An Ordinary Life, An Extraordinary Life

 Chapter Eight – Back in the US of A The trip began with an overnight in New York, where I stayed with some YWAM friends out on Long Island. Their oldest daughter was away so they put me up in her very girly canopy bed. The next day I had some time to kill before my flight to Florida. I watched some TV and it was really weird. There were so many food commercials that it actually made me physically sick. I flew to Florida and went to see my friends on the Good Samaritan which was now docked across the Bay from Bradenton in the city of Saint Petersburg. My parents had since left the ship but I was going to see them in California. I also went to the Epcot Disney park with some of my other friends from the area.  One of the people that went to Epcot that day was the girlfriend of Paul Tuohy, the 49er fan I had rooted against during the Superbowl the previous year. Paul had also now left the ship and was living back in California. But his girl told me that she and Paul were engaged...

As in Hawaii, I was confronted with yet another variant on the English language. Most of my fellow-workers had Cockney accents. Cockney is generally associated with working-class Londoners from the East End, although it has migrated out from there. I had to decide whether I was going to pick up on this new way of talking or hold on to what I considered to be correct English. I succumbed. It is a fun kind of way to talk. One of the phrases often used is innit. This means “isn’t it” which you use at the end of a sentence to emphasize what you’ve just said. When you say it, you do not pronounce the ‘t’. Because of my New Zealand background and my enjoyment of the English accent in general, Cockney began to become a part of my natural diction with my fellow Londoners. It was during this time in London that something happened that led to my next adventure. My brother got engaged. He had met a girl in Hong Kong named Carol. Carol had been born in the Philippines but her family had moved to H...

I had very little contact with YWAM in England but one day, for some reason, a young lady from YWAM ended up spending the day with me. I have no idea how we got together. She wasn’t very appealing to me so it wasn’t anything to do with any kind of attraction. The only thing I remember is that she was from South Africa. As I could go see free movies at the theaters where I worked, I could also sometimes trade tickets with people who worked at other theaters. A movie I wanted to see came out at another theater on Leicester Square and I found someone who worked there who was willing to trade. The movie became another one on my short list of all-time favorites. It was called The Mission and I took this YWAM girl from South Africa to see it. As we were watching the movie, I became awed by one of the actors whom I had never seen before. It was Robert De Niro and he became to me to be what I consider one of the greatest actors ever. Unfortunately, I have still not seen him in a role that I th...

Some of the people I worked with used to say they hated Americans and from what I saw of many Americans in London, I understood why. For many people in the world, there is a love/hate relationship for Americans. They love much of what America has to offer but many Americans think of the USA as the center of reality and the rest of the world as their playground. And either consciously or subconsciously, they think they’re cool and everyone else thinks (or should think) they’re cool. As I had an American accent and was perceived as American, I actually felt the aura of this kind of attitude myself.  Most of the Americans who are travelling are the ones who have more money so they are generally a certain class of people. But what people with “the rest of the world as a playground” kind of attitude do not see is that people in other countries are individuals with their own personal trials and struggles. Many are just trying to get by and make a living. The largest majority of Americans...

These were the days when I began to fall in love with London. When you’re struggling just to survive, it’s hard to get your thoughts out of the fog long enough to notice the amazing things around you. Now that I could breathe a little, my senses started to awaken to this amazing city. Since I didn’t have anything to do when I wasn’t working, movies became my main pastime. Not only could I see the movies where I worked, London also had a plethora of interesting theaters big and small all over the city. Of course, this was before you could stream movies at home. There were club theaters that would play older movies in double and triple features. Since there were so many movies I had never seen, I launched into a movie-going frenzy, sometimes going to see three and four a day. As I ventured around London to find the theaters, I began to see more and more unique and interesting aspects of the city.  Live theater is also a big part of London as well. Not only do they have the large, Wes...

Although Christians should always be part of a local church, I didn’t make it a priority. I tried one in Southgate but for some reason, I just didn’t pursue it. It’s not that I was angry at God. In fact, I very much felt God’s closeness and comfort through my struggle, more so than at any time before. Accordingly, I didn’t really make any friends. But as I was a natural introvert, I thought of myself as alone but not lonely. Once again, with the new company, there was a lag time getting paid for savings plans that I sold. But for the canvassing teams you got paid right after your shifts. As I was getting desperate, I asked to do some of that too.  There was no YWAM presence in London at that time but there were several bases surrounding the city. One of the bases was just north in the town of Harpenden. Lynn Green (who had given the Live in Loving Relationships message that had been so instrumental in my life) lived at the Harpenden base. He was actually the leader for all of YWAM ...

In any big city there are companies that prey on the new, young people that arrive every day with no skills. They advertise jobs that seem too good to be true and they are. I searched through the classifieds in the newspaper and there I found companies advertising to hire people to sell savings plans with the potential for great commissions. I bit.  There was a training period when you learned the spiel with a notebook that involved a lot of memorization. As I had done a lot of Bible memorization growing up, my memory muscle was strong. The others were impressed at how quickly I picked it up. Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily translate into good sales. Once we finished our training, it was time to hit the sales calls. That consisted of going door to door in council flats during the evenings. Council flats are high-rise apartment buildings built for people with low incomes or on the dole – not necessarily the best place to try to get people to start a savings plan. It was a ga...

19 – London, Greece, Amsterdam, Florida, California, Hawaii I moved to London right before my 19th birthday. Trish’s house was a three-story, six-bedroom row house with two rooms and a bathroom on the third floor. I moved into one of those. It was quite a distance from the center of London in the town of Palmers Green. The closest tube stop (which is a lifeline if you want to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time without a vehicle) was a short bus ride away in the suburb of Southgate. I was only in London for about a week before I was off again. It was time for the appeal trial for my father and the two others in Greece. For my dad and Don, returning to Greece was not a light decision. While they were returning as an act of solidarity with the Protestants in Greece, they were potentially facing prison time. In the build-up to the trial, the ship ministry had organized a huge international media campaign. They called the three men the Athens 3. Many people had given financially an...

Chapter Seven - London I was returning to Florida for Christmas to see my parents. They had renamed the little ship The Good Samaritan, projecting its purpose and made the inaugural ministry voyage from Jacksonville to Haiti. They had returned to the town of Fort Pierce, about two thirds of the way down the east coast of Florida where we were going to spend Christmas – if I could get into the country. When a foreigner comes into the United States and doesn’t have some kind of permission to stay, he needs to show he is leaving - as in a round trip ticket. I only had a one-way. They pulled me into a special room for a special interview. I tried to explain where I was going but they didn’t understand. Although I had plenty of time until my connecting flight, I began to worry about making it in time, or even making it at all.  Eventually, they let me go, albeit with a stamp in my passport to see the immigration official in Florida. Thankfully, the official in Florida knew all about the...

Our next shooting location was the refugee camps in the south. YWAM had an extensive, multi-faceted ministry among the Cambodian refugees who had fled the waves of violence that had enveloped their country. There were feeding programs, schools for the children, medical help and vocational skills training. We went to two camps and locations in the towns nearby. While we were in one camp, I feared for my life…or at least my ear.  These refugees had lost virtually everything as they fled with only what they could carry. Yet there were gangs of Cambodian bandits roaming the border area who would overrun the camps to pillage whatever they could – and they had weapons. While we were at one of the camps, one of the gangs attacked. All of a sudden we heard gunfire as the Thai army tried to hold them off and we were told to stay put in one of the buildings. While living in Amsterdam, I had gotten an earring. It was a small stud that looked like it could have been a diamond. I kept thinking ...

Soon after we moved to Amsterdam, Procla-Media was assigned video productions for FEET in Asia and for YWAM Thailand. I was chosen for the team. Once again, Russ, Kathy and I would be travelling together. This trip was going to take us to India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore.  I got permission to make a video diary of our trip, taping little stand ups of myself in each location. My brother was still living in Hong Kong and my sister and brother-in-law were doing a YWAM school in Korea at the time. I was going to see each of them. I was also going to see my parents in December, so I thought it would be a nice little Christmas present to see video of their kids (a rarity in those days). Up to then, my view of India had been formed by movies like A Passage to India and Ghandi. I saw the country and people as mysterious and volatile. Going there didn’t change my view. Our first stop was Bombay on the west coast where my brother from another mother, Ron Musch and his new wife...

Not long after we got back from Denmark, they decided to move Procla-Media to Amsterdam. We packed up all our stuff in trucks and began to caravan to the Netherlands. Once again, our route took us through Germany. There was a rest stop at the German border so we stopped for some refreshments. It was a large place with an elevated crosswalk above the road where you could watch the traffic pass beneath. I did that for a while before meandering back to our vehicles. When I got there, they were gone! As there were several vehicles, each one thought I was in the other and I was left…by myself…in the middle of Europe. There were no cell phones in those days so I had no way to contact anyone. All I could do was wait and pray that someone would notice I was missing. Thankfully, after a while Russ came back for me. The journey continued without further incident. Several of the families and couples moved into an apartment complex on the outer edges of Amsterdam and the video equipment was set up...