Ben Norcia’s Blog (from the journals of the greatest missionary rapper) Ep 4: B plot

 

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” Romans 1:16

 

This week, we have begun having less sessions in order to clear up our afternoons to get real experience doing local evangelizing and practicing all that we have been learning while at camp. We have gone out each afternoon in teams, so for the first time, the Sack-habitants have been split in half. This has led to the development of two separate plot lines. Theirs, which involves an X-squad girl team, Sam trying to name a stranger’s baby Otis, and other Team Othy adventures featuring other fan favorites like Clayton and the barefooted stranger, will not be included. Meanwhile, we had our own accounts which has been called “B-plot”. I like to think this is because Ben starts with B and not that they would ever imply we are the second tier story. Anyways, here goes B-plot!

 

(from journal entry: “Conclusion of Week 3 – Current Events 9/24/23)

“I’ll kick off this section by letting you know everything that follows will probably be really light hearted. Anyone seeking wisdom or knowledge here will be banned from this section with no refund.”

It is worth noting the following “current events” are often exaggerated or viewed through a non nonpartisan lens.

“First order of business is the housing drama. In Girl Village, the after effects of the Great Girl Village Night Flood are being felt. I’ve heard from many suburban homeowners various rumors, complaints, and frustrations. Due to the water damage they suffered, some city dwellers were forced to flee to “the country” or the quiet outskirts of the village. Country goers have made this disapproval known. The quiet country living is now overrun by riffraff. The worse life down there gets the more thankful I am to be a member of the Sack.”

Village life has reached an all time low. There were many other negatives I didn’t include (snoring) and even a casualty from last night. In a vicious political assassination attempt, one girl plummeted from fifteen feet in the air while sleeping. Her own hammock had sold her out. It is truly a lawless wasteland. The Sack, meanwhile, was at the end of its own drama caused by HOA president Doug falling victim to the dreaded strepdemic. He was the only boy quarantined with about a dozen or so girls. A nightmare for the man.

“He swore he was miserable having to be stuck with girls after recounting getting Zaxby’s for lunch, Starbucks, and ice cream from Walmart. “Doug what is the worst part about being stuck with girls all the time?” “Uhh, being stuck with girls all the time.” He was quite peeved (to say the least) about his situation and he became almost unresponsive after discovering we all had the freedom to spend a day at the lake and then attend a dirt road racing derby in the evening. His anguish was so visible you had to feel for the guy.”

note: Doug was an excellent sport and not only did he become good friends with the girls, he was even spotted teaching and learning dances with his new roommates. He ended up having a great time and all the girls loved his company. We all love Douggy, and we’re thankful to have him back in the Sack by now.

“Fast forward a sweet lake day and we wind up at me sleeping through breakfast Sunday morning, supporting my dominant oversleeping campaign this season. I certainly lead the league in breakfasts missed by a considerable margin. It’s one of the more dominant parts of my missionary game.”

The next paragraph is a dull summary of some afternoon activities and then a description of some laundry smuggling. If anyone asks, yes the last two weeks I’ve bucket washed my clothes and not smuggled them out to various sources for cleaning. To avoid ruffling any feathers with an explanation of my extensive efforts to avoid bucket washing, I will skip a considerable chunk of the entry.

 

(from journal entry: “What in the world is going on in Gainesville, GA?” 9/25/23)

“We did our first day of local evangelizing downtown today and like what in the world? We pulled up to evangelize to homeless people and ended up getting evangelized to?”

Unfortunately, the rest of this journal entry is completely random. After attempting to rewind and tell the story of the day most of the journal entry ends up being occupied by an expression of distaste (to say the least) for the failure of BNBftjtgmrE3:MH&MY at the polls (no, I didn’t just spam random things on the keyboard its an abbreviation for my blog title. I know. I’m working on it). Fortunately, I am a mature adult and would never be upset about not winning best Blog at the Bloggie’s. Had I been, I would certainly think it to be based, as that blog definitely deserved to win. I mean, it was – *my editor has cut off the remaining two paragraphs of ranting about the “snubbing” as apparently people don’t want to read about that* The journal entry we talked about earlier before getting distracted then gives a weirdly accurate description of the creek I sat beside while not writing what I intended to write.

 

(from journal entry: “The Origin of Norciangelizing” 9/26/23)

“I think at this time I do owe an apology to you, my dear nonexistent reader for my failure to return to and finish my last journal entry.”

I found this pretty funny but the abhorrent failure to use punctuation almost kept it out of the blog.

“Here’s how evangelizing has been going! Yesterday, team Banks was loaded up into an Adventures in Missions van along with a girl team including Lianne, Peyton, and the rest of their team except Grace, who I haven’t seen in a few days. She’s probably fallen victim to the dreaded strepdemic. Anyways, the first day of local ministry we had some lady bail on us so we ended up all just going out to street evangelize. We split into teams of 3 because John T’s strepdemic infused absence left us with an even number. So I set off into the great downtown of Gainesville, GA. Dom evangelized to a homeless man for about an hour, he seemed to be somewhat faithful in title rather than practice so overseeing their conversation was quite moving. Doug and I attempted to evangelize to a man who mistook us for mormons. He seemed flattered by our kindness but mostly uninterested. While we waited for Dom our search for targets somehow landed us in a Cinnabon.”

If you could, please pray for the man who Dom talked to. His name is Brent and he’s starting a new job on Monday. He’s very kind and he’s trying to get back on his feet right now.

“… I was lost and for some reason we ended up traveling atop a parking garage and then ending up successfully at the city’s central park. It was a grassy square, shaded in the middle by trees and a large monument which turned out to be a large statue of some confederate soldier with the dates 1861-1865.”

We stopped to talk to a homeless man in the park for a while. Banks, Peyton, and Maggie ended up running into us there and staying to talk. After a short while, the man’s friend arrived to join in the conversation.

“The man who joined us was a few inches over 6 ft tall with a buff, powerlifter build. He rocked a flat brim hat, aviators, a snow white beard, and one of the most eye catching T shirts I’ve ever seen. It was a long-sleeve white T that had been completely written and drawn all over. The art contained Bible verses, phrases, images from Hebrew and Egyptian cultures including the Ten Commandments, and much more I was unable to identify during my entranced study of his outfit. On a day out to evangelize to the people of Gainesville we ended up spending our final hour or so being evangelized to.”

This man quoted more scripture verses than anyone I’ve ever met, and they all applied perfectly to his points. Oh yeah and by the way the verses were each in the KING JAMES version. I spent most of the conversation with my brain so overloaded I couldn’t move or contribute anything so I just tried to retain as much of this wisdom as possible.

“My brain was so overloaded by the scholarly theological conversation between him and Banks that I’m still registering some of what was said. He touched on and explained a variety of topics all while churning out verses containing fake Shakespeare words like “thy” and “thou”. He explained his shirt as he was wearing it as a “banner”.”

This must have been some important scriptural Old Testament reference because it triggered a  Doug fun fact. Around when we needed to be getting back to the van and were forced to end our conversation we asked his name so we could pray for him and he could pray for us.

“I have many names” he said with an amused smile. “But the name the Lord has given me is Reginald.”

While an unorthodox character, Reginald was the real deal. All the people there knew and learned from him in that park. Legendary.

“Fast forward an uneventful evening, glorious breakfast, session filled morning, and delicious lunch, the story finds us back in the afternoon, back in the AIM van, and back with the team of girls. In classic gender role fashion the men were blessed with honorable, glorious, difficult, sweaty, painful (yea it really wasn’t bad but for my sake imagine it to be grueling) manual labor in the form of landscaping an elderly couple’s front yard. The jungle we found upon our arrival was quite a formidable task. I feared the flocks of vicious wildlife that had surely taken up refuge in the protection of the property’s homegrown rainforest so I stuck mainly to the clearing of the front walkway. Despite my doubts that the thick jungle floor could ever be hiding something beneath itself we did eventually uncover and completely clear a quaint stone tile formation leading to the house. After we concluded our tough, masculine endeavor we were able to indulge in the spoils of our success (Banks stopped at Chic fil a en route to the girls and I got a strawberry milkshake).

 

(from journal entry: “DOGs in the kitchen” 9/27/23)

“This week all the teams are getting to take turns preparing meals for the rest of the camp. This morning was Team DOG’s turn and we really showed up in a big way. We did not waste this opportunity to display our collective culinary expertise, rather we prepared a breakfast flawlessly. We carefully and meticulously poured each of the different four different types of cereal into eight different large containers, ingeniously putting each cereal in two containers. We also displayed our understanding of foods that go well together by putting milk out with our entree. Everyone is really impressed I’m sure. We’re basically heroes.”

 

(from journal entry: “Oktoberfestangelization” 9/29/23)

“In case my ingeniously crafted title had the unintended consequence of confusing you because it hardly even resembles a real word, allow me to break it down. Team Banks ATL’d (Ask The Lord) it yesterday. We went a ways away to Helen, GA (shoutout Mrs Coach) where we found ourselves at a Dutch-themed town’s Oktoberfest. It was not, in fact, a town that put up Dutch decorations, stands, and shops. It was a town where everything was Dutch themed (except the people, they were 99% old white southerners). I’ve never seen so many funnel cakes in one place before. The buildings had that weird, tall, Dutchified architecture and there were various flags everywhere (varied between North America and Western Europe that is). Upon arrival we split into pairs, Doug and I elected to team up. I don’t know if I forgot we were in the Bible belt or some other missionaries beat us to the fake Dutch festival because as Doug and I made friends with the fake Dutchified tourists and residents every single one was Christian. Naturally, our encouraging of people’s faiths and spreading of joy took us to a street magician, funnel cake joint, and ice cream shop. I’ll evangelize at a fake Dutch Oktoberfest anytime. To my surprise, when it was time to leave not only did we arrive at the van on time but we were even the second duo there. The other two duos ended up being a few minutes late, turns out they weren’t downing schnitzels with the oldies at the pub but they’d somehow managed to get lost in Georgia’s smallest fake Dutch town.”

After concluding our fake Dutch adventures Doug, John T, and I helped The Bill Swan on some more adventures around Georgia for the end of our afternoon through dinner.

“The girls had some girl thing tonight so Bill, Banks, and Dawson took all the guys bowling. It was tons of fun and I spent most of the time trying to negotiate a fantasy trade with Banks.

As I type this conclusion while enjoying a coffee at the Brogus Bakery, I must say that residing in this strange Bible belt land of Oktoberfests, Confederate statues, Kingly Banner-men, and strepdemics, life is pretty awesome.

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(from left: Sam, Me, Elijah, Clayton)