Five years ago the Earth shook off the coast of Indonesia causing a tsunami to rise up on dry land and consume everything in its path.  The devastation was and remains, overwhelming.

• 226,000 dead or missing
• 1.8 million people displaced
• 13 Asian and African countries impacted

December 26, 2004 was no doubt a long and frightening day for those who lived through the chaos.

The Thomas Reuters Foundation along with International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies released a short documentary which tells the stories of four individuals who are still picking up the pieces of the wreckage. I had a chance to view the short stories of these individuals. They are broken people, courageous people, vulnerable people and they are rebuilding their lives.

So my sister has the apron on, little cousin is begging to go to the park.  Some family aren't coming because they are upset and others are sitting in traffic on their way as I type.  Dad just yelled out, "Let the football games begin" and Mom is trying to squeeze one more place at the table.  Grandma has only insulted me once so far with an attempted compliment and our British friend is photographing every dish...   Just another holiday here at the Brooks' home.

In a couple of hours we'll be all settled in.  The prayers will be said and the food will be shared.  And then someone will bust out the first of Aunt Katherine's brownies and the stories will begin.   My grandmother has seven brothers and sisters.  They were raised in Hong Kong.  I have spent many Thanksgivings eating brownies and listening to their adventures.  This year there will only be two of them at the table- my grandmother and her sister in law are the ones left of that generation.  Considering the dwindling group, the stories become more precious. 

Ben is the founder of The Whiteboard Sessions and now STORY Conference.

Read more blogs from Ben at benarment.com and follow on twitter. 

A TRIBE OF STORYTELLERS

Pastors are facing a crisis of identity in the pulpit today. They don't know whether to be scholars, motivational speakers or talk show hosts. They feel pulled between using catchy sermon titles like "Desperate Households" and preaching verse-by-verse through Leviticus - all because their heroes are doing it.

Somehow the message has gotten lost in the method.

We had Kim's students' photography exhibit last weekend.  The three weeks leading up to it were hectic for Kim; full of selecting the photos, mounting the 254 photos, getting her students to name them, and writing a presentation she was to give at the cultural center an hour before the exhibit.  Our apartment became a FEMA zone cluttered with cutting boards, foam board scraps, and boxes and bags of photos.

The end result was amazing though.

But, of course, it didn't go as smoothly as planned - nothing here does.  It seems any time there is a big event we're doing or are apart of here, the cultural weirdness gets heightened and bad things happen.  It's not Murphy's Law, it's M*ngolian Law.

For example, the night before the exhibit we went to the cultural center with a bunch of the students and a couple friends to hang the photos on the walls.  As we're walking through the busy front doors a man decides to *punch the bag of photos* and then yell at us for being foreigners because "he is a M*ngolian".  Thankfully, none of the photos of his country were damaged.

Then, as we were rehanging some of the photos the next day, Kim left her presentation speech out on a table in clear plastic folder.  At some point in the preparation she went to practice her speech only to find someone had stolen the plastic sleeve it was in.  Thankfully, they left the speech.

Then, after spending hours writing said presentation, the time came for her to give it.  In the midst of all of the craziness of setting up her own exhibit she was going to do a favor for the man who runs the center by speaking to a class of his students.  Turns out he completely forgot that he had asked her to do that and asked her not to speak to the class.  Why?  Because he had been drinking when he originally asked her and didn't remember.  Thankfully that left her with more time to set up.

So yeah, those kind of things happen occasionally out here but they tend to happen in bulk around special events.

The exhibit itself was wonderful though.  The students' parents came and got to see their work and tell us how proud of their children they were.  The students got to share their work and talent with friends and strangers.   Our good M*ngolian friend said that he cried as he looked at the pictures because he was so moved.  A lot of M*ngolians got to see an art form and perspective they don't usually get to see.  

I hadn't noticed it until we had all of the photos laid out in our apartment but what the students had done, however unconsciously, was capture and told a really unique story.  All good art tells a story.  A good song, a good book, a good painting; they tell stories.  What the students had done with what Kim had taught them was tell their stories - the story of what it looks like to grow up at such a turbulent time in an emerging country, where there is a distinct tension between tradition and modern influence.  So, there were pictures of gers and high rises; herders and business men; elderly M*ngolians in traditional dress and teens that look like they're off the streets of New York.  It's a perspective special to this place, this time, and these kids.