Nelson’s Journal, 2/3/22

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Nelson has no idea that by the end of this month, he will begin feeling poorly in several ways. His symptoms are mysterious and unwelcome, and they don’t even hint at the disastrous diagnosis they will ultimately reveal.

Heavily on his mind at the beginning of February is whether or not he and Ann Sophie should schedule a break from the day and night pace of working with YWAM while pastoring a church. Soon they would become parents, and Nelson planned to be very much involved in parenting the little boy God was preparing to them.

Repeatedly in his journal he has asked what God thinks about making a big shift. Logic tells him that with the baby coming soon, there’s no time like the present to tackle the decision. The problem was all the questions that came to mind when he tried to puzzle it out. Should they give up one of their commitments? And if so, which one(s)? And when? And if they left, where would they go? To do what?

Nelson senses big changes coming but has no idea how extensive they’ll be. He is also unaware that in the end, he won’t have to decide anything, because God Himself is going to step in and do it for him.

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February 3, 2022

Early morning, still dark at our place at Hale Ola. Annso in the next room, pregnant as all get-out.

We’re packed up for the termite tenting today [all food double bagged, right], but first a beach staff meeting. Should be better than usual, with just 4 of us today.

Seems that whoever we have on staff over the years, people really need these meetings to unload and get stuff off their chest, though sometimes it lands on us. That can be really stressful, but it’s part of the job.

I am looking forward to a break from YWAM but not sure what exactly it will play out like. It’s the 3rd day of February, 2022. The date seems unreal. The 1990’s seems like ancient times. Actually, time is going so fast, 2019 seems like the old days but it was just 3 years ago.

Lord, I’m thankful for all of it. Thank you for the uncertainty and the certainty, although there is much more in the first category. Thank you for the joy you brought through Annso and the prophecy from Mom years ago to that effect. You are so nice to me, and I deserve none of it, especially not her. We have our little challenges here and there, but mostly, we get along so well.

I pray for the wisdom on how to do our taxes. Seems I vacillate between being overly honest to the point where we hurt ourselves and don’t need to, and just not reporting things we probably should. You have been so kind to me after all my trouble with the IRS in the past. We have no debt, no financial trouble at all, and you have given us all sorts of income streams. Being in Hawaii, it’s easy to rent things out [scooters, cars], and that helps.

I pray you would guide us in this transition, possibly into living off campus and not running the Kokua Crew anymore. It’s not our ministry anyway. It’s yours.

I pray for our little guy who is about to come into the world and that the delivery would be quick and easy for Annso. I’m sure millions of people pray for things to be easy, and maybe what’s the point, but I’d feel bad if I didn’t at least ask. You have been so nice to us and for us, that it seems the beginning of stuff is the hard part—like when we were dating and spending all that time apart being the worse part, and the marriage itself being the easiest. I pray the same thing for our little baby.

We had such a hard time getting pregnant, and if it follows the same trend, you would make the delivery easy. Why not? At least I can ask.

I pray for my meeting with Jimmy today about church and the time we have left in his internship. We’ve hit an all-time low in attendance. I have felt we should quit pastoring for some time now, and maybe the writing has been on the wall much too long. Same thing for Kokua Crew. We had a good run at it, but I don’t want to stay with it until maybe someone asks us to leave.

Please give us the wisdom to know what to quit and when to quit, if anything. You know what’s coming and have put us in the right positions at the right time. You also know the boundaries we should set, both with work and with personal relationships. Just let us know what to do.

I pray for a kingdom mindset with taxes, faith, possessions, status, location, what we do with our time, everything. Thank you for our invitation to spend a little time up north at Steve’s place for a day and a night away. I know it will help us.

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“The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.“ (Proverbs 16:9)

Nelson’s Journal, 2/22/22

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When a couple is expecting a new baby, the thought process is like a see-saw—up and down. Once the baby comes, will all our current freedoms evaporate? Or will it add lots of fun to our lives? Should we hurry to make changes before we can’t anymore?

Nelson was ruminating on this in early February. With the baby’s due date only a month away, he wondered how soon he should make the decision to stay close to Ann Sophie till the baby came. But that was just one unknown on a list of many, so he focused instead on meeting the goal of this one day.

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February 2, 2022

I have a hypothetical job as an electrician, starting May 1, with some other stuff starting anytime Tim (the electrician) gets a permit. Hard to imagine doing something like that as it’s been a while since I had a job like that, probably since 1999 or so.

Lots of self employment work since then, but not working for the man, other than for DY at Sawyer Hardware and Lumber. But that place is now a thing of the past. We are just doing what we feel led to do, not really having a long term plan, as so many things are unknown and so often change as we go.

I don’t know what it will be like to have a little baby and to try and raise a child, to get fully into doing that. I imagine it will be fun. I don’t think it will be too hard, to be honest. I look forward to it. Why change careers at the same time, or shortly after? It has to do with slowing down.

I was thinking of trying to convince Tim to let me work 4, 10 hour days instead of 5, 8 hour days. That way I would have 1 day completely open in addition to the weekend, because there is still church.

IMG_0117.jpgAt 5pm I passed the truck inspection, got it insured, and even got new license plates for it. That was my goal, other than getting it down into Waipio Valley. I am debating going this weekend with Bates and Jake, maybe taking a group down there with a van. I don’t know. There’s always the slight chance Annso could go into labor and that would be terrible to miss. I wonder if it’s worth taking a chance on that. But once the baby comes, there will be no more chances for stuff like that.

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“The wisdom from above is…. open to reason.” (James 3:17)

Nelson’s Journal, 1/31/22

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About two years after the start of the pandemic, Hawaii is still dominated by Covid rules, actually establishing more and more of them. Since Nelson and Ann Sophie live in Kona, on the big island of Hawaii, they are subject to all of them.

In Nelson’s way of thinking, after being compliant with a long list of pandemic regulations blanketing the entire ministry and scores of young people needing to be quarantined as they arrived on the island (a logistical nightmare), he seemed to reach his limit. Mandatory weekly Covid tests for the whole gang had become debilitating, with government vans invading the campus, checking on compliancy. To Nelson it seemed like they were in a foreign land, not the United States of America.

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January 31, 2022

“The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” is a book I’m reading that Annso gave me for my birthday. It’s almost prophetic that she gave it to me. She is that for me, in a way, and much more, with a baby on the way.

It’s the last day of January 2022. The date sounds fictional. We are making decisions based on vaccine mandates and dodging this and that new rule.

I got fined $250 for bringing a group up Mauna Loa (Long Mountain volcano) on the wrong date, because I supposedly put everyone’s life in danger having that many people in a cabin who could have been wiped out by the ruthless killer, the Omicron variant of the sinister Corona virus (with a 99.9% survival rate). It’s, “Don’t think. Just obey.”

The book is like medicine to me in a way, giving me an excuse or authorizing a break from the high speed pace of the campus and Kokua Crew. Been working to imagine a 7-3 job training as an electrician. I don’t know where it will end up, and it’s hard to imagine working any job for 3 years—especially for another person.

The book says that slowing down can look a lot like failure. Interesting. There sure is a lot of ego wrapped up in moving fast and doing a lot and letting people see you do a lot.

Lord, thank you for leading us. I pray for the courage to carry it out and the wisdom to avoid costly failures that don’t cost only me, but my family, too. Thank you for the encouragement to overcome at least some of the ego that keeps us running so hard for so long. Thank you for your grace and mercy to see me through, despite myself.

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“It is vain for you to rise up early, to take rest late, to eat the bread of toil.“ (Psalm 127:2)