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Authors: Rick Bundschuh, Cheri Hamilton
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wrecked her driver’s car door when we pushed the car out of the garage with the car door open in order to not wake up our parents at 5:00 A.M . But I don’t ever remember my mom getting mad at us!
Soon my sister got a boyfriend, and I was surfing by myself. Abandoned, I started hitchhiking with my surfboard to the beach. At 16, I got my driver’s license, and my dad bought me a car, so I didn’t have to hitchhike anymore. He probably saved my life!
After I got a car, I would surf Sunset Cliffs every day at Abs. I surfed it for a solid six years. On occasion, I would go north up to the Cardiff area and surf Pipes. In high school, I made friends who surfed, and we would all pitch in for gas to go surfing. My friend, Pam Falgren, from high school tennis, also surfed. And she always made everything extra fun.
Not only were my parents teachers, but they were also history buffs. It was popular in the sixties to put murals on your walls, so we had the Greek Parthenon painted on our living room walls and marble furniture that looked like it came from Greece. Our specialty home deco was a statue in the living room of Venus de Milo almost two feet tall. This is one of the most famous sculptures of ancient Greece. How many kids grow up with that in their living room? I now see it as God preparing my eyes for what the future would hold.
After the shark attack, we had a week of interviews at a friend’s house up in Kalihiwai Ridge. As soon as I walked into the living room, I was confronted with the Venus de Milo statue again! It was too close to home. No one else noticed it until I pointed it out. But it reminded me that I had grown up with that statue.
Later, when Bethany and I attended the ESPY Awards in Hollywood and stayed at the Morovian Hotel on Sunset Blvd, I noticed that our hotel room contained old antique items that were for sale, and our room had a magazine with the Venus de Milo statue featured on the cover. It was a bit strange to have this recurring theme.
Bethany eventually made it to Paris and got a photo in the Louvre Museum of the real thing!
There was a time when I was in love with Jesus. It was in those halcyon days when my parents would drop us off at Vacation Bible School. The church was known as Emmanuel Baptist Church, and it was one of the early hot zones of what people now call “The Jesus Movement.”
Whatever label you give it, back then Emmanuel was an interesting intersection of imaginative and welcoming youth ministry that made a group of surfers, hippie types and kids on the edge of culture feel loved while sharing with them the message of Christ in a way they understood.
Even as a child, I had a hunger for truth. Both my parents were educators, so I guess it was natural that I would enjoy learning. But this was a deeper sort of learning, not just rules of grammar or memorization of facts. I resonated with the simple message of the love of God. So, at the end of summer, I entered elementary school in love with Jesus. I felt a peace in knowing that He was God and that He loved me. I knew that He would hear me if I called out to Him.
But I was alone in my faith. After that beautiful summer at Emmanuel, there was no one close to me to encourage me on my spiritual journey, no one to teach me or introduce me to theprinciples of Christ or a better understanding of God. Except for the short-lived Sunday School excursion, my faith was isolated.
And then it began to wilt.
I was wheeling around town when I decided to stop by the local thrift store to look for castaway treasure. I picked up a book for a dime that told a true story about a sickly kid who was nursed back to health and won a swimming championship. The author wasn’t trying to preach Christianity; it wasn’t even a Christian book, nor was the book about God at all. The author simply stated that health was built up by cooperating with the God-ordained complexity of the human body via good nutrition.
It planted the seed of the idea
Soon my sister got a boyfriend, and I was surfing by myself. Abandoned, I started hitchhiking with my surfboard to the beach. At 16, I got my driver’s license, and my dad bought me a car, so I didn’t have to hitchhike anymore. He probably saved my life!
After I got a car, I would surf Sunset Cliffs every day at Abs. I surfed it for a solid six years. On occasion, I would go north up to the Cardiff area and surf Pipes. In high school, I made friends who surfed, and we would all pitch in for gas to go surfing. My friend, Pam Falgren, from high school tennis, also surfed. And she always made everything extra fun.
Not only were my parents teachers, but they were also history buffs. It was popular in the sixties to put murals on your walls, so we had the Greek Parthenon painted on our living room walls and marble furniture that looked like it came from Greece. Our specialty home deco was a statue in the living room of Venus de Milo almost two feet tall. This is one of the most famous sculptures of ancient Greece. How many kids grow up with that in their living room? I now see it as God preparing my eyes for what the future would hold.
After the shark attack, we had a week of interviews at a friend’s house up in Kalihiwai Ridge. As soon as I walked into the living room, I was confronted with the Venus de Milo statue again! It was too close to home. No one else noticed it until I pointed it out. But it reminded me that I had grown up with that statue.
Later, when Bethany and I attended the ESPY Awards in Hollywood and stayed at the Morovian Hotel on Sunset Blvd, I noticed that our hotel room contained old antique items that were for sale, and our room had a magazine with the Venus de Milo statue featured on the cover. It was a bit strange to have this recurring theme.
Bethany eventually made it to Paris and got a photo in the Louvre Museum of the real thing!
There was a time when I was in love with Jesus. It was in those halcyon days when my parents would drop us off at Vacation Bible School. The church was known as Emmanuel Baptist Church, and it was one of the early hot zones of what people now call “The Jesus Movement.”
Whatever label you give it, back then Emmanuel was an interesting intersection of imaginative and welcoming youth ministry that made a group of surfers, hippie types and kids on the edge of culture feel loved while sharing with them the message of Christ in a way they understood.
Even as a child, I had a hunger for truth. Both my parents were educators, so I guess it was natural that I would enjoy learning. But this was a deeper sort of learning, not just rules of grammar or memorization of facts. I resonated with the simple message of the love of God. So, at the end of summer, I entered elementary school in love with Jesus. I felt a peace in knowing that He was God and that He loved me. I knew that He would hear me if I called out to Him.
But I was alone in my faith. After that beautiful summer at Emmanuel, there was no one close to me to encourage me on my spiritual journey, no one to teach me or introduce me to theprinciples of Christ or a better understanding of God. Except for the short-lived Sunday School excursion, my faith was isolated.
And then it began to wilt.
I was wheeling around town when I decided to stop by the local thrift store to look for castaway treasure. I picked up a book for a dime that told a true story about a sickly kid who was nursed back to health and won a swimming championship. The author wasn’t trying to preach Christianity; it wasn’t even a Christian book, nor was the book about God at all. The author simply stated that health was built up by cooperating with the God-ordained complexity of the human body via good nutrition.
It planted the seed of the idea
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