Florida

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 missionary ship and it all turned out fine. But it is a good thing when one can avoid the special room. It wouldn’t be my last time in there.

The mom of one of the guys from Procla-Media worked at Disney World so he got tickets for my parents and I to go before Christmas. We had a nice, quiet Christmas with everyone on the ship before sailing on a ministry trip to the Central American country of Honduras.

My friend, Ted McKenzie, from the outreach team on the Anastasis was on the Good Samaritan now so it was nice to see him again. As I was part of the crew, I took watches steering the ship. You stare at a compass and keep adjusting the steering wheel to keep on course. I think we zig-zagged a bit during my watches. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t really get to see Honduras. We went to two places – Roatan and a port on the mainland. Roatan is a resort island but where we went, not so much. Of course, we weren’t there to be pampered but to reach out to those in need. It was just a small town with lots of mangroves, tropical vegetation and since it was the rainy season, plenty of mud.

The port we visited on the mainland was in the middle of nowhere. We docked out near the end of a peninsula with nothing around. When a team went somewhere, they went off down a long nondescript road into the distance. I never had any business to go anywhere so I was just stuck at the port.

On the way back to Florida, we heard about the tragic explosion and disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger with its seven-member crew. The space shuttle launches were old hat because there had been so many of them by this time. But this launch had become very popular because a female teacher was part of the crew in an effort to inspire student’s interest in math, science and space exploration.

After the explosion, some people started calling for an end to the space program because of the dangers it entailed. My dad didn’t like that. He thought space exploration was a worthy cause that had far-reaching benefits. He and I began to make up theoretical punishments for people who were saying such things. The most outlandish was that we would strap them to the outside of the next shuttle when it was launched. Sadistic, I know.

Before we had left Fort Pierce for Honduras, a church on the west coast of Florida in the town of Bradenton decided to ask the Good Samaritan ministry to come to their area to be its home port. So upon our return from Honduras, we docked at Port Manatee, just north of Bradenton. 

While we were in Bradenton it was time for the Superbowl. The two teams were the San Francisco 49ers and the Miami Dolphins. There was a guy on the Good Sam named Paul Tuohy who had joined Mercy Ships on the Anastasis in 1982 when he started his DTS out of Los Angeles. He was from the San Francisco Bay area so he was a 49er fan. I didn’t know anything about the two teams but because we were in Florida, I decided to root against Paul’s team and for the Dolphins.

Little did I know that in this, just his second season, Dolphins quarterback, Dan Marino was already beginning to break the records that would make him one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. The Dolphins lost the Superbowl that year but when I found out who Marino was, I decided to become a fan. It was an exercise in frustration because in all the years he played and with all the records he destroyed, he never made it back to the Superbowl. Years later, I got to see him play live at the very end of his career but more importantly, just a few years later, another incident involving Paul Tuohy would end up changing my destiny.

It came time for another ship ministry trip, this time to Haiti. On the sail down we stopped at a small uninhabited island for a day. We spent some time painting the outside of the ship, then we did some fishing where there were plenty of barracudas. We were anchored out and took a lifeboat into shore. The beach was sandy white with crystal clear water but the island was surrounded by a rocky reef.

On we sailed to Port-au-Prince. After years of occupations, dictatorships and corruption, Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas and it was quite chaotic. Security was a high priority. We distributed supplies and did ministry in the area. On the way out, we stopped at Gonave island, off the mainland - a mostly barren island with a lot of mangroves trees hugging the coast. We anchored near shore and did some swimming. Of course, we figured out the highest place we could jump off the ship into the water. On the way back to Florida, I added another sea-going storm to my resume, along with the requisite seasickness.

It was now time for me to figure out the next step for my life and filmmaking aspirations. In order to work and make money I had two options. Because of my father, I had a British passport; because of my mother, I had a stamp in my passport giving me New Zealand citizenship. So the choice was between New Zealand and England.

I felt like New Zealand was too far away with not many options. So England it was. I love cities and London very much appealed to me. I thought that I could perhaps get a job with the BBC and work my way up towards my filmmaking goal.

A friend of ours had a contact in London. She was an older lady named Trish who lived in the northern suburbs. She and her husband had been good friends with YWAM but her husband had passed away and now she lived alone. She was still working as a teacher but had a lot of health problems. She agreed to let me become a boarder in her house. I would get a room and food for my rent.