were shocked to realize just how much money we were wasting on things that didn’t matter. Hundreds of dollars every month disappeared to quick and easy restaurant lunches, to impulse buys, to “just because it’s on sales” and “it’s only a few bucks.” And because we weren’t paying attention, when it came time to pay the taxes, to pay the medical bills, to try to plan for trips or dream for the future – or even to fulfill our pledge to the church – sometimes, the money just wasn’t there.

These days, we pay attention. You can ask my husband: we pay attention. We track every dollar that comes in, and we know where every single dollar goes. Nothing is wasted – and what’s amazing is, for the most part, we don’t miss those restaurant lunches and impulse buys. We don’t miss them, because instead of wasting and chasing our money, we’re making it work for us: we give to the churches off the top, we pay our debts, we save for our big bills – and we invest in our kids, in dance classes and swim meets, in saving for trips and camps and experiences that will become memories that we can share together.

Money is a powerful tool – when we’re paying attention, when we’re controlling it instead of letting it control us.

Something strange has been happening at our house lately, though. We’ve been going over budget, consistently, every month for the last few months. Thankfully, we had some flexibility – but as I’ve been moving money around, I was wondering, “What’s going on?”

And then on Friday night, I looked around our dinner table: and there were ten people at the table. Our family has been growing: college students, exchange students, colleagues and friends – ours has become a table where there is always room to set another plate and another place. And that, to me, is something worth investing in.

This month, we didn’t put hardly any money into our savings – and that’s because, instead, we gave to the CROP walk, and we supported our daughter’s school readathon, and we donated pizzas to the swim team, and yes, we did buy a few of those fast food lunches – but we did it on purpose, so that I could have a break in my day and spend time with a certain four-year-old who’s been missing her mommy, since I’ve been working so many extra hours the last few weeks.

Feeding hungry people, and supporting our schools, and investing in the community, and sharing time with my daughter: those are investments I’m willing to make. And we’re reshaping our budget so that those priorities are accounted for.

I recently spent some time with a colleague who pointed out that money, in itself, doesn’t make us happy – until we use it. It’s when we buy that thing we want, when we trade our money for resources and for experiences – when we’ve spent it, that’s when we realize it is possible, sometimes, to use your money to buy some happiness, for yourself and for the people around you.

The joy comes when we use it – when we use it with intention, when we use it on the things and the people that matter to us.

And how we use our money can reveal what it is that’s really important to us. Or, as Jesus says in our scripture for today, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart.”

For too many of us these days, our treasure is in our treasure itself. We spend our lives in the relentless pursuit of more – more money, more stuff, more power, so we can get more stuff and have more money. And as a result, we’ve created a world where a few people have stockpiled away more money than they could ever even possibly use across several lifetimes – while others beg on street corners, or carry water for their families, or work in factories for pennies an hour or a couple of dollars a day.

Where our treasure is – what it is that we treasure – says a lot about our hearts. It’s very telling to me that there are leaders – even self-professed Christian leaders – who will support a violent regime that murders through torture, simply because that regime is a great business partner. There are professed Christian leaders who will even say right-out: the money is worth more than one man’s life.

Money is a dangerous thing – because we forget what really matters. We forget that, as Christians, we profess that one person’s death can change everything. We profess that God loves everyone, every single human being on the face of the earth, that every single person is made in the image of the eternal God, and that God loves every single one of us so much that God would rather suffer and die than let us suffer and die, forgotten and alone.

We say the words. We know the story. But when push comes to shove – that’s when we find out if we believe it. That’s when we find out if we love God, or if we love money; that’s when we find out if we’re willing to count the cost of loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Too often, we choose money. Too often, we choose ourselves.

And sometimes it’s because of greed. But if we’re being honest, often, our selfishness and greed is actually borne out of our fear.

We’re afraid. We’re afraid, because we’ve seen what kind of world we live in. We’re afraid, because we think there’s not enough to go around. We’re afraid, because we know that this world can be a cruel and callous place – a place where nobody cares if you’re hungry, where they’ll let you go bankrupt if you get hurt or get sick, where – if tragedy strikes, there’s no safety net to catch you when you fall.

So we squirrel away what we can – because we’re afraid. We’re afraid that one day, there won’t be enough. One day, we will be all alone, and our resources will have run out.

We are so terrified no one will help us, that we are afraid to help others. But what if we imagine, what if we envision, a different way of living? What if we actually make it so? What if we were willing to risk being generous with our neighbors, to risk setting another seat at our table, to take care of one another – and maybe we’ll find that that one day, when it’s our turn, we’ve created a world where someone will be willing to care for us?

We don’t like to talk about money in the church. We don’t like to talk about it, because it makes us uncomfortable. It makes us uncomfortable for lot of reasons – for some of us, we don’t like having to look at what we have and how we’re using it; we don’t like to be reminded that we are rich, and others are struggling, and we have a moral and Christian obligation to do something about it. And for some of us, we are struggling. We may be rich from a global perspective – but most of the time, we are barely scraping by; there are many of us on a fixed income, many of us who are mired in debt, many of us who would love to be more generous, but genuinely don’t see any way to do it. And when the pastor starts talking about money, it can feel like we aren’t welcome if we can’t give or give more.

And I want to acknowledge all of that today. You heard me tell you up front: my family has had some lean years. My family has made mistakes and gotten ourselves so mired in debt that it was hard to imagine any way out. And if that’s where you are – I’d love to talk to you, to share our journey, to offer any resources I might be able to share – and more than that, to reaffirm for you that you are welcome here, that your presence and your gifts – your skills, your passion, your friendship, your faith – are worth so much more than money. And I hope you know that God loves us, not because of what we can give or what we can do for God – but because of who God is.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus meets people where they are. Jesus loves people where they are. And that welcome, that love, continues today.

At the same time, though, Jesus sure does talk about money a lot, too. He warns his disciples: you can’t serve both God and wealth. He tells them, and tells us: be careful of storing up treasures for yourself; where your treasure is, there is your heart.

Jesus has a lot to say about money, because it’s dangerous. It’s easy for money to get in our way. It’s easy for our debts, our bills, our obligations, our worries, our greed and our fear to overwhelm us, to make us want to hold back, to keep us from loving God with all we have and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.

As I was preparing for the sermon this week, my husband shared with me a story told by one of his favorite theologians, Peter Rollins:

Early one morning a man turned up at the house of his minister in tears, saying “Please, can you help. A kind and considerate family in the area is in great trouble. The husband recently lost his job, and the wife cannot work due to health problems. They have three young children to look after, and the man’s mother lives with them because she is unwell and needs constant care. They have no money at the moment and if they don’t pay the rent by tomorrow morning the land lord is going to kick them all out onto the street, even though it’s the middle of winter.” The minster replied, “That’s terrible. Of course we will help. I will go get some money from the church fund to pay their rent. Anyway, how do you know them? To which the man replied “Oh, I’m the landlord.”[1]

It’s so easy for us to say “someone should do something” while letting our own greed or our own fear get in the way of seeing what it is that we, ourselves, can do. That’s why money is so dangerous.

But at the same time, money is also one of the most powerful tools for ministry that we have. With money, we can feed people; we can clothe the naked; we can comfort the afflicted; we can help the sick and hurting be healed; we can invest in education and relief and offer individuals and families and communities hope for the future. How we use our money matters. It matters to us; it matters to the world; and it matters to God.

Over the last few years, our congregation has been stepping up ministries: we’ve brought on new staff members to invest in our members through education programs and congregational care; we’ve added new kids’ classes, and new small groups; we’ve held our first Love in Action day of service; we’ve built community through pancake dinners and summer picnics and harvest potlucks. We’ve been investing in our worship together, in building relationships, in growing in our faith, and we’ve been generous – giving locally and globally to help meet people where they are, to bring help and hope in the name of Christ.

Our congregation has been stepping up our ministries. And this year, we’re asking our members to step your support of those ministries – to look at what you’ve been given, and prayerfully consider how you might step up your giving, your investment in the work that God is doing here.

Over the next couple of weeks, if you’re on our mailing list, you’ll be receiving some information about the work the church is doing and our hopes for the coming year – and an invitation to be a part of that ministry, to share some of what you have so that we can share the good news in ways that matter.

We’ll talk more in the weeks to come. But for what it’s worth, I want to let you know that my family is going to be stepping up our support of the church. We believe in the work that happens here. We believe that the work of this church – our worship, our fellowship, our learning, our service – it matters. And we want to do what we can to make sure those ministries don’t just continue but they continue to grow in the year to come. My hope is that you’ll join us; that you will prayerfully consider stepping up, too.

How we use what we have – it matters. Where your treasure is, your heart follows. I want my heart to follow Christ, so I want my treasure to follow him, too – I want to use what I have to love people, to transform the world, so the love of God might be revealed and lives be changed.

May you listen for God’s call. May you find the courage to be generous, in spite of your fear. And together, may we invest our resources and our lives in God’s work.

God, you know what holds us back. You know the debts we carry, the fears we face, the struggles before us, the wounds within us. We pray that you would surround us with your grace, that you would renew in us the assurance that you love us, just as we are, without one plea. And we ask that you would pour out your Holy Spirit upon us once more, to empower us to follow where you lead us, to use our time, our talents, and yes, our treasure, for the sake of your work in the world. May your love be revealed in us, and through us; in the name of Christ we pray. Amen.

[1] Peter Rollins (via patheos.com]

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benjamingarden · 5 years ago

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How We Paid Off Our Debt With Meal Planning

A Few Things I Learned About Myself (and Meal Planning)

I had to just do it. Regardless of what I came up with for excuses as to why it didn't work or wouldn't work, I just had to do it.

I fought against having a cash budget for grocery shopping but it wasn't until I finally gave in and converted that I met my budget - every. single. week.

I meal planned one week at a time. Some elect to meal plan for a month at a time, but it was too much time for me to work with and felt overwhelming, so I worked on the next week every single week.

Shopping my pantry first was key. Trying to plan meals around what you already have on hand, even if it's just a few items, will definitely save you money.

We ate out 1-2 times per month so we didn't feel deprived. They were pre-determined times so I was able to plan much of the remainder of the week's meals from our pantry and freezer.

Where We Are Today

We've reduced our needs and wants. And we've been able to properly identify which is which, unlike earlier in our journey.

We started and grew a business completely debt-free. It wasn't easy, we were both working full-time while doing it, but it is sooooo worth it.

We live (well) on a lot less than we'd thought would be comfortable for us. This has allowed us to work for ourselves and keep our business small as we'd hoped to do.

How We Paid Off Our Debt With Meal Planning was originally posted by My Favorite Chicken Blogs(benjamingardening)

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