This Christmas: Meaning and Purpose from Tragedy
By Dane Sammis
Dane Wesley Sammis,18, is from Corning, NY. He is a member of the First Presbyterian Church, Corning, NY. Dane is a student at Paul Smith's College in Paul Smith's, NY, majoring in Recreation, Adventure Travel, and Ecotourism.

With Thanksgiving coming in a few weeks, and the Christmas season following, I have had to consider what things will be like during this time of year. How will Thanksgiving and Christmas be different? I have so much to be thankful for this year. So much has changed in the past few months. I guess I will start with the beginning.

Back in my hometown of Corning, NY, there were four of us. Four best friends. More like brothers. Wes, Phil, Dave and myself. We did so much together, from Scouting to running on our high school cross country team. We did almost everything together.

It was the spring of my senior year in high school. I was doing extremely well. I had just been presented with the rank of Eagle (the highest and most coveted award in Boy Scouts). I was the assistant director for our school's musical that spring, and I was working as a student teacher in one of the Earth Science classes at school. I was one of the top runners in our section for track, plus numerous other activities. Life was great. Then everything changed.

It was April 1st, the day after Easter. School was closed but the sports teams still practiced and the drama club had rehearsal that night. It was our final week of rehearsals; we were putting on the play that Thursday night. I went to track practice for a few hours Monday just the same as it had been for the past four months. I would walk into the auditorium and get ready for drama rehearsal that night. I had just begun to eat supper and talk with a very close friend, Laura, when another friend of ours, Jana, came in.

Jana was not looking good at all and she asked me if I had heard what happened. I asked her what she was talking about. She asked me to go into the back hallway with her; she wanted Laura to come as well. We walked out of the auditorium and into a back hallway. That's when Jana told me that that morning Dave had died. I can't even begin to describe what happened to me. I can't really remember what went through my mind at that time. All I can recall is feeling all the energy being sucked from my body and Laura holding me as we stood in the hallway. I just couldn't believe what I had been told.

Jana and I went up to Wes's house and Laura said she would tell our director what was going on. After we spent some time there, the four of us Wes, Phil, Jana and I headed for Dave's house to spend some time with his family. It was about 11:00 at night when we returned to the school just to talk to our director. By that time everyone knew what was going on.

In addition to the extreme amount of pain I was feeling, I was bombarded with anger as well. People kept asking me "how was I doing "and "what happened." The hardest part was no one really knew what happened. All we knew was that Dave never woke up that morning, and what is worse is that his younger brother Matt was the one who found him. All I wanted to do was get away. Get away from school, from track, from drama, and from God.

I was extremely angry with God. I could not even begin to fathom why God would want to take Dave from us. He was a tremendously talented lacrosse player, he was so close to earning his Eagle, he had his goals set on going to West Point, and he would have made it too. Everyone liked Dave. One of the toughest parts was the fact that he died in his sleep. If he had died in a car crash or something like that I know I would still have the same amount of pain, but I wouldn't have the anger I felt towards God.

For a long time I stayed angry with God. It wasn't until that summer that I regained my trust in God. In addition to all of the happenings that week, on Thursday, the day of Dave's funeral I received an e-mail from the new director at our Boy Scout Councils camp, Camp Gorton. I had worked the past several years there, and Scouting became my life. (I am planning to work for the Boy Scouts of America full time. That is why I am majoring in Recreation Adventure Travel and Ecotourism at college).

In this e-mail he stated that he had filled the positions with the first applicants who applied and said that he wanted me to work in the kitchen. I was very upset about that e-mail. I could have worked it out so I had a much better position at camp. But I was so upset and disturbed that week that I said that I was not going to work there at all. It was an extremely hard thing for me to do. But I didn't think I would be able to work up to par after losing one of my best friends.

So, instead, during the summer I went to Montreat, NC for a Presbyterian Youth Conference. One of the guys in my small group was a pastor, Rev. Stephen Adkison. Steve and I had a lot in common and spent some good time talking. Well, one day the two of us went up to one of the balconies over looking the lake and mountains. And there I told him the story of Dave and everything that has happened since then. I explained to him about how I have not cried at all since Dave died and I didn't know why. I asked him for any advice he could give me. He explained to me that maybe the fact that Dave died made me strong, but it also had to do with some reason I was at Montreat that week.

Well, I didn't know it right then, but he was more than right. While at the youth conference, everyone was given some numbers as to how much power and wealth the States has in the world. One of he guys in my small group, David, stands right up and says "All we do is talk, talk, talk. It is time we do something". Well with that there were about a half a dozen of us who stayed after of small group meeting to talk about this. This is what I came up with:

Heifer Project International has a program known as the Ark Project. In which, for $5,000, an "ark" will be sent to a village. The ark contains two of each of the large animals, cattle, oxen, water buffalo, sheep, goats, llamas, etc. And then more of the smaller animals, chickens, geese, rabbits, fish, bees, etc. With that an ark will support 30 families.

I did some math and figured out the following: There are 33 million teenagers in the United States. They control $150 billion dollars in disposable income plus $50 billion in influential money. I figured that I would use the amount of $20, the average price of a CD or a t-shirt or two trips to the movies.

So, I Multiplied that $20 by the 33 million teens, then using those numbers, this small group decided to divide the total by $5,000, how much an "ark" costs. We used the ark because we all knew that very well. And then the group figured out how many families that would support, using the number of 30. We then decided that each family consisted of about five people.

So, if each teenager gave up one CD, or two trips to the movies, Heifer Project International could feed 18 million people! That is the size of New York State! But the goal is not to just make this a charity, but a conscious change. Instead of going out to eat three times a month go twice. Or if you still go out three times, make one of the trips to McDonalds and put difference toward a project such as Heifer.

Our goal is to make this a life change. We were tossing around the theme of "Change your life to change a life". And here are some more figures: If I tell this idea to two teens, and each of them tells two more teens, and each person is telling two a week, within 15 weeks the message would reach every teenager in the United States of America!

his is not just some idea that I might consider doing; I am doing it right now. We, my youth group and I, are working on a basic plan to get this information out to people.

Now, where this really all comes together is with what Steve told me. If David had not died this year, I would have probably worked at Gorton. And if I had worked at Gorton I would never have gone to Montreat. If I hadn't gone to Montreat, I would have never come up with this project. So with lots of meditating and thinking I felt this is my calling from God. And that's why God took Dave, because God wants me to help the world.

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