Joey and Vecky

This past week has been a roller coaster. In starting a new department here at YWAM, there are far more issues that come up than I thought. When I first got here, Maria and I got thrown right into the mix, and didn't really have any time to deal with the basics of setting up our department. Now that we've accomplished the urgent tasks, we've been able to step back and start to plan how everything should work and how we can pass that off to our successors after our time is over. It's often a frustrating job to figure out how our department should run and who exactly is in charge. There seemed to be a lot of confusion this past week about who was our department head, and also what our main responsibilities are as a communication department. There were a lot of long meetings involved, but we finally got everything worked out, and I think everyone is pretty happy with how our department fits into the bigger mission of YWAM Maui.


Adding to the roller coaster ride, one of our staff members, Joey Burdette, fell off a cliff last Friday and got pretty banged up. He was standing on the edge of a 20 foot cliff, wasn't paying attention, and just slipped. He was lifted out by helicopter (he was in the jungle on the east side of the island) and taken to the local hospital. He dislocated his knee, broke his nose, broke two teeth and fractured his face in three places. As bad as that sounds, it's a miracle that thats all that happened to him. He fell onto jagged lava rocks, and probably should have gotten hurt a lot worse. It was a freak accident, but because a lot of our weekend activities are pretty dangerous (cliff jumping, spearfishing, surfing, etc.) its made all of us staff guys a lot more careful when we do those things. I know that as my Mom reads this, she's probably having a heart attack and calling me to tell me to stop doing anything fun, but DON'T WORRY MOM! I'm always careful, and I have good health insurance!!!


See Mom, I have great health insurance!


In other news, Vecky Tuimon, our Indonesian contact and base leader of YWAM Pontianak in Borneo, has joined us for the fall. It's a great honor to have him come to our base as he is an immensely important figure in the church in Borneo. He has come to see how we run our DTS and how he can expand his ministries in Indonesia. He's a pretty quiet guy, but I'm sure that has a lot to do with some culture shock he's experiencing right now. I definitely am looking forward to getting to know him better in the next few months.



Vecky and I in front of the YWAM Maui kitchen.


And finally, because Don Swaney wants to see it so bad, here is my surfboard:



There you go Don, the 6'0" Kazuma Superfish.


4 comments:

  1. Samantha said...:

    he's going to love this.

  1. blessedjourney said...:

    Ok--Mom here--I don't care how good your health insurance is, don't participate in any dangerous activities!!!! I mean it!!!
    (we are missing you this week on our trip--Disney isn't the same without you!)

  1. Melissa said...:

    Renee's comment is definitely the best part of this post. Her voice is now in my head!

  1. Anonymous said...:

    Health insurance of not, be bold, go strong, trust in the Lord