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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There was a hotel on the coast of Israel that for some reason was offering apartments to everyone at King of Kings. The apartments were all 1 bedroom, kitchen, bath; most were underground and very small, but they were free to KOKA members. To keep things fair, King of Kings had all its members bussed to the hotel one day, and they unleashed us on the hotel all at once. Each availible room had a slip of paper inside. When you picked a room, you took the piece of paper, put your name on it, and brought it to the realtors, who were set up in a special room. The rooms weren’t normal hotel rooms at all, and you had to travel down twisty back hallways to find them.

Somehow I had rooms picked out ahead of time that I wanted. You were really lucky if you managed a room with windows, and I knew where some of them were. But when I got to one, it would inevitably be taken by someone else (usually one of our stranger members). After the first 2 or 3, I gave up and just went to hang out.

Towards the end of the day, I went to see the realtors. I told the head guy that i didn’t want to look, I just wanted him to find me something really nice. I was flirting heavily, trying to get him to help me out (knowing that whatever apartments didn’t go to KOKA people, the realtors would sell for commission, it was in his best interests to save the nicest apartments for himself).

He found one on his list that he was going to give me, but then for some reason he reconsidered. He put me in another one, and to demonstrate that it was a nice one, he showed me that Malcolm Hedding had taken the one next door. I took it.

To add to my absolute chutzpah, shortly thereafter I asked him to take me to see the room. The lottery room was full of people (I remember the Kings, in particular), and they heard me ask. When he agreed, most of the people in the room went with us.

We had to travel the twistiest maze of corridors, but we finally arrived. The room was absolutely incredible. The living-room was huge, with one whole wall that was glass and had a bay window effect. Looking straight you looked out over the sea, to the right was a wooded area, and the view from the left portion of window you could see the city, shining in all its picturesque glory. It was breathtaking. The fittings in the apartment were very classy - wood floors, triple pane windows, marble, fine paint. I think there was even a little indoor garden. And it was quite spacious. I was embarassed that so many people had tagged along to see the apartment.

Back in the common room, Jared was getting ready to return to New Zealand, and we were all very sad to see him go. I gave him a huge hug, and I think we both cried. After he left, Ann Hilsden commented about what a nice guy Jared is, and how we’ll miss him.

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I was at St. Giles Presbyterian, my home church in the States. It was just after worship, and we were all standing silently, waiting on God. Jean was beside me, and he pulled out his harmonica. I gave him a strange look, and he let me know that he really felt like God was asking him to play. Into the stately silence, Jean began playing his harmonica. The people of the church began to dance to his music.

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we were a large family, scientists, the first to arrive on the planet. We were studying its ecosystem. It was strange in that one area of the planet had a small, empty city of very normal looking houses. We moved right in and began our work. There wasn’t a whole lot of life on the planet. Things were going very well when one day we noticed (from afar) that in another part of the city, another family had moved in. We went to investigate.

It was our family, right down to the youngest children. They made a great effort to appear normal - in fact, they seemed completely human - they were completely human, but they certainly weren’t normal. They had no memories, but pretended that they did. It wasn’t hard for us to confuse them and show them up as imposters. We freaked out and decided to leave the planet immediately.

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