YWAM Houses

YWAM had bought some houses in town and started running training schools out of them. They asked my dad to help lead one and our family moved into the Aloha House with twenty something young ladies. It was the perfect opportunity for Samuel to use his special female-scaring skills. Kona has a plethora of what are called Kona cruisers - very large, frightening cockroaches. My brother used to tell the ladies to be careful because the cruisers would eat their eyelashes while they were sleeping. I’m sure there was many a yawn from the lack of sleep in that school.

As an outreach we went to the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Our family stayed in the parsonage of a local church. At the back of the parsonage was a large, steep downhill slope where I spent hours by myself playing an unusual game I had made up. I would erode the dirt at the top of the slope and call the rolling dirt my army of “dirties”. I enjoyed watching the dirties pour down and “conquer” everything in their way. What can I say? I’m an introvert with a vivid imagination. 

I did feel a little guilty playing the game and it eventually made me stop because every time I played, the hill eroded a little closer to the parsonage. Hopefully it didn’t end up all the way to the house. Samuel and I also bought two mice while we were in Kauai for 50 cents each.

Back in Kona, there was a man in YWAM named Dale Kauffman who had a vision to start a performing arts ministry for children and teenagers. He called it King’s Kids. It was 1976 and the bicentennial anniversary of the founding the United States was coming up on Independence Day, July 4th. Dale decided to launch King’s Kids in time for the celebration.

Kona’s festivities were held down at the old airport park where I had been baptized. My mom helped lead the group and all three of us kids took part. King’s Kids has now become an international ministry with numerous teams performing around the world. Although I would go on to do King’s Kids in later years, I chose not to be involved in its second year.

By this time, Bill Mansfield had bought a small sailboat to help train people for the small boat ministry. We moved into yet another YWAM house called the Barnabas House where they would run the school. One day while we were living there I woke up to find our mice dead in their cage. Their running wheel had separated at the seam and both of them had broken their necks trying to run on it. We had an emotional funeral and burial in the back yard.

The Mansfields, the Grahams and the Williams on the
front of the Small Boat Ministry boat, the 2nd Timothy


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