The Mayan Mystery Book
Writing that novel did present a problem for me. A writer friend told me that a novel needed
lust and violence in it to sell. My
Christian belief would not let me write a book like that.
Then I realized that my job was not to sell the book, my
job was to write. If God wanted the book
to sell, he would provide a way.
I
wrote that novel about the folklore tale, but you don’t have to buy it to learn
how God revealed my purpose. You don’t
have to buy anything to learn that. The
entire story is in this blog.
The
reason I did that is so you would not have to pay me for telling what God has
done for me and may also be doing for you.
I put that information in this blog and it is free, all you have to do
is read it.
If
you do choose to buy the book after you read this blog, it is titled Mayan Mystery Unveiled and is available
from Amazon. At the end of this blog is a link directly to the book on Amazon. Click on that link and you can review free excerpts from the book. If you choose to order the book, you can also do that. I make a small royalty from
each copy that sells. Last month, my
royalty check was about $15. If more
people hear about the book, perhaps that royalty will become enough to buy a
dinner for two once a month.
That’s
not asking too much, is it?
The
book is a novel, a work of fiction, but it’s mostly true. The characters are fictitious, but they are
real. The book describes them living in
the real places Virginia and I visited and loved. Their experiences are also real, they are the
same events Virginia and I experienced while we searched through ruins, climbed
pyramids that had been covered by jungle for a thousand years, and ventured
into dark caverns where ancient priests held sacred ceremonies.
So,
even though the characters in the story seem fictitious to you, they are really
me and Virginia. They are doing what we
did. Like me, they each rediscover an
ability God gave them to achieve their purpose, then they eventually recognize
the signposts lGod puts in front of them to show the path they should be
taking.
Later,
I will briefly discuss the three ‘Principles For Understanding Your Purpose’
and show how they fit into this story.
These principles seem easier to understand when put in a story like
this, easier than reading a description of them. Use this blog, along with the book, Mayan Mystery Unveiled, as you search for your purpose using the program described in the book by Rick Warren. Life taught me these principles, and the
lesson was painful. In the story, the
characters learn the principles the hard way, same as I did. I hope the story will help the reader
understand that lesson without going through any more pain than necessary. If the reader has already gone through the
pain, I hope the story will show the benefits that can be gained from the
difficult experience.
Let’s go back now to our search for the scrap of truth
in that folklore story. This scrap of
truth reveals what happened to destroy that ancient empire, it tells how the
leaders strayed off their path of purpose, and while focused on building
monuments to their pride and increasing the abundance of their riches, they
lost their lives as well as their treasures.
That
has happened to other rulers throughout history, such as when the French
commoners rebelled and cut off the heads of their monarchs, and it is still
happening today. It could even happen to
me and to you if we do not learn from the mistakes of others. The story in this book shows that a person’s
purpose is important, each of us needs to discover ours and to follow it.
Even
though this book is a novel, you can imagine it really happening, and you can
picture being there. It did happen,
Virginia and I were there and invite you to join us in this exciting journey.
The
book about the Mayan Mystery, when combined with this blog, completes the true
story that tells how God revealed my purpose.
The Mayan Mystery Story
The story begins in the lunch room of a hospital. Kelli, a nurse, sees her friend, Ta-Ta,
eating at a table across the room, joins her and says she made a medication
error that could have killed a patient, except the lady noticed the pill was
different than the kind she had been taking.
This was the third medication error Kelli had made this week and the
doctor told her to take some time off, go somewhere far away and totally
different, and not come back until she can do her job without endangering his
patients.
Ta-Ta
tells Kelli about a volunteer team going to a medical clinic in an impoverished
Mayan village in Belize, says they need two nurses. Ta-Ta says it would be a nice vacation during
a cold and dreary February, she offers to sign up for it if Kelli does, then
they both rush back to their assignments.
The next scene is at an airport, they are in a yellow van
with the air conditioner running and the driver standing outside, sweating
under the tropical sun. He is staring
back toward the line of people coming from the door of the terminal building,
looking for two other tourists he is supposed to pick up.
“There they are,” he says, and he points toward two elderly
people, followed by a porter with several suitcases stacked on a handcart.
“They can barely walk,” Kelli says. “Are we going to spend a week touring Belize
with them?”
The driver helps the newcomers into the van, then tells all
of them he will be their guide this week and asks each to tell their purpose
for this tour. He says that every tour
needs a purpose, just as every life needs a purpose.
This is the theme statement for the book. The title of the book may cause people to
believe the main theme is the ‘Mayan Mystery,’ but it is actually ‘finding
purpose.’ That is the first problem
stated in the book, and it is the last problem solved.
Kelli says that she and Ta-Ta volunteered to work at a
medical clinic in a village, and they came a week early to see the natural
wonders of Belize and the Mayan pyramids.
The teachers say they have a contract with a travel magazine to write a
series of articles about the Mayans and their pyramids, and they want to
explain the mystery in the final article.
Since they all want to visit the pyramids, the guide plans several tours
of Mayan ruins, and he says their purpose will be to search for the reason the
ancients abandoned these cities so suddenly.
Kelli agrees to that purpose.
That evening, Ta-Ta begins to question Kelli, looking for
the reason she is having so much trouble concentrating on her work and is
making serious errors. Kelli normally
does not make mistakes. Ta-Ta finds that
Kelli had just discovered her husband is being unfaithful and her marriage
could fail. If that happens, Kelli would
be unable to achieve her planned purpose of building her dream house, and that
is causing her anxiety.
The next day, the guide takes the four of them far up a
river to an abandoned city. They walk
trails through the rainforest between pyramids and the ruins of a palace, and
the guide explains that the rulers built the pyramids as displays of their
success and as monuments to their pride.
That evening, Ta-Ta points out that Kelli is imitating the faults of the
ancient Mayan rulers, just on a smaller scale.
The second day, the guide plans a trip to another abandoned
city and its pyramid, but the elderly couple need to rest and cannot go, so he
carries Kelli and Ta-Ta to a cavern where ancient priests had conducted sacred
ceremonies. Deep inside, the guide drops
his flashlight and it breaks, leaving them in total darkness. He leads them out by the trickling sound of
the stream that had been cutting the cavern through the mountain for thousands
of years, and still flows along its channel to emerge in the rainforest
outside.
This becomes the pattern of their tour. They all explore an ancient city and its
pyramid one day, and the next day the elderly couple rest and the guide takes
Kelli and Ta-Ta for a more strenuous adventure.
They
tour an abandoned city, then visit a nearby village of thatched homes. They meet descendants of the Mayans who had
inhabited that city a thousand years ago.
Here, they are told a folklore tale about ‘evil spirits’ that had been
passed down for an unknown number of generations. They hear the exact same words a Mayan guide
told the author and his wife when they visited Belize the first time. The retired teachers, who were familiar with
folklore, suspect this tale originated at the time the city was abandoned, and
they are determined to find the meaning of it.
Kelli and the retired teachers follow the same path of
experiences as the author did during his search for the answer to the ‘evil
spirits’ tale, so the reader can envision the actual exploration like being
there when it happened.
As
Kelli learns about the life of the ancient Mayans, she compares her purpose to
those of the ancient rulers. She sees
that her success at her career had caused her to take her eyes off her original
purpose, as happened to those rulers a thousand years ago, and she is now
traveling the same path toward a disaster as the ancients.
The search for the meaning of the ‘evil spirits’ tale leads
the four of them and their guide on an adventure that ends with a reenactment
of the day the courageous Mayan farmers decided they would live free from the
tyranny of the king and his aristocrats, or they would die trying. Like many other oppressed people throughout
history, they rise up in revolt. They
overcome the king’s warriors, then flee the city to escape the spirit gods they
believed were protecting the evil king.
They fear the vindictive gods so much that they never return.
The retired teachers have found the answer they were
seeking, and Kelli recognizes the signs that show her current path is leading
her away from happiness. Her purpose has
become to increase the abundance she and her husband are accumulating, and to
build her dream home as a monument to her pride.
She
rediscovers her original purpose, and she abruptly changes direction. She returns to her path of helping people who
are sick and need medical care. Before she boards the airplane for the flight home, she passes on her purpose to a little Mayan girl who had become her friend. She agrees to sponsor the guide's daughter, pay for her education so she can become a nurse for the people.in their village.
She
rediscovers her original purpose, and she abruptly changes direction. She returns to her path of helping people who
are sick and need medical caare.
This is the end of Post 6. To go to 'Post 7, Examples' and for all following posts, go to the list of posts and click on the remaining posts that you have not read.
This is the end of Post 6. To go to 'Post 7, Examples' and for all following posts, go to the list of posts and click on the remaining posts that you have not read.
The
book, Mayan Mystery Unveiled, is available from Amazon.com. To review excerpts from the book, at no charge,
or to order the book if you want to do that, press and hold CTL and left click
on the following link to the book on Amazon. For some operating systems, the switch to Amazon does not immediately occur, but the top line on your screen will show the link to Amazon, and you click on that to view the book.
The link to Amazon follows:
The link to Amazon follows:
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