Who was your most influential childhood mentor?

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

Everyone had someone they looked up to during their childhood. Apart from parents, who was your most influential childhood mentor??

[phkrause]

Good question Pam! Right now I can't think of anyone, but will think about it.

[M. T. Cross]

David Lee Roth.

[Jeannieb43]

My excellent elementary school teachers. We lived in Takoma Park while I was in grades 3 through 8, and I attended the Sligo school. Those teachers also taught the elementary ed. students at the college, so they had to be good. Such marvelous impressions they made on me.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

I think I would have to say Ed Noyes MD. I've known him since I was 6 years old, and he was always the most pleasant, dedicated, fun, person to be around. My family and his would go on vacations together. When he came back from Vietnam on furlough, he'd tell stories about his experiences. He listened and he cared (and still does care) about people. I've always thought he was one of the most exemplary Christians I've known.

[Aliensanctuary]

Our Wesleyan Methodist pastor, Pastor Jack, started an amateur radio club with the youth of the church when I was just starting high school. I think that jump-started my interest in science and mathematics. I made it to the Advanced Class amateur radio license, but my preferred mode was CW, Continuous Wave: Morse code, that is. It kind of reminds me of today's texting, including the specific abbreviations for shortcuts, but it was much, much slower and subject to poor radio reception conditions.xxxx_._.xxxx_ _._

I should have become a scientist, but I seemed to lack the social skills and motivation needed to succeed.

_ _...xxx..._ _

[JoeMo]

My very first "true love". We never made it as a couple, but she taught me more about unconditional love than any Bible study or male friend. My most vivid "glory days" memories are of my years with her in my late teens and early 20's Though we are both happily married and in our 60's now, we remain good friends.

[Gregory Matthews]

_._. _ _ ._ = CQ

_ _... ..._ _ = 73

O.K. Now tell us what the above means.

:)

[JoeMo]

Quote:

tell us what the above means.

Ummmmm ... CQ 73? I know it's old Morse Code

[Gail]

Joanne :)

[JoeMo]

In old-time ham radio lingo (back when you had to know Morse Code) CQ 73 meant "Attention - I love you" (I think).

[Naomi]

Quote:

Apart from parents, who was your most influential childhood mentor??

I have given this some thought and quite honestly can't think of a single person that had more influence on me than anyone else. I was blessed with a large, close net, often vocal family. That being said, I believe that aunts, uncles, older cousins,etc., alternated served as my "mentor" during various stages of my development.

[joeb]

I have to say the person who stands out the most in my childhood was Alvin Kurtz. He was the teacher in our one room, eight grade church school during my 3rd and 4th grades. He was the first person who ever showed me, and those around me, that I was of value.

My older brother engineered a constant stream of contempt, sneering, etc... towards me by constantly lying about me. Kids would come up to me and call me an idiot, a fool, a jerk, etc... as soon as they walked up to me. I'd ask why and they would tell me I knew what I'd done at home. I'd ask them what it was and it was something that had either never occured, or was very distorted so I would look bad. The only place the stories could have orignated was my older brother.

Well, one day Mr. Kurtz gave us a reading assignment and then said we could do anything we wanted to after we had read the assignment. So, I read it, and then got out a non-school book out of my desk and started reading. Mr. Kurtz came over to me a couple of minutes later and told me I was supposed to have read the assignment. I said I had and said he didn't believe me. Well, the titters and laughter were going all through the room. They all thought, "the idiot got caught". You could hear it in the laughter and what they said.

Mr. Kurtz told me to get the book the reading assignment was in out of my desk and give it to him. I did and he started asking me questions out of it. He asked me maybe ten questions or so and I answered every one of them. Then Mr. Kurtz turned around to the entire school room and said, "I could not have read this as fast as he did, and I could never have absorbed everything he did at that speed". He then turned to me and said, "I'll never question you again about anything. You are very good at this."

The school room was really silent for a long time afterwards. No tittering. No laughter. No mocking.

Mr. Kurtz was a very kind man, and looking back I can see that he set the entire situation up to give me public praise and show those around me that there were things in which I was much better than they were. That incident gave me a belief in myself I'd never had before. It gave me something to hang onto.

Mr. Kurtz died about 30 years or so ago from a heart attack, but he lives on in my memories as this wasn't the only time he engineered situations to make me look good, but it was the first time.

Thank you Mr. Kurtz. You were a good man, a good Christian. You lived with the love of Christ in his heart.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

[phkrause]

Praise the Lord for people like that. How do you and your brother get along now??

[joeb]

Praise the Lord for people like that. How do you and your brother get along now??

I have two brothers. My older brother, the brother in question here, and I haven't spoken since our mother's funeral in 1997 when he picked a verbal fight and walked away laughing. My little brother told me in 2006 that he had never considered me worth knowing and that we might be acquaintances, but would never be friends. That was his response to my overtures towards him when I tried to resolve the issues between he and I, and when I told him what had gone on in our family before he was born. He and I haven't spoken since as I figure there's no reason to attempt to communicate with someone who has that attitude, and he has never attempted to communicate with me either.

In 1994 my older brother sent me a letter telling me I am everything that is wrong with the world.... To say our family was/is extremely disfunctional is to put things mildly, and in very disfunctional families it's very common for the family members to pick one individual and make them the scapegoat for all their anger, frustration, hurt, etc.... That was the role they picked out for me and I rebelled against it because it violated my understanding of justice and fairness even at a young age. To say that made me unpopular with all of them is a massive understatement.

God is good. He has Mr. Kurtz's in many places for many people. I can only say that we have nothing to fear as long as we never forget how God has led us in the past. Ellen White was exactly spot on when she said that.

[Naomi]

Quote:

God is good. He has Mr. Kurtz's in many places for many people. I can only say that we have nothing to fear as long as we never forget how God has led us in the past. Ellen White was exactly spot on when she said that.

Amen

Thank you for sharing and through God's grace becoming the man you are today.

[phkrause]

That is definitely sad joeb. You figure that as we grow up and see life as it is around us, we would understand what its about and start forgiving our siblings. My brother and me, even though we were never at each others throuts(sp), but I used to pick on him and he told me that one day he would be bigger than me and kick my, you know what! LOL Anyway when he did get bigger than me he had grown up and we laughed about it.

[JoeMo]

joeb,

You have been through much. It was a very open and brave thing that you told us. In my eyes, God has been faithful to You. He has always given you the strength to stick by Him. His grace is all over you, brother! In Jesus you have a Friend that is closer than any brother could be. He's stuck by you and pulled you through stuff a less faithful man would have crumbled under.

[Gail]

Joeb, I am glad you are here! I am glad that you have found redemption in Christ. He doesn't only help us morally but He redeems us from all the sorrow the world has given us, even from our very own blood family.

You are precious to God and a blessing to us, too :)

[Gregory Matthews]

Joeb said:

Quote:

To say our family was/is extremely disfunctional is to put things mildly, and in very disfunctional families it's very common for the family members to pick one individual and make them the scapegoat for all their anger, frustration, hurt, etc.... That was the role they picked out for me and I rebelled against it because it violated my understanding of justice and fairness even at a young age. To say that made me unpopular with all of them is a massive understatement.

There is a school of psychology that follows the thought that you have expressed above. It is called "Systems Theory."

In this school of thought, the scapegoat that you have mentioned above is called the "Identified Patient" (IP). One interesting thing to me is that if the IP is removed from the family, the family picks another IP as it seemingly cannot exist without an IP.

NOTE: Systems theory involved systems, such as work place environments, other than family situations.

Those of you who are interested in this might want to read up on Systems Theory.

[joeb]

I won't answer each of you individually, but will combine my answers to each of you on one post.

I don't know that what I said/did here was brave. It's just the way things are for many people in a world of sin. I used to carry a load of guilt/shame because of how I grew up but I came to understand that I have nothing to feel guilty/shame about. I wasn't in the wrong no matter how often my family told me I was the cause of all the trouble. Oh, I'm not claiming to be a saint as I fought back and in fighting back I did some things I'm not very proud of. I lived to get even for quite few years. I'm still tempted to want to get even at times, but realize that that is just the wrong way to go about things and that it will never solve anything.

So, for those of you out there that are going through, or have gone through, the same things I did(physical, emotional, and sexual abuse) God grants us healing if we will surrender these things to Him. He wants to hear about it from us. He wants us to share it with Him, and when we do He will grant us healing when we share it with Him and allow Him to work things out. He will be a better friend to you than anyone else you'll ever meet. Let Him hear it all. The pain, the anger, the frustration, etc... that you feel is what He wants to hear from you. Don't be afraid let all those emotions loose on God. He understands. I guarantee it.

God will also bring you into contact with those He has prepared to help you. It may not be a professionally trained counselor either. It may be just that humble Christian who lives the love of God in ways that touch your heart and cause you to want to trust them with who you are. Ask God to lead you to them and you will know who they are when the time is right.

It was a big help to me to understand that I wasn't alone in what I went through. When I came to understand that others have gone, and are going, through the same things I was it helped a lot as I can remember back during the years I talked about here just sitting on my bed at home and crying after I got home from school because I felt so absolutely alone. Even though I thought no one else had ever experienced anything like it, I wasn't alone. Others have gone through the same things and made it out the other side, and knowing that is something that was a great blessing.

Everything I've gone through has taught me something. I've learned from it all. I wouldn't wish what I went through on my worst enemy, but God has used this to teach me things that I could have never learned in any other way, and that is a blessing beyond compare. To know, to understand, what it is that sin does, what it can do to people and the healing God can, and will, bring to us when we allow Him to is be able to trust God in all situations. That is a gift not many have been given. No matter how bleak things look God can always bring good out it. And God always has someone there to help even though we often don't realize until much later just how much help He has given us at the time. And whatever that help is, it's the very thing we needed right then.

Once again, Mr. Kurtz, you gave me far more than you ever knew. Thank you for allowing God to work in your life.

[Naomi]

[Geoarrge]

I can't say I ever had a real mentor.

[M. T. Cross]

I was actually serious when I said David Lee Roth. But there were others, but I only ever met two of them.

So get some popcorn, cause I am going to tell you a story.

I grew up very sheltered and isolated a lot.

When I was a kid we picked up everything and moved to Lac La Hache B.C. so my dad could work in a sawmill there that was owned by an SDA fella. This guy had agreed that if we moved up there and my mom was willing to drive every day he would provide a van to take SDA kids from LLH to the Adventist school in Williams Lake. That only lasted a year however as my brother had graduated, some of the other families moved and it was not worth it for him to provide the service for just our family. So my one sister boarded with a family in Williams Lake and my other sister went off to school in Spokane Wa.

That left me (a lot younger than the rest) and my parents decided to homeschool me. So by 9 years old I was at home on 25 acres basically in the middle of nowhere, cause there was not another kid for about 5 miles for a year or so. My mom was not much of a teacher, so school was not actually a big part of my day to day life. So I spent a fair bit of time out doors with a book. These books were the writings of Mr. Sam Campbell and published by Pacific Press. If you have never read them do yourself a favour and do so very soon. I have it on good authority from Gail that they are still available through the ABC stores. Sam, Ginny, and Hi-Bub, the little boy they befriended, were my doorway to the world. Those books cemented a life long love of nature that is pretty core to my personality. Around that time there was a couple, the foreman at the sawmill that was married to the daughter of the owner of the mill. I spent a lot of time at their house after my mom figured out that she was not a teacher and that Joan could help LOL. Her husband Lloyd and her were great friends to me as a kid, cause they got me out of the house and doing stuff. Lloyd would take me out snowmobiling and 4x4ing and showed me the forests up there in such a cool way. He had explored them all as a kid and knew the coolest places. I will be ever grateful to them as they probably saved my life. Lloyd was a big loud man though and he was a huge influence on my personality.

Around that time I got really into rodeo's and really studied three guys, Charlie Samson, J.C. Trujillo and Leo Camarillo. Not just how they did what they did, but what drove them to the greatness in the sport. From Leo Camarillo I got the motto that everything matters. Every single minute of your life matters, what you eat, when you sleep etc. Through a book about him I got my first look at Farrah Fawcett in a bathing suit and that kinda changed my life as well.

From Charlie Samson and J.C. Trujillo I got a lot of stupidity. Charlie Samson was a bull rider that rode in the National Finals Rodeo with his riding hand casted and broken in 4 spots. I figured that was really cool and I figured it was that kind of gutsy attitude that allowed him to become on of the first real big name black rodeo stars. J.C. Trujillo upon dismount in the bare back bronc in the same years NFR got his had caught in the rigging and dislocated his shoulder as he hung from a bucking horse getting kicked in the head for about 45 seconds till they got him out. He rode the next day and finished second. Those two guys were my mentors in what it means to work through pain. In hindsight I kind of wish I had never heard of them LOL. But once my dad told me that most rodeos are on the Sabbath and that I would never be able to participate I quit practising roping, riding and bull dogging and moved on to hockey.

Now around this time we had moved to Grand Forks B.C. and the home schooling was about to come to an end! So there was this lady that was a school teacher and an SDA and she said she teach two other kids and myself in her basement! Basically it was home schooling with a teacher, we used a home schooling course that was put out by the church. To this day I don't think I have ever met a lady that mean. IMO she was truly evil. But I had hockey at this point, Wayne Gretzky was beginning his epic career and that gave me someone new to study and learn from. While I always loved his playing I really grew to love the guys that dig in the corners, take sticks to the face and get banged up so guys like Wayne can do their thing. The list of them is too long to mention, but one really stood out. A man names Stan Smyl. A grinder , a goal scorer and a quiet gentleman that took time to respond to me when I wrote him a letter. I practiced hockey probably 8 hours a day on school days, and 12-14 hours on non school days.

In the real world around me there was a new SDA school here and it might have been one of the last one room school houses in B.C. I was the oldest kid there out of 6 kids and so never really had any peer's and people to push me. Mu brother was off doing his thing, my one sister had eloped, and the other sister was at what was at that time C.U.C. in Lacombe Alberta. Right around then we found out that the only game days the local hockey team had was Saturday. So that was out. Really a shame too, cause not to toot my own horn, but I was very good.

Once I got through grade 8 there was no SDA teacher available here. My parents (old enough to be my grandparents) were not really looking to spend the rest of their savings sending me to Alberta or Spokane to an SDA school. There was a self supporting one in Bella Coola that we tried out, but something went wrong with that and I ended up in public highschool. Talk about culture shock. I really had NO idea how to interact with other people. I was simply a wall flower and was terrified. So right there at the ripe age of 15 I had a total and complete nervous breakdown. When I say total and complete - I mean physically my nervous system shut down. I was so physically ill there was a great deal of fear for my life.

Around that time the one kid that had befriended me in high school had to move. Bummer. But he left me a bunch of magazines. That summer I had heard Van Halen at campmeeting and there in those magazines was interviews with their singer, David Lee Roth. This guy was like a cartoon figure come to life. Bugs Bunny on steroids, with a rock band behind him and technicolour sunglasses. This guys was not scared of anything ever. So I memorized his one liners, listened to the radio to hear an interview or two. I became David Lee Roth for a couple years really. I promise you I would have blown my brains out if I had not found this character to emulate. For everything Dave did was based in joy and celebration. It was years later that I found out that Dave had grown up a Jewish kid in Indiana farm towns till his dad finished med school. He had leg braces till he was 10 and a hyperactivity disorder. He did idolize Looney Toons Cartoons and turned that into a career. He created a character that I idolized.

So while I am certainly no DLR clone for many seasons now, I called him my most influencial child hood mentor, because with out him and that spirit he showed, born out of fighting racism and disability I would not have made if very much past 16 I'm sure.

The end