The rare exception of a weekend not immediately followed by an exam or a paper due date recently privileged me with a forty-eight hour Hawaiian vacation. Via a direct hop from LA to Maui, I left my coursework on one side of the Pacific and met fellow Class of ‘03 alum Ashley Bachara on a small island paradise in the middle of the vast ocean. Ashley recently committed to serve for two years on the staff of YWAM Maui and by all indications, she couldn’t have pursued a better opportunity.

Ashley was gracious enough to meet me–lei in hand–at the airport and give me the grand tour of her island home. We hit all the major tourist spots, ranging from waterfalls with canon-balling behemoth Hawaiians to the most densely-populated surf spots I’ve ever seen. Beyond the fantastic temperatures and ridiculously sweet T-shirt prices, I was most impressed with Ashley’s entire YWAM team.

Contrary to the Sunday-schoolin-surfer-dudes I had imagined, these folks were fantastic conversationalists and were contagiously passionate about their work. They had come from an amazing array backgrounds; one particularly memorable story came from the quiet but kind Jorry. Twelve months ago, Jorry had abandoned school and was living life on the streets of Papua New Guinea. Ashley met Jorry on a missions outreach to New Guinea last year and after an astonishing number of opportunities aligned, Jorry is now studying Biblical hermeneutics in Maui. The icing on the Horatio Alger cake: Jorry didn’t speak English when he stepped off the plane six weeks ago. He didn’t mention that fact, though, until we had been talking for at least 30 minutes.

My only travel-miscalculation of the excursion occurred in my prudent parking planning. In an effort to save the $10-15/day charged to park in the vicinity of LAX, on recent trips I have been parking in a friend’s lot and taking the city bus to the airport. The scheme unfolded as planned and I turned $1.50 in bus fare into $45 of saved parking fees. My mistake, though, was neglecting to notice that the late Monday night I had chosen to take the bus back to my car happened to be October 31.

Downtown LA + 11 PM + a city bus + Halloween = a freak show of epic proportions.

And that’s all I have to say about that.