We had just finished a major event, and the boat was loaded with all ICEJ and Simul staff. I don’t know if I missed the boat (which was a fire nation boat from Avatar), or if I chose to swim along behind, but it was a long, exhausting swim across the ocean to the island of Nauru, where we were scheduled to have lunch with the king.

I arrived a bit after the boat, and was the last in line for lunch. By the time I made it up to the table, there wasn’t much food left. Ray was in charge of food distribution, and he stopped me when I got to the table. I was starving from my long swim, and impatient to eat, but it soon became apparent to me that he wasn’t going to let me eat until he was sure that everyone else had had their fill. I was angry to be treated that way, but there was enough for me in the end.

We sat for lunch at a large square of tables on a balcony overlooking the sea. The king was a skinny red headed young man with glasses. While we ate, he had us go around the room introducing ourselves and telling him where we were from. He pretended to know something about our home states and nations, but it was obvious that he’d never been off the island.

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We borrowed Lisa Rudiger’s Settlers of Catan game and decided that a good place to play it would be in the middle of the road.  We set up the board and played our game.  Then we had to go somewhere, so we decided to just leave the game out - we’d put it up when we got back.

In the car on the way back it began to snow heavily.  It was beautiful and we were all very excited.  Then we remembered that we’d left Lisa’s game out in the middle of the road - oh no!  Well, it was certainly ruined by now.  We made plans to order a new game online for Lisa, and have my mother bring it when she comes in a week or so.  In the mean time, we could let Lisa have our game.

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I was at Coresco alone late one night when a van pulled up outside, a couple of kids got out and began taking two small dead bodies out of the van and putting them in a ditch. As I called 911, one of the kids looked up and saw me. I completed the call, but too late remembered that the door was unlocked. A few of the kids came in. The leader was 10, and way tougher than any 10 year old should be. Turns out they were all brothers and sisters - 14 originally, now 12 with the death of 2 of the younger ones. We were at Coresco a long time before I realized that the cops weren’t coming. The 10 year old basically kidnapped me, and took me back to their house.

At first I was scared, but back at the house I was overwhelmed with sorrow and pity for these kids. Never in the history of man has there been a more disfunctional family. Dad (who was actually around) was the most useless, pathetic, weak person I’d ever met, and Mom (who wasn’t around anymore) had made no bones of the fact that she didn’t love any of her kids. Each kid had a wildly different problem. They seemed to be raising eachother. I saw one kid feed the baby with raw egg and a syringe, then throw her down on a bed for the night. It was explained to me that the baby never slept anyway. I went to the baby, changed her diaper, held and rocked her to sleep, and put her in a proper crib. Then I spent time with the oldest child, he was 16 or 17 and a disaster. He didn’t talk anymore. But when I sat down next to him, he actually told me what was bothering him. We had a great talk.

It was like that with all the kids, even the scary 10 year old - it was like they were actually dying for someone’s attention and love. All I had to do was care, and they completely fell apart. In the dream it was very clear that the Holy Spirit was helping them to open up, and helping me to know what to say.

I actually only got to spend time with the oldest few of the group before it was time for me to go home, but I had made plans to return and spend more time with them soon.

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I was a youngish Arab man, who growing up had been very close friends with an older Arab man. This older Arab man, as it turns out (though I didn’t know it when I was growing up) was a major terrorist (he even looked like Saddam Hussein). I only found out what he was involved with when he was arrested by US troops. There was no doubt in my mind that he really was guilty.

I decided to rescue him anyway - he meant a lot to me. Somehow I got him out of the US military base (where he was being treated very kindly) and smuggled him to his family compound in some desert village.

As a side note, I also went to get my god daughter out of the boarding school she was at. When I arrived, she was being punished for not wearing the hajib correctly. I got mad, and started yelling at the teachers - she’s only 5 for goodness sake! Show some mercy.

There were about 300 people in Mr. Terrorist’s compound. My friend was extremely old, and nearing death. As we made plans for his death, and the inevitable US attack, I kept having flashbacks about my friendship with this guy - how kind and wise he was, and all he had taught me.

He died and we had him cremated. I was to sprinkle the ashes from my balcony during the attack. We knew that the people in charge at the compound would release all the chemical and biological weapons (an unbelievable amount) when the attack began. I was given a really cool high-tech gas mask, but there weren’t enough to go around. Many of the women and children in my family were going to have to go without.

They did release the weapons. First we could see gasses, then the unportected people began to get sick - breaking out in lesions. Then, as a result of the weapons, it began to rain over the compound - a deadly rain. This was my cue, and I went out to the balcony, and cried, and sprinkled the ashes.

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Dave was staying with us. Somehow he convinced us that we all needed to drive to Cuba to go to the beach, and that the best way to get there was to go through Jamaica. So we all piled into the car, and started driving. When we arrived at the border between Jamaica and Cuba (hey, it’s a dream, OK?), we were stopped by the police. They told us that in order to go into Cuba, we had to get rid of all our illegal drugs. Dave refused. His logic was “if we’re going to have to get rid of all our drugs, why did we bother to go through Jamaica?”

In the end, the police won. We trashed our drugs, and arrived at the beach in Cuba. Since it was such a spur-of-the-moment trip, I somehow arrived with no bathing suit, no shorts, in need of a leg shaving, etc, so I had to pay a visit to the local version of Wal-Mart, where I picked out the ugliest outfit. The beach wasn’t all that impressive, either.

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Chloe and I were going for a meeting with Merlin (our set/projection design company). The meeting was in the evening, and we made the long trek to Tel Aviv. They, however, had forgotten the meeting with us, and when we arrived they were in the middle of a huge staff meeting. So we walk in and 50 eyes turn to stare at us. Our contacts were like, “uh, what are you doing here.” When we reminded them that we had a scheduled meeting, they were very embarassed, cancelled the meeting and started offering us coffee, tea, whatever.

For the Feast we were all scheduled to stay in a hostel on the way out of Jerusalem. Instead of having individual rooms, the hostel had set aside 4 or 5 very large empty rooms for us. The logistics team brought our beds from our houses, and there were several families staying in each room. One night, after a long session at the BHU, I returned to the hostel and crashed hard. Logistics woke me up in the middle of the night because they needed to move my bed over a bit in order to get another bed in the room. I was really grumpy, and they just couldn’t understand why.

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