Fabulous 15

Amy was 1 day younger than me so we always celebrated our birthdays together on my birthday. On my 15th birthday we sailed into Pensacola, FL, and all of our friends went out for our birthday dinner at Blimpies. Keith Brinkman pretended that 1 of those window Christmas candles was our birthday candle and burnt his hand when we "blew it out" and he covered it with his hand.

15 was SUCH a fun age. Although people had always still been friends with me on the ship no matter my age, by 15, I was close enough to the crew's age that I was seen as an equal. We had night watchmen who would guard the gangway 24 hours a day to make sure noone came onboard who wasn't supposed to. There was 1 nightwatchman who moved onboard who won my affections over and I started staying up til 2AM talking with him everynight that he had the late watch. I am not sure how I got up the next morning for school, but I was in love. When we got to Cozemel, Mexico, he asked me on my first date and I was shocked that my parents agreed to it because he was 23 and I was 15, but he was such a nice guy AND my parents knew he was moving off the ship soon. They were pretty smart. I was heartbroken when he moved off and cried for weeks. We went to Hard Rock Cafe and out for ice cream and then a sweet long walk along the water under the stars.

As I mentioned in the last post, Miss Kelly took us on lots of excursions. 1 was to a little island in Guatemala that was only excessable by boat. For some reason we went into a little store and she told us that we could each pick out something for her to buy us. We were looking around and Annie was looking at the frames when all of a sudden she yells out, "That's me!" We thought she meant that it looked like something she would like, but we looked and it was actually a pic of her in the frame. When she was little a chain store took pics of her and her little sister as models and this pic had somehow made it's way into a frame in a remote island of Guatemala and Annie had found it. One of the many crazy stories in life!

One week a group of the crew went into a remote village to work with a school and church in a village. There was a scorpian that lived in the shower. We slept on the floor under misketo nets and there was a chicken that lived in a box with us that eventually Lisa killed it and plucked it front of us and was made into stew. I could not eat it after living in the same room as it.

At 15, Amy and I LOVED the band DC Talk and their latest album "Jesus Freak." We arrived in Jacksonville, FL and realized that they were doing a free concert within walking distance of the ship. We were estatic, waited all day there, worked our way to the front & had the time of our lives! Also, we were contacted that year by probably the biggest Christian teen girls magazine at the time that they were intested in our lives and wanted to send a reporter out to spend a few days interviewing us and taking pics for Brio Magazine. When we sailed back into Jacksonville, FL, Andy was there and we spent the next few days being celebrities.

The summer when I was 15, Amy and Dan both moved off the ship. My parents were always very cautious about our needs and how choosing the life of missionaries affected their children. My dad asked me if I wanted to move off too then, but I decided I wanted to stay on the ship an extra year. That summer though I did meet Rick, Brenda, and Jordan Lewis. Rick and Brenda were leading a youth trip called X-treme Summer to Mexico. I knew alot of the leaders because they had been on a mobile team to the ship the year before so i decided I wanted to attend. We spent a week in TX and then drove down to Mexico for a week. I loved being around so many other people my age and getting to know Brenda, Jesse Carter, Mooky, Pete & Josanna, and Jessica Velnosky better. Funny how so many of them still have a presence in my life.

When I got back from X-treme Summer, a new DTS had started onboard. My mom told me that one of the boys Josh on it had been asking about me because his cousin had been one of my good friends on Teen Missions the summer before. Josh and I started hanging out all the time and then one day he started acting really weird and that day wouldn't talk to me, but he and Miss Kelly sat out on the dock for hours talking. I was so mad at them for excluding me (even though I found out later it was because he had been asking her for advice on what to do about his crush on me), but later that night he asked if he could talk to me and told me of his feelings and wanted to talk to my parents to ask if we could date. Kelly was in love with our friend Andy and the next day she and I walked down to the Landing in Jacksonville to giggle about boys. Unfortunately Josh fell in love alot faster than me and was ready to marry me, but I was 15 and wanted to see the world before settling down. That fall there were so many fun young people onboard. We docked in Guatemala next to another ship called the Logos 2. They were way stricker than our ship, but they had lots of dances. On Thanksgiving they invited our ship to a dance on their ship. There was a boy named Phillip onboard our ship who I really liked and I suspected he liked me, but my mom didn't really like him and he was scared of my dad so he never asked me out. And there were a bunch of scandenavian beauties onboard who liked Phillip as well. That night we headed over to the dance and Phillip kept making me promise I would save a dance for him. The girls kept asking him to dance and I was tired of watching it so I walked out and was headed back over to see if Pappy would like to watch a movie since mom was out of town. It was dark and there were tons of stars in the sky that night and all of a sudden I hear Philip yelling my name from up on the ship, "Erin come back and dance the last dance with me." My memory of that night was so dramatic I swear it had a soundtrack playing on the dock that night. : )

That year I traveled to:Pensacola, FL; New Brunswick, Canada; Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua; Santo Tomas, Guatemala; Cozumel, Mexico; Jacksonville, FL; Richmond, VA; Chambersburg, PA; Montreal, Quebec; Grand Haven, MI; Chicago, IL; Duluth, MN; Cleveland, OH; Buffalo, NY; Jacksonville, FL; Panama; Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala; Lindale, TX; Monterray, Mexico.