I'm living a dream. You see, I have this imagination that works like the director of a film considering the score, the lighting, the visual enhancements, every look, detail, and nuance that will communicate in a deeper way with the audience. Events that seem boring, mundane, and insignificant to some can, for me, be a history altering moment with eternal significance and value. It's like this. Two people stand in front of a painting of the sky. One says, "I see an endless expanse with limitless possibilities, yet on the left the sky darkens and fortells of a storm to come. This explains the shading on the clouds and the direction and motion of the waves. The other guy says, "It's got alot of blue." I'm not the second guy. I like to explore the story as an author who delves instead of a journalist who simply describes. So as you can imagine, on a tropical island surrounded by people who are, shall we say "different", I would have no end of material to write about. And if you indeed come to that conclusion, you would be correct. However, the difference here is that the stories are already so colorful that there is no need for me to explore the meaning behind the colors of the sky and in doing so illuminate to you that the picture is not merely, ahem, blue. So let me tell you one such story that needs nothing but the facts for it's so fascinating in itself that...well, you'll see what I mean.

Friday morning, I went down the road through various gulches and corners of the rainforest, through Haiku to the YWAM (Youth With A Mission) base there for the 8am worship gathering. The makeshift campus sits on a lush, soggy, green slope of land that hangs on the side of a gulch thick with ancient trees that make it look as if you could walk across the top of them. With multiple facilities and more people than rooms to accomidate them, the campus has that "hippie" vibe working itself out in a true sense of community. On this morning they decided to do worship outside because after all this is Hawaii. We gathered in a circle (because neo-hippie Jesus People like circles) and the worship team got in the center. "Now", says the worship leader, "We are going to illustrate the body of Christ today in our worship so the musicians will be the heart and rather than look inward we're going to take our focus outside so every one in the circle turn and face outside." With the accoustic guitars strummin and the dumbek drums humming the rhythm made it easy to move with the wind. Worshipping the Lord outside in an acoustic drum circle in Maui. Am I in a dream? Being on the wet side of the island meant that we were fortunate to have some dry weather in the morning but halfway through the worship a mist began to fall and I instinctively initially thought about seeking shelter. However the musicians kept on going and in spite of the rain seemed to have no plans to move. So there we stood. Around 50 people, in a circle, facing the outside, worshipping God, in the rain, on Maui. I looked up and to my left and saw a rainbow. Yes, a rainbow. This is the problem of writing like a journalist. The mere facts don't communicate the awesome sense of spiritual joy that such an event contains. Next Tuesday we'll be going down to Paia to share the Gospel and worship with these students. This must be a slice of the abundant life that Jesus was talking about.