The NET challenge: Ten Thousand Dollars, Twelve Short Stories, and Three Months

It's not often that you find yourself writing a story about a cult of evil bananas in order to try to bring people closer to God.

But that, ironically, may be just what I'm doing over the next three months, because I'm raising ten thousand dollars.

This coming school year, I've been invited to serve with NET Ministries.
After an intensive five week training program, NET sends 150 young adults in teams of 8-12 across the country to give retreats and share their faith with youth, offering them something better than what they might find in broken homes, unsupportive schools and peers, and cultural pessimism.
In a word, Evangelization. (A big word, but still just a word.) In case you don't know that word, it basically means to spread Christ's love, especially through actions and how you live. (In this context.)

I hate to wake up and hear somebody talking about how this kid just committed suicide, or that guy came into school with a gun. It stinks to live in a culture where we just seem to accept insane divorce rates, teenage depression, substance abuse, and twelve year olds addicted to drugs and pornography. 

I think you hate it too.

But if we don't have anything better to offer, we can't fix the problem at its root.

We do.

My name is Samuel Wong, and I'm going to go travel the country, sing, perform skits, carry furniture, subsist on parish charity(apparently something called "eggbake" is particularly common), and generally make a fool of myself to attack that problem. The problem of people not even knowing who Christ is, not realizing that someone really does love them. I want to share the good news. I want to share how God has worked in my own life.

And you can help.

NET asks us to raise five thousand dollars to cover the costs of lugging someone around the country for nine months. That's about a hundred retreats, and seven thousand young people reached- -by one single NET team.

Over seventy thousand young people are going to be able to experience a NET retreat this year, and you can help, with any kind of donation, be it money, sharing this with a friend, and especially, prayers.

We aren't just gonna leave it like that: we're gonna have some fun.
I pledge to you, the reader, that for every thousand dollars raised, I'll write an epic short story- if you need an example, check out Death of the Flies.
If you need another example, check out The Worst Decision.
If you need another example go donate so I can post more stories.

When we hit ten thousand dollars, I'll post an awesome semi-anthology thingy with all ten of those short stories, plus:
Two bonus stories by me.
Two bonus ones by guest authors.
Cool bonus artwork by the Unleavened Ministries' Olaf.

I think that we can totally do ten thousand dollars.
Don't just sit there. Click here to donate. (Takes just three quick steps!)

Then share this opportunity with someone else who cares. Because that's what it's about.

Thanks for your time,
Sam Wong

EDIT:

$1,000 Milestone! - Poorly Timed Snack. This is one of my typical stories, I eat food and it horribly backfires, (metaphorically in this case) and it's pretty much a true story.

$2,000 Milestone! - Banana Cartel. This is something a little bit different. I enjoy a whole lot of O. Henry and early twentieth century short stories, so I kind of messed around with something along the lines of that style, but different at the same time. Just a warning, very Deadpan.

$3,000 MILESTONE! -  Lost Frog WOW. More than half way there. This is truly awesome. This story, even it's name, is one of my freewriting projects/story I have wanted to tell for a while. I do have a tendency to get lost in ridiculous ways, and I did write this kind of without thinking. Freewriting is like that. Take a subject, write write write. It's not my best work, but it is a great example of what happens when I freewrite.

P.S. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or contact me directly at my email, astoolamongchairs@gmail.com ( I read anything and everything you guys send!)

Vegetarians, I don't hate you.

For some reason half of the stories I write here turn into making jokes at the expense of the poor people who actually try to eat healthily. It's a complete accident, I promise.

It's not like I get up in the morning with a food hangover from the fried chicken sandwiches the day before and say: "Today, I'm going to make myself feel better by picking on people who make better choices than me."
Or if I do, it's the subconscious.

It gets to be troubling, because it isn't just stories, but also how I react to situations. I have in the past made fun of nice people who eat raw broccoli because it is healthy and probably damaged their reputations. There is unfortunately not much of a control unit between Mr. Brain and Mr. Boca.
(Boca means mouth in Spanish. I have a bad habit of populating my sentences with spanish frases, pero no puedes anything about it.)
Or Spanglish phrases at any rate. (Why does Spanglish sound like some disgusting pseudo-Italian dish?)

I've attempted to add some kind of dam in the thought-to-word flow, but my capitalistic brain decided to charge tolls.
Oh well. At least I have EZ-Pass.

That's a stupid analogy because they don't charge tolls on dams.
But don't give them any ideas.

It's especially a problem since I've frequented mostly homeschooler circles over the course of my young life, and (homeschooler fun fact for those of you who don't know much about us) about every third homeschooler you meet has some kind of weird hippie-food thing.
I just did it again. We'll rephrase that. Some kind of responsible I-will-take-care-of-my-body-thing. So they get natural peanut butter and don't eat dairy and all that stuff. Coolio. When people talk about how in depth their health regimes are, I just kind of stare and say stuff like:
"Well... I brush my teeth regularly..."
"I make sure to read the sides of the cereal boxes so I know what I'm eating..."
and the best:
"Yea, I exercised once. It was nice." (Awkward silence after this one.)

I think it's ironic, because culturally speaking, the stereotype is that girls and women are the ones who care about their health, and guys are just like,
"BACON!"

And it's unfortunately too true, but for some reason we of the male race seem to think that lifting weights for five minutes burns off all of the garbage we just imbibed for the previous six hours.
I assume it works kind of like burning random trash. The worst stuff just stays there amidst the ashes of everything else.
If that's true, my body is made up by about seventy percent of metaphorical melted plastic and clocks.

What, you don't set your clocks on fire?
You should.

Sometimes I legitimately try to follow the example of healthy people.

Sam reads a blog on burpees.
"I can do that." Sam thinks.
Sam does three burpees, cries, brain goes into a fuzz and he wakes up six hours later eating icecream out of a mixing bowl.

I do have an on-off relationship with exercise, but she hasn't been returning my calls.

Poetry+ Wrap Up for side projects+ plans for Freeflighting

On the Eating of Fudge:

I’d eat the fudge if I knew where it was-

But I don’t. So I won’t. 

-Me
(^This is an amazing poem I wrote once, by the way. Now you know what homeschoolers really spend their time doing.)



Hey all. That was an odd sort of in between. I did some fun stuff, wrote some odd stuff, wrote some really odd stuff. All good. I did put a lot of effort into Of Livestock. (And Mercenaries), probably more than it deserved, being a silly story that took a rather psychological twist in the second half. Not the best way of telling a story, surprising a reader like that. Oh well. Gotta just start writing somewhere, as they say on Writing Excuses.
Plus that means I probably won't do that kind of thing again.

Probably.

But on to the future.
Freeflighting will be returning soonish. I have sixish chapters of the second draft written, which means that once I hit ten I'll start on draft three, which will be published for all the world to see. It's gotten a lot different. A lot better in my opinion. (This whole system of doing it seems so confusing if you aren't in my head. I apologize.)
I'll be juggling format and stuff, moving things around, so don't be concerned if half of the posts disappear over the course of the next month or so. You might get some cool short stories, but all depends on if I can find the time. After school is over, I promise to get at least two funny stories out....

And there will be some extra special things going on this coming year. What kind of things?

More on that quite soon.

But not yet.


(Cue Evil Laughter.)

-Sam