A Black Eye
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. My eye started to swell and my head hurt. Everyone suggested that I should just go lie down. As I looked in the mirror, I could see that I was going to have a black eye. Fortunately I didn’t break my neck.
At the end of a DTS outreach, everyone gets back together for a few days for a debriefing and graduation. Since we had left from London for the outreach, that’s where we returned to meet back up with the team that went to Romania and the DTS leaders from the ship. We were going to be staying in Holmstead Manor, the YWAM base south of London where my family had spent some time back in ’82 when I had first visited England.
Laura met us at the airport. I had not been able to tell her about my black eye so that was a little surprise. She was able to get some time off school so she could stay with us during our time at Holmstead. We re-instituted JYPO when we found an unused room in the Manor. We added other members from the Romanian team until we were nine strong – 7 Americans, 1 Brit and me, whatever nationality I was.
Laura wasn’t really silly enough for full membership but, as my wife, she was made an honorary member (even though she didn’t want anything to do with it). She had fun hanging out with some of the single girls she had gotten know during the lecture phase of the DTS on the ship.
After any DTS of our size, there are usually at least a few marriages that come from romances begun during the school. The other two founding members of JYPO, Joe and Lucy ended up getting married. And there was at least one other between the “devil worshipper” student (who did end up graduating) and probably the prettiest girl in the school - a blond, southern belle-type from Texas. Everyone could see that they had become friends during the DTS but they seemed like a very unlikely couple.
Graduation Night |
The Final JYPO Members |
The "Devil Worshipper" and The Southern Belle |
Joe and Lucy |
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