Flying through the night on a fourteen-hour Japan Airlines Chicago-to-Narita flight had me thinking back on my long, soon-ending career as a Covenant Police officer. Twenty years and now I’ll get my military pension. Time had flown by. I served ten years in Washington protecting Covenant officers while they were looking for government funding of yet another chapel at North Park. Most of the remaining years I was undercover, working with a secret Covenant women’s group at filtering some Swedish and Danish websites from their husbands. I don’t make the rules. That’s left to the bosses on Francisco Avenue.
Looking out the window, it was pitch black. We were somewhere over the International Date Line, nearing Japan’s northern islands. There were some Northern Lights blowing off to the east. This was a quiet time to pray for peace as the Covenant had its annual surf mission in Bali.
Everything had changed since the Muslim extremists attacked the Western tourists on Kuta beach. The last time the surf mission met here was in ’95. To think that many of us were dancing the nights away at the Sari Club, the very same club that was blown up last month. How I remembered the music; all the Bee Gees, and Abba for the Australians. And then she walked back into my life. Of all the dance clubs in the world she had to walk into the famous Sari Club. There we were, old and new friends of the Covenant dancing in cutoffs and Hawaiian shirts and drinking Fosters, while she was dressed to kill and getting all the looks from the guys. All the men were watching her. I couldn’t help but let my eyes follow her around the dance floor. She was stunning. But what we’d had years ago was over. What we had at North Park was long gone. It’s strange, in that you don’t remember how love grows but you remember when it’s over.
We had the responsibility of protecting hundreds of Covenant families as they gathered here on Kuta beach. We came a week early and stationed men on various cliffs overlooking the beach. The Muslim population from Java had been overpowering the peaceful Hindu people of Bali.
Every day the families were arriving by boat. The tide was low, so they had to wade through the water with all their equipment. A lot of the pastors had cell phones, so the helpers met them and packed the luggage into the Land Rovers. Soon they would be checking into the beautiful hotel that the Central Conference had reserved for the two-week event. We suggested that all of the little blonde kids not wear their N.P. Vikings t-shirts, so that they wouldn’t be targets of Muslim extremists.
The mornings were spent surfing the outer reefs. We had a large group; the tradewinds were light, and the swells were pumping. The whole ocean seemed to rise up and engulf us — the effects were delirious. We were poaching awesome winter swells. We had to recoup and beach our long boards. I was talking to a couple of guys who had been surfing the east coast of Japan. One of them, Tim, had been in a couple of *Surf Companion* magazines. He was a Widerquist — a big name in Covenant surf circles. His father was with
Karl Olsson when he first began the surf missions in the sixties. They were an eclectic bunch of Covies on those first surf sojourns.
Tim said, “In Karl’s teachings, we learn that at times we can’t see the ocean for the waves. The surf mission is a journey without an end; the goal is the surf itself.”
That night we had a full-moon Christmas party and blared Covenant techno music. No Lucia, but we had a palm tree with lights. It’s Christmas, and Covies love to party!
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