Nelson and Ann Sophie first met while staffing a crowd of people in a Youth With A Mission ministry called Kokua Crew. This group, sometimes as many as 100, was made up of young people from all over the world. They came to Hawaii to serve as workers on the main YWAM campus in Kona.
Nelson and Ann Sophie were in charge of this group, giving them work assignments such as kitchen crew, daycare helpers, post office workers, coffee shop baristas, grounds keepers, library assistants, school aids, and anything else where help was needed.
In exchange for 40 work hours each week, these volunteers were able to live in beautiful Hawaii without cost, receiving three square meals each day, dorm-like housing, and free time on the weekends when they could do anything they wanted.
In today’s journal entry, Nelson is working out multiple problems connected to staying indefinitely in Hawaii, having been there for many years (especially Nelson), now that a baby was coming. How would this work?
The two of them were on call 24/7, overseeing the activities and whereabouts of all these young people while challenging them spiritually. Some of them preferred to break rules and do their own thing, requiring above-and-beyond attention from Nelson and Ann Sophie.
Every day the challenges were daunting and often exhausting, but the main campus counted on Nelson and his staff to see to it that each Kokua Crew member showed up daily to do the work they’d promised to do.
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February 17, 2022
I’m writing a bit this morning to process and pray about Kokua Crew and the future of it. What should we do about it?
There are lots of options, but it seems the writing is on the wall when YWAM is starting to charge them to participate… and quite a bit, according to some of the feedback we’re getting from those attending/starting in March.
Lord, what would you have the campus do? Stop Kokua Crew? Should we just make it no different from staff? It’s been super popular and getting more so all the time… then covid hit and we went back down. Now the numbers are back up and we have this immigration thing. Is it something to fight through or something to listen to? Are you saying something else?
Is Kokua Crew condoning the entitlement mentality that is so prevalent at this campus? What would YWAM Kona be like if we didn’t have Kokua Crew? Maybe that would be a way forward, like birthing pains into something harder but healthier.
I’m thankful for early mornings, Lord. For my girl sleeping in the next room, for our healthy baby boy growing inside her and how faithful you are to show your love for us in tangible ways that matter to us. Thank you for blowing away false ideas about you. Thank you for the work I have with Tim the electrician, the education it is, and the paycheck at the end of the time.
Thank you for the financial provision and the dream to build our own house all legal and up to spec. I never thought I would be able to do anything like that, just rehab an old one.
I pray for your leading today, for the appointment with Dr. Sira (OB doctor), and for the ability to stand up for what we believe is right with regard to the Kokua Crew and the medical care for our baby. I pray for peace, but where there is none, not to have that influence or divert us from the right thing. Amen.
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“I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you.” (Isaiah 48:17)