A Very Dangerous Discovery

 Another acronym some people use for YWAM is Youth Without Any Money. Despite this, YWAM, Hawaii was trying to purchase an old, abandoned hotel on 45 acres in Kona, with the goal of turning the property into a university. Even though it was a monstrous amount of money to us, YWAM made an offer on the property well below what the owners were asking. But that was the amount the leaders thought they should offer and they believed we would win.

Much to everyone’s disappointment, someone else bought the property. But then the deal fell through and it was up for sale again. It sold again. But that deal also fell through. Finally, the owners sold it to YWAM for our original offer.

There were four large buildings on the property that they numbered one through four. Unfortunately, squatters had taken up residence in some of the rooms. We couldn’t move in until they evacuated and they were given seven days. On the last day, my dad and another man moved in to try to force them out. Although one man threatened to barricade himself in with a gun, the squatters all left the next day.

Our family moved into building one near the entrance so my dad could keep an eye on security. The property was in quite a state of disrepair with all the plants extremely overgrown. To us boys, it was another opportunity for adventure…and danger.

At the end of building three, several of us boys made a very dangerous discovery. We found about five boxes, each containing about twenty smaller boxes, each containing about 100 paper books of matches. It was dangerous because we were pyromaniacs and in that part of Hawaii the grass is very dry. 

We would stack the matches in large piles, light the bottom, run and watch as the pile went up in flames and smoke. We had match wars, flicking lit matches at each other. During one of those wars we noticed some grass around a tree had caught fire. We scrambled, trying to throw as much of the very scarce dirt on the fire as possible. Fortunately, we got it out but did this incident help us learn a lesson?

The hotel had had a golf course and if you searched around, you could still find old golf balls lying around. In those days, inside the outer shell, golf balls were made up of lots of rubber band-type material with a super bouncy ball type of core. When you put a golf ball in fire it melted the outer shell and the rubber band things would go snapping and popping all over the place until it burned to the core. After that, you had to get it out of the fire quick because if you left it in too long, the core would melt, a white liquid would come out and the super ball would be ruined. This became one of our pastimes…in a clearing…in the middle of some very dry, tall grass we called bull grass. 

Incidentally, this was the only time in my life that I ever tried to smoke anything. The bull grass was a dry, brown weed that grew in hollow segments between joints (and no, I don’t mean that kind of weed or that kind of joint). If you broke the joints off each end of a segment, you would have a hollow cylinder you could light and puff, which I once did in our clearing. I don’t think I actually even inhaled but I didn’t like it and never did it again.

Well, all bad things must come to an end. One day as we were burning our golf balls, an adult came across us in the middle of the clearing. We scattered, hoping he didn’t see who we were. I circled all the way around the property and came home from the complete opposite direction, only to find my parents waiting for me. Discipline was severe and that ended the very real danger of stupid boys burning down YWAM’s new base worth millions of dollars.

One of the overgrown buildings on YWAM's new property

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