POST by JED: Selling Stuff

I awoke to the drip-drip-dripping that only one of my parents' beach mission camping trips could induce. That's right, "it's 5am and I'm soaking wet, and although I'm 4 years old and a regular bed wetter (psychologists of the World unite!), this one's not on me." Higher powers are at work...

And so we troops off with our plastic bowl and plastic cup to get a scoop full of delicious hot mush and a cup brimming with refreshingly watered down water. Which, had my parents mentioned, I would have reminded them about my sleeping bag, which contained more than enough water to subdue the thirst of every parched Ethiopian...

We promptly returned to our camping quarters so that we could grab our bathroom gear and fling ourselves through the showers(?).  Then it was drag comb through hair, across teeth and off to the morning meeting we'd trot.

Hail! It was the 70s... Abba reigned, as did big hair, bellbottoms and disco. Good times. What was also fun-in-the-sun was the year I learnt about pet rocks. Cause pet rocks rock!

The praise and worship time ended and whilst undergarments were promptly being repositioned, guest speakers announced, and trapeze artists ascended the rigging, us kids were shuffled off through the side flap of the grandiose marquee for our daily class with "Sky" - the tree hugging, dark-glass-lens wearing, Jesus loving delectate that she was.

"aaaand today kids, we're going to learn all about making pet rocks. Cause pet rocks remind us of our pet, the Rock, JC, who we all currently have our feet on." My brother's and my response, "riiiiiiight..." It may be lost in translation, but this happy-hippy-JC freak was onto something. Money! That's right, pure and simple, muchas mullas.

And so that day I cleared the entire beach, at an undisclosed location (I was 4, give me some grace... And yes, my parents will be writing to say that I was actually 5, the beach was called blah, blah, blah, and seventies pop culture was the beginning of the end for Australian society...), of all pebbles and rocks.

I hauled every single solid object from the beach back to my parents delightful double-roomed tent (which were all the rage during the 70s, a home-away-from-home...)  and fell into my waterbed for a delightful 12 hours of rambunctious Z action.

Of course, those 12 hours were cut in half because of the ensuing tidal waters, sent to God's green Earth by way of thunder and lightening. I advised my parents I was leaving in the morning by raising my dripping hand in the air, as the lilo I used as a bed floated past that of my father and mother's.  To my surprise the bed miraculously floated right out of our tent and straight into the circus marquee just in time for another day of Beach Mission Madness (that's an example of just how spiritual our Beach Mission Missions were), a real hoot for any would-be holidayer.

I enjoyed yet another 2 hours of jubilation-styled praise and worship before once again being shepherded  out to a session with Smoking Sky. (Who looked like she was high by way of her bloodshot eyes and artificial exuberance for small children, whilst simultaneously holidaying on the set of Noah's Ark... But thinking back, nearly everyone was unrealistically happy, as the camp was only 10 days long and who wouldn't be thrilled-to-bits with 1,000 complete strangers in close proximity, limited clothes washing facilities during the monsoon season of New South Wales, half a dozen bathrooms for the hordes and bootcamp stlyed dining cuisine?)

I finished my worksheet on Jesus'  time in the hot, dry desert (without rain, might I add... "Yes, horrid time he must have had" my 4 year-old brain thought, not being able to believe that the tormentation he was suffering worse than the dampness I was having to endure...) and swam back to our tent, where I immediately set to work on making my designer range of original pet rocks (which I'm sure are now collectors items in Musée du Louvre). My brilliant, 4 year old brain had concocted the most mind bogglingly spectacular idea. I... was... to... create... a PET ROCK SHOP!

I spent hundreds of hours (which in reality was probably more like hundreds of seconds) sculpting, and forming, designing and planning. I drew with my silvery sparkly pen like no other 4 year old in the history of our Worl - I'm going to go out on a limb here and say UNIVERSE!

It was superb... I arranged my showroom, put the signs up and heralded the poor, unsuspecting sales victims through my contempary, artistic, concept-driven sales area. (So romantic... A gondala ride through the back quarters of the Brien's tent at Burleigh Heads...)

I made a fortune! $2.36. My parents of course were very impressed as well. I'd managed to move 3% of my stock in a single day! The weight of the "front room" had been reduced to 3.5 tons of pure rubble, but all with adorable little hand drawn faces (2 x eyes and a banana of a mouth (On some I'd even attempted to add hair and teeth - those ones must have been rather especially beautiful 'cause I think I recall hearing  a few "Oh God" and "Jesus Christ" comments. I clearly was pushing people into the Church, via my felt tip...))

In any case, I had a great time and it made my beach mission experience even more worthwhile. Needless to say my parents only ever "visited" the "mission" after that year.

Further on down the track, and my thirst for the sale had not subsided. When I was eight years old I, along with my parents, moved to Youth With A Mission in Canberra, Australia (the Nation's Capital). The building we lived in was an old monastery and for many reasons I loved this place.

One of the reasons I loved the ol' place so much was due to my captive audience. If I were to sell in our neighbourhood, I'd have to walk from door-to-door along long, wide leafy streets. In the monastery I was able to sell door-to-door along long, closely connected rooms, filled with missionary people suffering with a rare type of yucky food malyumtrition. (the food at YWAM wasn't really food... Some kind of bio-bad-bi-product...)

There wern't enough rocks lying around at YWAM and so I hunted high and low for the next best thing. I often meandered into the kitchen and watched the staff trot around making this and that. Everything was commercial and hence, lots and lots of waste. Excellent for profiteers!

 I would always linger around the dessert making area and wait for one of the YWAMers to make a mistake. They always did. "Aaaa-HUH! She's left too much batter in the bowl!" I'd race over, whilst simultaneously knocking over the poor cook as she was trying to turning back to get the rest of the sustenance out of the bowl. (The poor dear had only left the unprepared food for a single micro-second before I was into it!)

I don't know how it came to be that I wasn't booted out. What right did I have to be in there? I didn't pay for the ingredients, nor the electricity, and I greedily kept ALL of the profits for myself. What a palaver that all was...

The turning point for me was when compassion kicked in. I was working at Flight Centre Limited in Canberra, Australia. I was the manager of our small operation, with just 4 people bringing in the dollars. I was known around town as Jed the Travel Agent/Social Worker. I loved my customers and didn't give a rats about the dineros. We had fun. I can bring to mind thousands of knee slapping, thigh whacking action, too many to dialogue here... 

My workers were generally the same as I. We cared about service and process, not about the big bucks that other agencies went for. We were a family and regularly enjoyed practical jokes. (This is generally where we are more "British" than "American") On one occasion, whilst I was serving a couple of corporate clients, one of my newer workers, unfamiliar with business etiquette, tackled me to the ground right in front of my customers as they were paying for their first class holiday to Dubai!

We were always at the bottom of the pack, in terms of profits, but our sales were high and our customers loved us and really, that's all we cared about. Then one day, that all changed...

Enter, super-sonic sales celebrity of the CENTURY! Now I don't want to use actual names so we'll just call this  bird Cath. This girl could sell ice to Eskimos. On several occasions this highly capable and ultimately terrifying woman had me floored. Literally, floored. (One time, in response to some of the dazzling behaviours exhibited by our Cath, I actually fell to the ground and lay on the floor as one of our highest paying customers walked through the door. My response? "And how may I be of service to you today?" She just laughed and helped me off the ground.)

Cath loved her customers as much as, in fact if not more than, the rest of us. However, she was able to make the distinction between the love of her customers and the love of herself. She would often say to me "Jed, it's 7pm at night! I've got for children at home. Any person I service at this time is going to be paying for it!!!" And pay for it they would.

On one occassion Cath hugged a woman, who leaned into Cath's five-foot-nothing frame and cried like a wee-tot. It was both awful and beautiful... This woman's mother had just unexpectedly passed away and Cath was organising her travel arrangements to the UK.

Cath also began to cry. She eventually started balling. In the end I had to remind myself who's mother had actually died. I handed out the tissues and even took a couple for myself. It was one of those eternally gratifying moments (in a sense).

As a travel agent, I too had been in this position several times. It's a time in your life when you just kind of have to drop everything and open your arms. No one was better at this than Cath. The empathy and heart-felt responses oozed out of her. She could change the heart and mind of any customer walking through the doors. Any "problem customers" I always let Cath deal with. That great big smile, feminine way, and determination were far too great a combo for even the worst traveller to get around.

But, like the saying goes, "all good things must come to an end..." After an hour and a half, the woman sulked out the door, we stood there waving to her, like we were family seeing her off at the departures hall in Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport.

"Gosh, that was sad..." I murmered. Cath swung around, still wiping the tears and mascara from her eyes but with a grin from ear to ear. She cheerfully exclaimed, "yeah... but I still made $900 out of her!" I then hurled my body to face her, with possibly a shocked look across my face "YOU MADE HOW MUCH?!?!?!?!" Cath, starting to giggle, repeated  the figure. The shock that went through my body I cannot tell, but it was in those moments that I most admired Cath, for the guts and for the determination. The customer felt loved and cared for, and her kids were all sporting new Nikes the very next day...

Nine hundred dollars was a LOT of money to me. Liz and I had already discussed these types of "sales dilemma-type issues so many times before (Liz, before studying journalism at university, had been in sales and had made more money than me, and I was in the high paying field (at the time) of information technology...).

Liz felt that after 5pm my fees should increase. Really, I mean on average I never left the shop until 7pm, and on a nightly basis. So I was virtually losing 10 hours per week to people I wasn't even in any kind of relationship with. Liz says it's one of my design flaws, a pastor's heart... ha ha 

In every instance of death-in-the-family, I would always do everything at cost for my customers. In fact, I used to lower my figures for any kind of reason. At one time, a girl from Adelaide had just experienced a messy break-up with her boyfriend. I found her an awesome deal with Finnair (I do love that airline) and Qantas Airways (do I have to say it??? The SPIRIT of AUSTRALIA!!!) to Europe, during peak season, for $1400 (including taxes). I spent many, many hours on a booking for a lady that I'd never met, in a city not my own, and personally received, after tax, less than $10. (Though her Dad did call to personally thank me and tell me just how happy his daughter was... I still remember his chipper voice.)

And so... here we are in Nicaragua. I, along with my wife and children, have left all of the beautiful people I love and cherish, and have entered yet another realm of sales. I believe we're all sales people in a way. When we walk out the door, every single day, we "sell" the goodness that life can bring to those around us. Do they buy it? 'Tis up to them. We "sell" ourselves. What kind of price do we put on our words, actions, and thoughts? Are they priceless?

And then when we do make mistakes, and who doesn't, who buys those? When we speak pure evil, we're vendors, but who is the purchaser? When we are unkind, when we think evil of others, who is paying for that? We ultimately bare a consequence for our sinful ways, it's kind of like a variable seller's cost, but who pays the total price for our sin?

Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins. All we have to do is understand that yes, we are sinners. We've all made mistakes. We need to understand that Jesus paid for our sins by dying on the cross for us. We need to believe in him - believe that HE is God. We need to invite him into our lives and give him the place he deserves, as our Lord, our Father, the one who eternally is, the one who loves us... Who loves you...

Thanks for reading my blog today. My family's work revolves around the chronic needs of Nicaraguans, who also need a spiritual father. However, our desire is to reach those who don't have a physical father, who don't have access to an education, to health facilities, to a sufficient daily diet. We want to pray with those who are in prison, we want to feed and clothe the poor. Please pray for us today - we need your support...