Dear Students, Teachers and Friends,

We have a tournament in Denver on February 21st. Anyone interested
in attending please see your instructor.

A couple of up coming events to put on your calendar is the Pikes
Peak Tournament to be held here in Colorado Springs (Coronado High
School) on March 13th and our black belt testing and training camp
to be held on April 16th and 17th. We have a great group of master
instructors lined up for training and many of our senior black belts
from around the country are flying in.

One of the new divisions we are going to be able to compete in is
Chanbara where competitors are able to spar with padded swords and
protective gear. This event is a lot of fun and we will be having a
seminar on Feb 14th at 11:00 at the Bijou school. The seminar is
free to Master Club, Leadership or Deshi members, $25 for everyone
else.

Quotes of the Week

ALBERT CAMUS:
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness
consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning
of life.
Mark Twain

"Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the
rest."

VICTOR FRANKL:
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the
striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs
is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a
potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

Lesson of the Week

Houkousei – Mission or Purpose

I write a lot about goals setting and mission statements because I
truly feel that anything is possible with clearly defined written
goals and good planning. A mission statement helps a person or
business stay on course maintaining a focus on the primary key
principles of that person or business. The mission statement for our
martial arts organization is pretty simple: "To make a difference,
by empowering our students to significantly increase their human
performance capabilities through classical martial arts training and
success principles education." Decisions are easy to make by always
looking at our key mission and deciding if our plan of action is
achieving that goal. We want everyone to eventually make a black
belt, not because that piece of cloth has real value, but that we
know by the time a student has reached that point they will have
developed the positive life skills needed to be successful in
anything they choose to in life.

I recently read an article that symbolizes an attitude that I feel
is prevalent among most of the martial arts instructors I know. I
share it with you here:

In Brooklyn, New York, Chush is a school that caters to learning
disabled
children. Some children remain in Chush for their entire school
career,
while others can be mainstreamed into conventional schools. At a
Chush
fundraising dinner, the father of a Chush child delivered a speech
that
would never be forgotten by all who attended.

After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he cried
out, "Where
is the perfection in my son Shaya? Everything God does is done with
perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children
do.
My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do.

Where is God's perfection?"

The audience was shocked by the question, pained by the father's
anguish, and stilled by the piercing query. "I believe," the father
answered, "that when God brings a child like this into the world,
the
perfection that he seeks is in the way people react to this child."

He then told the following story about his son Shaya: One afternoon
Shaya and his father walked past a park where some boys Shaya knew
were playing baseball. Shaya asked, "Do you think they will let me
play?"

Shaya's father knew that his son was not at all athletic and that
most
boys would not want him on their team. But Shaya's father understood
that if his son was chosen to play it would give him a comfortable
sense
of belonging. Shaya's father approached one of the boys in the field
and
asked if Shaya could play.

The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates. Getting none,
he took matters into his own hands and said "We are losing by six
runs
and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team
and
we'll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning."

Shaya's father was ecstatic as Shaya smiled broadly.

Shaya was told to put on a glove and go out to play short center
field. In
the bottom of the eighth inning, Shaya's team scored a few runs but
was
still behind by three. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shaya's
team
scored again and now with two outs and the bases loaded with the
potential winning run on base, Shaya was scheduled to be up. Would
the
team actually let Shaya bat at this juncture and give away their
chance
to win the game?


Surprisingly, Shaya was given the bat. Everyone knew that it was all
but
impossible because Shaya didn't even know how to hold the bat
properly,
let alone hit with it.

However as Shaya stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few
steps
to lob the ball in softly so Shaya should at least be able to make
contact.

The first pitch came in and Shaya swung clumsily and missed. One of
Shaya's teammates came up to Shaya and together they held the bat
and
faced the pitcher waiting for the next pitch. The pitcher again took
a few
steps forward to toss the ball softly toward Shaya.

As the pitch came in, Shaya and his teammate swung at the bat and
together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher. The pitcher
picked
up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the
first
baseman.

Shaya would have been out and that would have ended the game.
Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to
right
field, far beyond reach of the first baseman. Everyone started
yelling,
"Shaya, run to first! Run to first!"

Never in his life had Shaya run to first. He scampered down the
baseline,
wide-eyed and startled. By the time he reached first base, the right
fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second
baseman
who would tag out Shaya, who was still running.

But the right fielder understood what the pitcher's intentions were,
so he
threw the ball high and far over the third baseman's head. Everyone
yelled, "Run to second, run to second."

Shaya ran toward second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously
circled the bases toward home.

As Shaya reached second base, the opposing short stop ran to him,
turned him in the direction of third base and shouted, "Run to
third."


As Shaya rounded third, the boys from both teams ran behind him
screaming, "Shaya, run for home."

Shaya ran home, stepped on home plate, and all 18 boys lifted him on
their shoulders and made him the hero, as he had just hit a "grand
slam" and won the game for his team.

"That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his
face,
"those 18 boys reached their level of God's perfection."

Respectfully,

Terry Bryan