An Ordinary Life, An Extraordinary Life

We got back to doing street outreaches in Athens and we were also trying to get into other places like schools. On another day off, some of us decided to go on a day trip to Corinth where my parents had once been taken to the police station. One of the coolest things about Corinth is the acropolis and subsequent fortifications built atop a very large hill behind town. We went up there to explore and I stood on top of a post at one of the highest spots overlooking the bay and did a Julius Caesar by crying out, “I came, I saw, I conquered”. Back in Piraeus, a few of us decided to start a secret society. It all started with THE ROOM. It was at the end of the hall where they stored extra mattresses and beds. I’m sure we weren’t supposed to be in there but once we found it, it surreptitiously became our hangout. We also built a fort out of the materials at hand. It was built in a corner of the room with natural walls on two sides and the other two made of mattresses. Part of the top was als...

After about ten days, we split up into our smaller teams to go to our three destinations. We had 12 on our team - a family with three kids, 5 single girls, a single guy named Brian and me. We took an overnight ferry to Kos and found a house to take over. Brian and I had to sleep in the kitchen so it made sense for us to get the job of breakfast prep. It didn’t work out for us to do any street outreaches on Kos. They had just had elections and the military were everywhere. We were forbidden to create crowds in case someone tried to stir up trouble. Our team leader met the minister of culture and he seemed interested in what we wanted to do but the Greek Orthodox bishop put the kibosh on it. We ended up doing a lot of prayer and practice and what is called personal evangelism – just going out two by two to talk to people about God. We had a day off coming up so Brian and I decided to do one of my favorite things – rent mopeds to ride around the island. Unfortunately, Brian had diabetes a...

Before Laura left for London, we had another quandary. A DTS is organized into two parts. There is a three-month lecture phase followed by an outreach segment. Our lecture phase was soon coming to an end and the outreach was going to be in an old haunt of mine – Greece, with a smaller team going to Romania. Since we did not really have the money and I had already been on a number of outreaches in Greece with my father, I tried to see if I could get out of it again. Laura was struggling, not least because I would be away for a couple of months while she was alone in London. But then she got an amazing confirmation that this was the right thing to do. For a portion of the outreach in Greece, the team was going to split up into three smaller groups. One of the smaller groups would be going to Turkey, one to Albania and one to the Greek island of Kos. Kos was the birthplace of Hippocrates, the man considered to be the father of western medicine. It has also become famous for the place wher...

Chapter Twelve - DTS Soon after I got to Hamburg, I decided to go with a group from the ship that was going to check out Berlin. It was cool to see and snag a piece of the infamous Berlin Wall that had finally been opened just the year before and to be able to go through the famous Brandenburg gate into East Berlin. Back on the ship, I had two cases of mistaken wife identity. There was a special outreach going on in Hamburg and one of my female friends from King’s Kids, New York was on a dance team performing in town. I went to see one of their performances with another female friend of Laura’s and mine. After the performance, my friend on the team came to say hello and thought the friend with me was my wife. The next day she came to see me on the ship. We were sitting in one of the lounges talking and one of the girls from the DTS came up and asked if she was my wife. Laura came soon thereafter and everyone was set straight on who was who. As with any DTS, we had some “interesting...

23- London, Scotland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, the Netherlands, Greece, California, Hawaii We saw all our friends on the ship in Glasgow which is the largest city in Scotland and very industrial. The capital of Edinburgh, on the east coast, is more of an historical city. We decided to take a few friends from the ship and visit Edinburgh with its beautiful castle and Royal Mile. I also took the opportunity to take a day drive out northwest of Glasgow to check out the amazingly lush countryside. Don Stephens was on the ship at the time. He spent most of his time at the ship office in Texas and travelling the world now but he would visit the ship from time to time. He knew about my DTS prerequisite situation and offered me the opportunity to take it on the ship while it was going to be in Europe that summer. He also offered it at a very reasonable price. We decided to pray about it.  Laura wanted her best friend and her husband to come back to London with us for a visit. This...

Laura let me know that she didn’t like the church I had been attending – the New Rainbow. It was also quite a distance from where we were living. We looked closer to where we were. There was a church not too far away called Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) that was a lively and modern Anglican church, yet they still met in a great, old cathedral-type building. They had several different kinds of services, from more traditional to very contemporary. Cherilyn went to the contemporary service. They were also running what was then becoming the very popular Alpha course - a ten-week introduction to Christianity that has since spread around the world. We attended HTB for a time but ended up at a sister church called St. Paul’s, closer to where we lived with a more family-oriented feel.  We also joined one of the church’s small groups. It was run by an American who was related to a speaker I had known in YWAM. Yet, even though the leader was American, we felt like people related to us somewhat...

After Christmas, Laura found a position at a preschool. It was a great place with a number of American children and a small brush with fame. Nick Rhodes (from the band Duran Duran) sent his daughter there. Most of the interaction was with his nanny but he sometimes stopped in. We decided to rent a flat with our friend, Cherilyn. It was a two-bedroom, basement flat in Earl’s Court. Even though it was lower than the street level, there were still windows in the front and a little walk-out patio in the back. The back faced the side of the Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre. The beautiful thing about living in Earl’s Court is that it is officially in Central London. That is not only a physical reality but also a psychological one. It is a dream come true for many a young person to live in central London. We had arrived. And although the closer you get to the center, the more expensive it is, at least I now only had to get a travel pass for Zone 1 instead of 1 and 2. While I took the Tube to wo...

To me, holidays weren’t too big of a deal. Getting together with family wasn’t a necessity. I would at least try to get together with friends but if that didn’t work out, no bigee.  To my wife, holidays with family were a BIG deal. This year, however, we weren’t going to be able to afford to travel to California. I decided that we at least needed to do something special to distract Laura from her deprivation.  The cool thing about living in London is that you can easily get to Europe, otherwise known as The Continent. There’s a bit of a controversy between the UK and the rest of Europe. Some English people don’t consider themselves European since the island is separated from the rest of the continent, although it’s more of a cultural thing than topographical. Anyway, there are lots of great places you can easily get to on The Continent from London for a fairly reasonable cost. We found a special package to Austria. It was a coach trip to the Channel (this was before the Chunne...

They say that first year of marriage is the hardest and the saying held true for us. They also say opposites attract. These two individuals who are so very different and who have lived separate, self-interested lives are now permanently tied together and the adjustment can be rough. We went from hardly ever seeing each other, to being together 24/7 for our three-month honeymoon. That part wasn’t so bad as we were doing a lot of fun stuff. But now we had to settle down into a regular life, working and doing all the menial stuff that much of life entails. In one respect, Laura and I are very much alike. Neither of us are very vocal arguers. Instead, we tend to retreat into ourselves and get quiet with each other. I would take offense at something she did and just get quiet or vice versa. Then we wouldn’t talk to each other except out of necessity for a few days until we made up. She wouldn’t know what she had done that I took offense to and I wouldn’t know what I had done. We just needed...

Laura and I approach finding a job with two very different styles. I am relentless - checking the paper every day, calling, interviewing. Laura is far more laid back. She just prays and waits and trusts that the right opportunity will come along. It drives me crazy. I found a position through one of my friends from the New Rainbow church where I had been going. His brother was the manager of a camera warehouse, located just down the street from St. James’s Park in central London. The warehouse was underground below one of their camera stores. I worked with another guy pulling orders to deliver to the other stores in the region. Now that there was at least some money coming in, we started to look around to see if we could find somewhere to live by ourselves. The only thing we could afford was a bedsit, short for a bedsitting room. It is just a room in a house with a shared bathroom. For things to be affordable in London you have to plan well. The closer you live to central London, the m...

Our next destination was Lausanne, Switzerland where I had lived a few years before. We were going to stay with the Devereauxs, an American family I had known in YWAM. Our train climbed into the magnificent Alps, out of Italy and into Switzerland. In Lausanne, we relaxed by Lake Geneva with the French Alps towering in the distance on the other side of the lake. I took Laura to see the picturesque Chillon Castle down the lake, one of the most visited in Europe and purported to be the inspiration behind the castle in The Little Mermaid movie. It sits right on the lake near Montreaux, a town which hosts the second largest annual jazz festival. Then we went to one of my favorite spots in the world. Gruyere cheese is one of Switzerland’s most famous, often used in fondue. It takes its name from the town of Gruyeres which sits in a large valley, surrounded by mountains on all sides. In the middle of the valley is a large hill, covered by a small medieval town, topped by a castle. We toured t...