Day 5– July 4, 2005:A day of fireworks (literally and figuratively)

WOW, what a day. Yesterday I actually wondered if today would have anything worthy of writing down. On the walk home this evening I found myself trying to piece together the day and remember everything to throw into this….

It started out quite simple. We had a late brunch at 9:00 so we all slept in a bit and had some time to read. The brunch was great, some kind of veggie omelet/quiche thing with bacon and fruit and toast with sugar and cinnamon. Then we talked about how we were both actually cold last night so I stopped at the boutique to pick up a light comforter. The boutique is a store where everything is free, but used, kind of like goodwill, but the stuff is from previous DTS’ers. After brunch we had a ‘get to know each other meeting’. I thought this would be lame. I was wrong. There were 80 of us in a room (with another ~20 staffers) and first we all gave our name and where we came from. Then it got interesting. They opened up the microphone to whoever had a story to tell about how they got here, what God did in their lives to make this class happen. There were so many cool stories that I swore I would remember them all. Of course I didn’t. This one kid (18 years old) talked about how we should cherish our young kids because he was once here with his parents when he was younger and then his family went to China to be missionaries. He mentioned how they were there during the SARS epidemic and were actually locked down in a college campus. Out of boredom they started singing songs over the intercom and he was able to sing “Jesus Loves Me” in three different languages. A member of the communist party heard him sing and wanted to throw him in jail, but they did not because he was so young. After that many students from the college came to talk with them about who this ‘Jesus’ is and ‘why does he love me?’. Many became Christians through this simple act of this young kid.

After the meeting we split up into smaller groups. We were with John from Santa Cruz and a family of 6 from New Zealand and Toby from Switzerland. During our mini-meeting we each told our stories of how we got here and the guy from NZ had an amazing story of how God provided both financially and physically. It turns out that he won a $2000 travel voucher (which helps a little when your flying 6 from NZ). He also fell 30 feet while rock climbing and was ok, but then 4 days later (the day he had to pack his house) he wrenched his back so bad he couldn’t get off the floor. He thought it would be impossible to make it here. Then two friends came to his house and prayed for him on the floor and he got up and hasn’t had an ounce of pain since then.

Suddenly Jonny and Jessie came running towards us (they were playing in the ark park). Jonny was covered with blood and dirt all over his chin. Ruth ran to tend to the boy and I ran for the first aid kit. It turns out that he fell from about 6 feet and landed on his chin in the pebbles/rocks. He had a gash in his chin all the way across about an inch long and a quarter inch deep. It was nasty. We cleaned it up as best we could and went off to the emergency room. Luckily, Craig (from NZ) has a minivan and he drove us there. Jonny ended up with 5 stitches and a new pet lion (stuffed) from the ER folks. Daddy couldn’t help but wonder how much that lion was going to cost him.

Upon our return, Jonny was famous. Everyone was asking if he was ok and Jonny was proudly displaying his battle wounds. He quickly started playing again as if he now knew that a doctor could fix anything that could happen.

Then we had a BBQ with everyone and headed to town for the parade. We saw some authentic Hawaiian garb on natives with drums drive by on flatbed trucks. It was fun until the rain started. It didn’t stop for well over an hour (luckily, this is the dry side of the island). We ended up hiking the ½ mile back up the hill to our little home in the rain. Luckily we found a broken umbrella in the trash that shielded us a bit. We got home drenched and just in time for the rain to stop and the fireworks to start. Luckily we were able to see them great from our room…. Happy 4^th of July!