An Ordinary Life, An Extraordinary Life

YWAM had a DTS running in Latvia but it was only held on the weekends, four hours away in the countryside on the Baltic Sea. It was their last weekend and they asked us to go. Us boys didn’t really want to but we gave in. Transportation was on a private bus and right from the start, there were people standing in the aisle. Then we then picked up people all along the way until there was a crush. The Sea was close by the property so one of the other guys and I decided to go find it. It was about 9 p.m. when we left to explore but as Latvia is very north, it stays light very late in the summer. We found the water and the scenery was nice but the water was cold and polluted. On the way back it was drizzling and we thought we could find a short cut through the forest because we were getting soaked. Instead we got lost and by this time, it was getting darker. We were following a grass road, thinking we were going in the right direction when all of a sudden we heard the sea again. We discover...

I had a minor run in with the criminal element. I had bought some jeans before I left but they were too tight on me. I was thinking about giving them away but someone suggested I might make some money by selling them on the street. I found a guy who offered me $20 American cash. I agreed and he handed me the cash.  He had given me a ten dollar bill, a five dollar bill and four ones, so I told him that he had only given me $19. He took the money back, pulled out another one-dollar bill, handed the cash back to me with the dollar bills on top and left. I went to count it again and discovered that he had slipped the ten and five-dollar bills out from underneath the stack and had left me with just the five one-dollar bills. I felt so stupid at being had and I wished that I had just given the jeans away in the first place. The Russians seem to think that good-looking people need to multiply their genes. Every time I showed someone pictures of Laura they would say how beautiful she was a...

We flew to Kiev where we spent the day before catching a train to our destination of Kharkov. That’s where they held the first communication workshop. We all stayed with families in town. I was with a family of three in the suburbs. There was Roma, Rosa and their eighteen-year-old daughter, Julie who spoke halting English. Whatever we were paying them to host us probably wasn’t much by our standards but I think it was a lot for them. Rosa seemed like she was trying to fatten me up. For my first meal she gave me a huge bowl of soup; a plate of stew; a salad of cucumbers, tomato and onions; and bread. Then she offered me a bowl of special Ukranian soup called Borscht. For dinner there was a plate of potatoes, salad, fish and a dessert of cheese, yogurt and sugar. I was so full, I couldn’t eat the dessert. I watched some of the Olympics with my hosts and I pulled out my pictures. Laura had sent me off with a mini album full. They loved them and thought Laura was very beautiful. Then they ...

Back in Kona, we got to participate in some other exciting events. One day there was a total solar eclipse we watched with the special tinted viewing devices so that we didn’t burn our eyes out. It was bizarre how as the moon went in front of the sun and it got dark, the morning birds all started up their singing until the moon moved on again. Kona hosts the famous Ironman triathlon every year for which YWAM provides volunteers. We gave out drinks and encouragement to the runners at a spot where they were just reentering town from their long run out in the lava fields. There were only a few miles left until the finish line. Although it’s certainly a great accomplishment to complete the race at all, to be an official finisher, the competitors have to be done by a certain time. With some of the stragglers at the end, volunteers start running with them for support. That was fun but I was wiped out with just those few miles. I can’t imagine doing the whole race. 25 – Hawaii, London, Poland...

Maui is the next island up the Hawaiian chain from the Big Island and the second biggest. Laura and I decided to go there for our anniversary. We got a kamaaina rate for a hotel and car rental which is a special rate for locals. Maui is built on two volcanoes with an isthmus connecting the two. The western volcano, Mauna Kahalawai created the west Maui mountains and the eastern volcano is the younger, much larger Haleakala. Of course, I wanted to do a circumnavigation of the island but there were two obstacles. The road around the western mountains was very narrow and dangerous in parts and the road around Haleakala was almost not even a road in parts. A lot of it wasn’t paved and there were huge ruts and potholes. Because of these conditions, the rental companies forbid driving all the way around the mountains. The second obstacle was the game plan. Knowing our differences, we agreed on a course of action to satisfy both of our preferences. The first day we would explore for me and th...

One of my friends from growing up on the ship came to Hawaii with her husband to go to U of N. From time to time we would go on fun outings together. We went from the top of Mauna Kea down to Waimea to a grocery store where we bought bread and cheese, sodas and grapes that we consumed on some benches in the shopping area.  One of my favorite memories was another time we went with them to Waimea. It was nice to get away from the regular, everyday normal to a completely different environment. This time, after we got the stuff from the grocery store, we climbed up the hill behind the shopping area to eat up there. There were cows in the field and the view was incredible, looking up at Mauna Kea and down to the deep blue ocean - so peaceful and relaxing. Sadly, they ended up getting divorced. Incidentally, all five of the main girls that I grew up with on the ship ended up getting divorced. They say it takes two to tango but each of them seemed to have had very legitimate reasons - fro...

Some people, when they live on an island, get a psychological condition called island fever. Knowing you’re on an island, you feel trapped. Even though, if you live any other place, you might not necessarily travel very far, you know that at least you can. Laura got the fever and had to leave every six months to go see her family in California. I worked when I could. I got a Saturday job at a tile warehouse but didn’t have to do much. I could actually get a lot of my reading done for school. The store was in the front of the building and when orders came in, I was supposed to fill them back in the warehouse. But Saturdays were pretty slow and half the time, the girls in the front would just come back and get the stuff themselves. That was a good situation for me. I didn’t have a class during my first summer and the husband of one of the girls from the tile shop had a business actually installing tile. I worked with him and did work for a temp agency, mostly doing yard work for companie...

Chapter Thirteen – U of N On the way to the University in Kona, we stopped off in Oahu to see my brother and his family. They took us to a luau out on the west coast. Then it was on to the Big Island. The weekend we got there, a big recording company was taping a worship album with a popular YWAM worship leader, Bob Fitts. They filled a hall with anyone who wanted to participate in singing in the background for the album. We gave it a shot. We jumped right in with a “couples without kids” group who were having a game night. They were playing a game we had never heard of called four on a couch. It involved constantly switching everybody’s names on pieces of paper where people end up answering to the names on the paper rather than their real ones. Despite having fun, it confused us on people’s real names and took us a while to get everybody straight. I began my university courses with the Video Production School. It was led by one of the guys who used to work with Procla-Media, the YWAM ...

Just before we left for Hawaii, Laura’s mom, Pat decided that she wanted to take Laura’s brother, Paul, Laura and me to Lake Tahoe for a couple of days. Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America, located on the border of California and Nevada. It is a major tourist attraction, with a number of ski resorts. California didn’t allow gambling but a lot of Californians went to Lake Tahoe to gamble on the Nevada side. I grew up being taught that gambling was a great evil. There is no specific prohibition against gambling in the Bible but it violates a number of Biblical principles and usually leads to great loss. In Laura’s family, some minor gambling was seen as just a little fun if one kept it from getting out of hand. Before we left, one of Laura’s uncles gave us a little money just to use for just that purpose. We needed money for our move to Hawaii so I was thinking that I would just keep the money and Laura’s uncle would be none the wiser. We got up to Tahoe and were enjoy...

Now that the DTS prerequisite was completed, it was time to make plans to attend the university in Hawaii. It runs on a modular system, in which you take just one class every day per quarter. I was planning to just get an Associate of Arts in Communication Arts starting with the Photography course in January. Laura was going to work until the Christmas break in just a few more weeks. We would fly to California for Christmas then on to Hawaii. My mom lived in a condo right next to the University where we would stay to save money. It was only a one-bedroom place but she was building a loft for herself so that we could have the bedroom. The Cicchettis (whom Laura had sort of worked for before the preschool) let us stay with them until we left. It was a much more relaxed home to stay in than the more high-strung household Laura had been in while I was in Greece. She was kicking herself for not asking them if could have stayed with them the whole time. They told her they would have been mor...

Greece is known for its marble. Many of the buildings are constructed of it, especially the floors, including the building we were staying in. The day before the outreach ended, some of us were hanging out in a big meeting room. People were doing different tricks and I decided to show a little of the gymnastic skills I had acquired growing up. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t really been doing any gymnastics for some time. I was confident that I still had my mojo. I was going to do a round off to a back flip. I did the round off and went into the back flip and woke up a few seconds later, sprawled on the floor. I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened so I got up to go try again when everyone started yelling,                      “NO, NO, NO”.  What I didn’t realize was that, as I went into my back flip, my right arm buckled and I landed on the side of my head, knocking me out for a few seconds. Now I started to feel it....