Risen Magazine Spring 2009

risen faith * hope * love

The Philippine All-Stars Jay Adams Rick Slaton Jon Sundt John Van Hamersveld Do Hard Things The Shack

spring2009

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contents columns

spring 2009

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4 looking inside The audacity of Hope meets the Hope of the World.

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scott hancock :: the glue network eduardo enfuego :: the rising sun nova page :: singer, songwriter, artellectual bryan jennings :: walking on water gail skidmore :: dulcimers and death

16 outreach :: rocky malloy-a pirate’s treasure

Rocky Malloy’s life as a pirate nearly ended in a Mexican prison cell.

His new birth as a missionary is no less dangerous, or exciting.

54 natural high :: escape to reality After losing his two brothers to drugs, Jon Sundt turns kids onto their own natural highs.

64 miracles :: larry brown-the price of humanity Larry Brown went to Africa to see through blind eyes.

68 FHL :: Ultima Thule: n. an unknown and distant land Hope finds a home.

70 expressions John Van Hamersveld :: endless Removing his corporate suit and tie Van Hamersveld crossed the street into the world of the Sex Pistols. Aside from that, he hasn’t done much unless you count Rolling Stones and Beatles covers.

76 pulse Will Smith, Common, Mathew McConaughey, Mike Myers, Miley Cyrus, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Russell Crowe, Shia LaBeouf, John Travolta, Maria Bello

78 the well :: king on death row

interviews

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20 the philippine all stars :: hip-hop’s new bloom The light from this 14-person world champion dance troupe could illuminate a city the size of Manila for a month.

28 molly jenson :: oh my gosh, it’s me!

Sounds of love and life from a voice you’re going to hear a lot more of.

36 rick slaton :: fighting words In the ring his opponents fear his fists, but those same hands might just hold a kid’s dreams.

40 harris brothers :: the right kinds of trouble 18-year-old brothers are expected to crash their parents’ cars and barf in each other’s shoes. Brett and Alex Harris fight against such ridiculously low expectations.

46 jay adams :: freedom road As a leader from Dogtown, Jay Adams was followed by kids around the globe everywhere except into the dark world of despair and addiction.

60 william paul young :: the shack Long before best-selling author William Paul Young penned The Shack, he had some work to do on a shanty of his own making.

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VAPOR TRAILS

Where the Audacity of Hope Meets the Hope of the World andwiched between Faith and Love on our cover is Hope, a recession-proof commodity that never goes out of favor. Risen contributing artist Shepard Fairey illustrated Hope to the world on his President Obama posters, which proved a beautiful marriage of a lovely four-letter word, an artist, and a politician.

In earlier times parents named their children Hope.

The last word of e Shawshank Redemption is hope.

Hope gives us vision for a better world. As it is on Wall Street, so it is on Main Street, your street, throughout our nation and our world. Hope keeps us moving forward.

And hope is a weapon against a big world of stress. We at Risen have to remind ourselves of that as we grapple with other printed words, digital photos, and self-imposed deadlines. I, along with our talented and small team artists, writers, photographers, techies, and sales people, scramble to mix all of these elements together until they become the publication you are now holding. It’s the most punishing job anyone ever could love. And while I do love it, there are times when I get tangled in the details of print runs and paper stock while ignoring the big picture. Right when I’m about the cross the burnout line, I’ll come in contact with someone that makes it all worthwhile.

In this case, it was our featured dance crew, world champions of hip-hop dancing, the Philippine All Stars. Equally gifted, but practicing a far more dangerous dance, is ultimate fighter Rick Slaton, who splits his passions between hitting hard and helping kids. These are two of the stories you’ll find inside, along with others like the miracle of Pastor Larry Brown, Rocky Malloy’s mission to save South America, a Dogtowner’s redemption, and Molly Jenson’s graceful but dramatic burst onto the musical scene.

It’s a crazy, mixed up turned around and beautiful world, Lola. And it’s a world where stress threatens to cripple us as we all seek some sort of personal bailout, which leads me back to the that word in our tagline, Hope.

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My well of hope was dry on the evening I entered a somber room where people were praying for a friend, Rocky Green. Rocky, who has survived treatment for brain cancer, may not be around in the flesh to see this issue. Then again, we cannot discount the idea of a miracle, or that he may read this from his new celestial mansion. I do not want to trivialize this deeply painful situation as I too struggle in prayer for our friend, a wonderful brother who was on the verge of shaking the world with his blues-influenced musical style. I held back tears that night. Others did not.

Yesterday it hit me that I may no longer see Rocky paddle out at the Boneyard (the reef where I last saw him surf ) or hear him play the local coffee shops near his home in Encinitas, California. I felt robbed and pleaded with heaven for guidance. In response all I heard were the sounds of my own words echoing off the walls.

Since God was apparently silent I turned to the Internet to hear one of Rocky’s songs. The first item on the cue, “Vapor,” talks of the brevity of life. “Life is a vapor,” he sings, quoting James 4:14. I played it to the end, listening to Rocky’s words offered in comfort and joy. And while it didn’t make the pain go away, it did help make sense of a brief, well-lived life. Thirty, fifty, eight years—however you trim it, life is short, too short to obsess over the paper realities of this or any other magazine.

Both of the Rockys in this issue realize that “Life is a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.” So the choice is ours every day to live boldly or to die slowly. It is to our benefit that Rocky Green chose life. His vapor trails of hope will not soon diminish.

With thanks and blessings, Chris Ahrens and the Risen Magazine staff

faith * hope * love PUBLISHER :: Allan Camaisa EDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF:: Chris Ahrens MANAGING EDITOR :: Mat Marquez COPY EDITOR :: Dane Wilkins CONTRIBUTING WRITERS :: Kelli Gillespie, Dean Nelson, and Trish Teves,

ART ART DIRECTOR :: Rob Springer CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS :: Bil Zelman, Estevan Oriol, Grant Brittain, Rob Springer ILLUSTRATIONS :: Zela, Annika Nelson ONLINE EDITOR :: Owen Leimbach RISEN Magazine is a subsidiary of RISEN Son, LLC. The views expressed by the subjects interviewed in RISEN Magazine are not necessarily those shared by the staff or publishers of RISEN Son, LLC. All interviews are recorded live and exclusively for use

by RISEN Magazine. Interviews remain the sole property of RISEN Son, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this magazine may be reproduced without the written consent of RISEN Son, LLC. PRINTED :: USA

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Cover Photo :: Bil Zelman

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Scott Hancock The Glue Network Writer: Trish Teves

Scott Hancock likes helping people. After starting Risen Magazine with Chris Ahrens and Hagan Kelley six years ago, Hancock decided to hone his entrepreneurial skills with a new venture. The Glue Network was founded on the back of a napkin at a little cafe in downtown San Diego with Hancock and Shawn Parr. “I have always followed my heart in hopes of making a lasting impact on the world. People are more influenced by our walk than they are by our talk. I pray my actions will speak to people without me ever having to move my own lips.”

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Freedom Project.” The purpose of the event was to raise money and awareness in an effort to fight human trafficking. It was a great success in that it helped educate tons of people about the issues of slavery and how the issue is bigger now than it has ever been throughout history. Most of the people who came to the event had no idea that human trafficking was such a big issue.

Nor did they know that is was happening right here in their own backyard [Southern California].

Risen Magazine: How does The Glue Network work?

Scott Hancock: Shawn Parr and I were inspired while working on a campaign called “Hungry” for World Vision’s 30 Hour Famine program. We discovered that there were many credible organizations out there that could benefit from our helping them connect with the youth culture in more relevant ways. We also noticed that while technology has changed tremendously over the years, philanthropy and the way people are solicited to make a donation hadn’t changed much at all. This was a problem to us, but it was one that we thought we could fix through creating The Glue Network.

RM: Was there an instance in your life that turned your focus to humanitarian work?

SH: Well, I really don’t look at myself as a humanitarian.

Mother Teresa was a humanitarian. She put herself aside and fought in the trenches daily to help the poor. True humanitarians like Mother Teresa have an incredible gift and ability to love people without ever getting tired. I bet Mother Teresa never spoke about the good she was going to do. She just got busy doing it.

RM: Which Glue event has caused the most buzz in the community?

SH: Measuring an event’s impact has always been difficult for us. The most common way society measures charity events is by how much money is raised. However, to this date, I can honestly say that our most successful event wasn’t the one that raised the most money. On April 28, 2007, we held an event called “The

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RM: You and your wife are expecting a second child.

How did becoming a father affect you personally and professionally?

SH: Becoming a dad has been the greatest and the hardest experience of my life. “What do you mean it’s not all about me anymore?” With London, and another girl on the way, I truly am blessed. My family is my greatest accomplishment.

RM: You are always so busy promoting artists and networking. Do you ever have time for your own hobbies?

SH: I love to go to the gym and run. My surfboard and my art supplies have dust on them. But I still tell myself that at least twice a month I will go surfing or paint a picture. My biggest hobby is my daughter, London. She is one and half years old and one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me. Between her and my dog, I have learned more about God and His love for me than ever before.

To join The Glue Network, visit www.thegluenetwork.com.

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Eduardo Enfuego The Rising Sun Writer: Trish Teves

One day a friend loaned Eduardo Enfuego a movie about Muslims who had come to know Christ. Enfuego was only fifteen, but he understood the magnitude of that sort of conversion. A few weeks later he loaned the movie to a Muslim acquaintance, who in turn took it to his mosque. Enfuego never saw the movie again. That is when he realized how important it was to deliver the message of Christ’s hope. It was this experience that prompted the production of his new film, The Sun Rises.

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Risen Magazine: Could you explain the basis of The Sun Rises?

Eduardo Enfuego: Sure. It is a documentary that features

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RM: Are these dreams and visions a featured part of the documentary?

EE: A couple of our subjects had supernatural, dramatic

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lifelong Arabic Muslims that have come to Christ while living in the Middle East. Most fascinating . . . is that people who have come to know the Lord in the Arab world have come to know Him through dreams and visions. In fact, a recent statistic stated that one-third of all people who come to know the Lord come to know him through these types of dreams and visions.

experiences when they came to Christ. The film starts out focusing on the life of Paul and how he came to the Lord. It makes a statement that just as God moved in an incredible way two thousand years ago with a person such as Paul, He is doing the same thing now.

RM: Are you anticipating backlash for some of the converted Muslims in the film?

EE: The film has been aired and distributed in parts of Europe and the Middle East. Arab Christians are similar to the people you read about in the Book of Acts. They don’t care about persecution; they just want to get the gospel out. They have the attitude of the early church; they know the consequences of sharing their faith but are still willing to do it. Nowhere in the world do we see pictures of the early church like we do in the Arab world. In fact, nothing like this has ever been done before, with Arab Christians willing to go on camera, totally exposing themselves to share their testimonies.

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RM: What’s the meaning behind the name “The Sun Rises”?

EE: The symbol of Islam is the night and the crescent moon.

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RM: You mentioned that one of your interview subjects had been on the verge of committing murder.

EE: One of the people we interviewed was a former terrorist

The symbol for Jesus is the sunrise. Several times in the New Testament we see this scenario. Also, our guiding verse was “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.” [Isaiah 9:2] That is how the title came about.

from Algeria, with ties to many different radical organizations.

At the same time he planned on killing his brother, who was a Christian, he came to know the Lord through a vision. The police did not believe him and thought he was trying to infiltrate the Christian ranks by faking a conversion. But he was very sincere.

All of the stories are radical. They are very emotional. I believe the film will bring hope to the Western world. The only real hope we have is Jesus. One of the goals of this film is to encourage Christians to band together and pray for the Arab world, to pray that God would move and bring revival. The Bible says, “In the last days I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,” and that includes the Arab Muslim world, and we are starting to see that happen. It is so exciting.

For more info on The Sun Rises, please visit www.thesunrises.net.

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Nova Page Singer, Songwriter, Artellectual Writer: Trish Teves

Nova’s personality is true to its moniker; it packs a blinding punch. “Apparently I was unexpected. So my parents named me Nova which means ‘new exploding star.’ Their nickname for me was ‘New Joy.’ But I prefer to tell people that my name comes from being conceived in the back of a Chevy Nova!”

Nova’s voice can be heard in a lot of places lately; daytime talk divas Tyra Banks and Ellen Degeneres have walked their respective catwalks to her tunes, TMZ, Extra, The CW, CBS, ABC, and the Oxygen Network have used her songs. Early partnerships with producers who worked with Tupac Shakur, Stevie Wonder, and Earth, Wind and Fire gave her a head start in an industry known for squashing dreams.

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God sees them. My song “Deeper” says, “If I can have one wish that they would see how God created them,” and that would be a wonderful thing.

Risen Magazine: Tell us about your new album, On the Couch.

Nova Page: I remember the moment I was inspired to write a song called “On the Couch.” My husband, Ricky, and I were talking to a couple who had recently been engaged, and we were all sitting on a couch. The two of them were cozied up under large couch pillows, almost hiding in a way, while spilling their guts about mistakes they had made in their relationship. Isn’t that such a great metaphor for life? Our lives end up being that sofa; we hide our hurts under the pillows and let feelings fall through the sofa cracks.

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RM: Because you’re so young, many people would be surprised to know you suffered from breast cancer.

NP: Yeah, another huge passion I have is for women who have

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RM: What’s your next project?

NP: I’m doing a benefit concert with the Salvation Army and

RM: How can you tell when your friends are lying to you?

NP: It’s their eyes, their posture. It’s so much easier to tell the truth than it is to tell a lie. When people fumble with their answers, it’s a dead giveaway. I’ve worked with a lot of teenagers and kids, and I can always tell when they are lying. However, I don’t want to tell them they are wrong for lying. I just want to love on them. I want them to feel comfortable enough and loved enough where they want to be honest. Then we can start the healing process. I hope to empower them to change and live a full life. There is hope. We have a huge reason to hope.

RM: You speak passionately about homeless people and young people. Is that your life’s mission?

NP: Today, my passion is the homeless. But I do also have a huge passion for young girls who have eating disorders. There is so much self-hate in that and I want them to see themselves as

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been affected by breast cancer. A few years ago I had a couple lumps in my breast. One was gone through the miraculous hand of God. The other lump I had to get removed. There was a lot of pain in that. I remember writing the song “Mother and Son.” It was a plea to the Lord asking Him to allow me to live to raise the little boy that He gave me. “If I can’t, I can’t. But if you allow me to I would be so grateful.” During the thirty minutes that I wrote the song, I wept. It was one of the defining moments in my life, especially as a songwriter. Through my experiences I desire to live a life that can help change people.

the San Diego Chargers, a ton of local coffeehouse gigs . . . I just spoke with the President of the Los Angeles Mission and they said they would like to start a new “do something” campaign together to try to encourage people in LA to help the homeless.

That would be a beautiful thing.

Want more of Nova? See www.novasmusic.com or www.myspace.com/novasnewmusic.

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Bryan Jennings Walking on Water Writer: Trish Teves

When famed surfer Peter King took Bryan Jennings on a surf trip to Hawaii at the age of fourteen, Jennings had no idea it would alter the direction of his life. “On that trip Peter introduced the spiritual world to me. He talked to me about angels and demons, and it freaked me out a bit. But that trip opened my mind to God and shortly after I became a strong believer.” The pro surfing circuit soon followed, as well as many chances to share his faith. At eighteen, the idea of holding surf camps for young groms took root. Then surf movies . . .

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one another and encourage one another in our faith. We call each other out when we’re blowing it. We all need correction at times.

It’s simple, basic stuff like staying close to God, prayer, reading the Word daily, and going to church.

Risen Magazine: Does the world of angels and demons especially interest you?

Bryan Jennings: I believe in that unseen realm. It’s a huge part of my life, especially running an evangelical ministry. We are on the frontlines of a spiritual battle and we are constantly dealing with spiritual things that can’t be seen.

RM: What sorts of spiritual battles?

BJ: Every time we put on a surf camp, or make the next surf movie, or go to share our faith with somebody, there is some sort of a struggle. We definitely need to be covered in prayer.

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RM: How do famous surfers respond to Walking on Water’s evangelistic mission?

BJ: At a recent fundraiser, I was about to ask Damien some questions, but he took the mic from me and thanked us for being a blessing in his life. He said he was grateful that we told him he can’t be in these movies and not live differently than anyone else.

RM: Your newest film, Walking on Water, is getting some great publicity. It seems you have cornered the market on faith-based surf films.

BJ: Our mission at Walking on Water is to reach and impact this generation’s global surfing community. We want to reach the core surfers, and hopefully the message will overflow to general audiences and to new believers.

RM: How do you stay centered in this business?

BJ: It’s important to make good choices and surround yourself with good people. It’s amazing being around Damien and CJ [Hobgood] and Tom Curren—guys who could be prideful, but they are so humble. For all of us it’s important to stay close to

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For more info on Walking on Water movies or surf camps, please visit www.walkingonwater.com.

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Gayle Skidmore Dulcimers and Deaths Writer: Trish Teves

“My friend gave me a dulcimer. On the first day I got it I wrote the song ‘Nightingale,’” says Gayle Skidmore. While dulcimer may be an unfamiliar term to most people, Skidmore happens to be fluent in piano, guitar, banjo, and pretty much every other stringed instrument.

Which is why she was able to pick up the aforementioned and immediately write a killer song. Skidmore also has one thousand songs to her credit and calls musicians like Jason Mraz her friend. “I’ve written songs in a journal since I was eight. I’m constantly writing.

Especially when I feel something intensely.”

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Risen Magazine: You’ve said that you got into songwriting more seriously due to a string of multiple deaths in your life. Did songwriting progress the process of healing?

Gayle Skidmore: In my first two years of college, twenty people that I knew died. Some of them were older people from church, some of them were friends who got in accidents, some had cancer. I used to go backpacking with friends from my church. The most upsetting death was a friend who fell on one of those hikes. We all witnessed it. I started college two weeks after that happened. I was still traumatized and depressed. At school I felt like a total alien. I didn’t connect with people. Then in that first semester, one of the girls I grew up with died in a car accident. So, with my songs I tried to spit out what I was feeling . . . all my confused emotions and questions I had about God.

RM: You probably felt God was playing a trick on you.

GS: It’s not fun to be known as the person whose friends always die.

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RM: When you’re writing, what occurs in your head?

GS: The inside world is a little crazy. [Laughs] There are times when I write a song that I hope will be a popular song. Then there are times when there is something specific in my head and I’m trying to get it out. All the songs I picked for my last EP were songs that came really easy to me . . . not contrived at all.

One of my favorite songs on the album was a short one I wrote on a banjo I borrowed from Rheanna Downey. As I was playing, the words just came.

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RM: What has been one really cool thing that has happened in your career?

GS: Well . . . I recorded with my friend Jason Mraz. My friend Ron from Softlightes is going to be producing those songs.

RM: Has there been a defining moment in your career?

GS: I’ve had a few. I continually try to expand my horizons.

When I lived in England I started experimenting with my guitar.

That changed the way that I wrote. But there were some life experiences that changed things too. A lot of relationships I had affected my writing . . .

RM: Romantic relationships?

GS: I wouldn’t call them romantic [Laughs] . . . but they should have been!

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RM: Is there a spiritual connection when you’re performing in front of people?

GS: We are all spiritual beings. I believe that God blesses people with gifts. I do pray a lot when I’m performing. I pray that God would help me perform the songs as best I can and that the songs would bless people. My music is a gift from the Lord.

From that aspect, it’s spiritual to me.

To learn more about Gayle Skidmore, please visit www.gayleskidmore.com.

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ROCKY MALLOY Pirate’s Treasure Writer: Chris Ahrens Photos: Bil Zelman

n his fifty-three years Rocky Malloy has witnessed the horrors of war and the serenity of peace. He has encountered numerous life and death and near-death experiences, more than once watching his life flash before him at gunpoint. He has seen the greatest suffering and the most spectacular miracles, including, according to him, the dead being raised.

Malloy has also experienced the agony and ecstasy of being a sea captain, a drug dealer, a pirate, a healer, a teacher, a writer, and a missionary. He has cut a path into a dense spiritual wilderness, risking everything to help the needy and distribute a quarter of a million Bible-based books to kids in the schools of his adopted home of Bolivia.

Returning to the States after fifteen years away offers the necessary emotional distance to talk about his life’s work and passion— sharing the love of God with children who, through no fault of their own, have been stripped of everything. Caution: this story may cause you to exit your comfort zone for something a bit more, shall we say, wild.

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Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine in San Diego.

Risen Magazine: Tell us about the books you publish.

Rocky Malloy: There are thirteen books for students from kindergarten to twelfth grade. The names of the books in English are Here I Am. That was Samuel’s response when he heard the voice of the Lord in a time when people weren’t familiar with that voice. Everything about the books is covert, because we’re delivering Jesus in a package that can fit into the public school system. Each book talks about what in Latin America are called “universal truths”: health, gender, environment, government, and economy.

It’s a thirty-five-week course, which is a complete school year. Everything has purpose and they learn why they’re studying math and why ethics, government, and morals are important. It’s all based on seven principles found in Genesis, the first two chapters, before sin. It’s love, creation, purpose, work, fruit, government, and marriage. People love it. It’s like a wheel that goes over and over again. Most books miss when they try to teach values as anti-values, like don’t smoke. Don’t do this, don’t do that. “Don’t do” did not work for Adam. It didn’t work for me. [Laughs] So telling people not to do something, historically, has not been very successful, and that’s basically what the world has to offer. So, taking spiritual principles, or Biblical principles, and putting them into children . . . then values like honesty come out . . . Children get the equipment they need to make a quality life decision, like not participating in premarital sex, not because it wouldn’t be fun or adventurous, but because it wouldn’t have purpose.

After we first went into the high schools with our program there were 2,500 fewer pregnancies from a study group of 80,000 students. The Bolivian government took note of that, and the president of Bolivia at that time issued an executive order giving us permission to go into any school in the country.

We are the only publishers in the country authorized by the Bolivian government. It took an act of [the Bolivian] congress to authorize the use of our materials in schools. Teachers get an increase in pay when they come learn the program, but they improve their skills and they enjoy it.

Risen: Why not just set up a church?

RM: I was pasturing a church with about a thousand people in it, and every Sunday there was a reason not to come. When Spiderman came to town, the line went down the road, and people waited for hours to see it. That’s when I realized we weren’t delivering. Spiderman outdid church every day of the week.

We had to change what we were doing. We made it attractive and we took the message out of the church, cuz people have such a stereotypical concept of what church is. I’m not criticizing the church, but . . .

I got the idea from Paul in the book of Acts where they accused him of infecting society, and I realized that I was trying to build a network around Jesus in the name of my church. That was taking a lot of time and after nine years we only had 50,000 people born again. How can you win whole continents like that, like Paul did?

We realized that the largest network in any country was the school system. It covers about 30 percent of the population. In Bolivia there’s a little less than 9 million people, and they’ve got 2.7 million students. When you add all the parents and teachers, you’re talking about around 50 percent of the country. So, our program has the potential to impact half the population of an entire nation. It would have taken me many lifetimes to build enough churches and Bible schools to do the same thing.

Risen: It seems that in Latin American countries God is not theoretical.

RM: The God issue there is a given. Here you have spiritual things and natural things. There it’s all one thing. The idea of separating them there would be a weird concept. That can go both ways, cuz they’re more sensitive to the spirit, but also totally deceived. There’s true devil worship there. The Bible talks about spiritual wickedness in high places. I know that’s not necessarily terrestrial, but the highest inhabited regions on earth are in Bolivia and they have Satanic worship there. They have parades where everybody dresses up like devils. The greatest celebration is on Easter where they celebrate the death of God. They worship Mother Earth and the devil incarnate. They hang gold all over them—nobody www.risenmagazine.com

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touches that gold. You can’t leave a notebook around without somebody stealing it, but on these idols nobody would dare touch the gold, out of fear. They’re more aware of the spirit, but also very involved in demonic things.

Risen: In general how does the church respond to that?

RM: Centuries ago the church showed up with the conquistadores. If you do a little research into the Incan empire, you find that an ancient emperor had the same revelation as Melchizedek in the Bible. They knew that the sun was not God, but a part of creation. His revelation was that there’s a creator out there, but I don’t know who He is, the same as Melchizedek. He told his son that, and all the priests and the upper class of that society acknowledged that there was a creator and to acknowledge the creator and not the creation. Their prophets foretold that men would come that would look different and bring the book of life. When the Spaniards showed up with Pizarro with just over a hundred soldiers, there were 5,000 Incans out there, the upper class of society. The Incans thought they were showing up for church. It was a fulfillment of prophecy. They came out to meet the representatives of God and they were slaughtered. Their arms were cut off by these guys in armor, and the Incans were completely unarmed. So that was their first encounter with Jesus. Jesus was back in the wagons with the cannons. And it hasn’t changed much. So, the conquistadores had sex with all the Spanish girls and tried to introduce the Spanish blood to the region. So there’s been a lot of abuse about what we call Jesus. There’s been a lot of pain.

artillery was falling all around them every night. So, there was the little girl, about two years old, with a little dress on that was very dirty. She was waving goodbye to me and they were sad that I was leaving. That little girl waving bye to me really touched my heart and that was the beginning of the ministry we have now to children.

After that, when we moved further down the river,

That little girl waving bye to me really touched my heart and that was the beginning of the ministry we have now to children.

Risen: What got you started on missions?

RM: When I went down to the war zone in Nicaragua, right on the boarder, on the Honduran side, I was working with the Contra soldiers, and I was building with them, and teaching them the dynamics of construction. I was really privileged to work with these battle-hardened guys that had a heart for God. I’m teaching them about the Lord, and how He works through our lives.

The combat was so hot that a civilian plane couldn’t get through with their pay, and they were disgruntled. I said, “Let’s pray.” As I’m praying, just of a second, rain fell. When it did it formed a rainbow right over the top of their heads, where you felt you could touch it. It really spoke volumes to them, because that’s the promise of God, in the Bible. Only a few hours later we heard the plane coming in with their pay.

Every night you would hear the villages being bombed and see the smoke and when you got there it looked like a lunar landscape. Out front of where we lived was a MASH unit, just like on TV with surgeons and medical personnel to take care of the wounded Contra soldiers that were coming in off the front.

The soldiers got first priority, but a lot of times civilians were hurt. One day there was an especially large number of civilians in front of this MASH unit because a nearby village had been shelled that night. We were out there trying to take care of them, and this one little boy about twelve years old comes up and taps me on the side and asks for a can of milk for his sister. His back was burned really badly, and his parents had been killed that night. I gave him a can of milk and I didn’t see him again for a while. When he came back again I gave him another can of milk. That went on inconsistently for about eight months.

On the day we were leaving I was in the back of this tiny airplane, and all the Contra soldiers were waving goodbye, crying, sad that I was leaving. This little boy, for the fist time, he brought his little sister out of the woods. They had been afraid to come out because they were afraid to get shelled again, because

I paid more attention to the children. They were so confused. They had no idea what was happening. Why had their parents been killed? They played with sticks and leaves because they had no toys, but they were just little children with the same desires as our kids. There was no school for them and I saw how innocence is so abused in the world.

When we went to Bolivia we started working with kids from about seven to twelve. Many of them would be involved with petty theft, shining shoes, just surviving. Most of them didn’t have parents. One little boy about fourteen years old who was the leader of the group was raised in a cardboard box.

These young people were so damaged mentally, they couldn’t imagine ever having anything or being successful. We’d bring them right up to a decision, and then they couldn’t make a decision. For instance, I got this one young man a scholarship in a Catholic trade school. He was doing excellent in school. On the day of the test, he didn’t come. The guys in class with him made good money, and he was the best student. When it came time for him to take the test, he just couldn’t imagine that he could succeed; his inner-self just wouldn’t allow that to happen.

After struggling with this for years, we felt the only way to help was to go to schools and help prevent them going on the streets in the first place. We started a ministry, Mission Generation, with forty-four students in three schools. Today we have a quarter of a million students in over a thousand schools in Bolivia. If, in the name of Jesus, we’re able to put together the finances to increase our logistics, we can have over a million children in the program in 2009. We want to keep children in school and help them make quality life decisions based on Biblical principles.

To learn more about Rocky Malloy and Mission Generation, please visit www.missiongeneration.org. www.risenmagazine.com

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Rapper Tupac Shakur often referred to himself in his writings as a “rose in the concrete.” Making this his life metaphor, he used it to convey a meaning of an extraordinary life that deserves proper care in the face of improbable odds of surviving, yet yielding such an extraordinary beauty it could only speak of something Greater.

It’s not every day that we come across these types of living metaphors in real life.

But recently, Risen had the pleasure of coming across one such bloom. In fact, we discovered a full rose garden emerging from the heart of Manila’s streets named the Philippine All-Stars.

Hip-Hop’s New Bloom

Writer: Mathew Jon Marquez Photos: Bil Zelman

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he Risen team enters the spacious split-level house in the hills of Los Angeles to find twenty sets of multi-colored Adidas shoes lined up in the foyer. To the right and up the winding stairs are three ladies whose urban B-girl attire seems oddly out of place in such an austere upper class neighborhood. On the main floor, several young people, all in varying states of waking-up and grogginess, mill about, waiting for the day’s marching orders. It’s nearly 1 p.m. and their sluggishness and fatigue clearly tells of their wild and wonderful transcontinental ride. “Sorry, we’re still getting around. Had a really long day . . . night or something like that . . .” and then the young man trails off to follow the heavy aroma of coffee wafting out of the kitchen. “What day of the week is it?” someone shouts from an unseen part of the house.

And another voice barks from upstairs, “Who cares?! One more day and we get to go hooomme!” And a small wave a cheering breaks out across the house. For the All-Stars, the last three years has been a series of cramped airline seats, cabs, buses, bad hotels, and guest homes throughout Asia, Europe, and now North America. The idea of returning home to the Philippine Islands becomes more and more sacred each day. This colorful and creative band of brothers and sisters represent, to the millions of fans who follow their travels, the new kings of hip-hop dance. After all, they have just reasserted their claim to the world title for the second time, just weeks prior to this interview. The Philippine All-Stars are the 2008 World Hip Hop Dance Champions.

With thirteen members here stateside on this trip and a growing posse of MCs and DJs in their wake, trying to capture the varied and beautiful facets of this urban garden would be an enormous undertaking. However, at the core of their identity is their leader, Kenjohns Serrano. His voice, in heart and vision, serves as spokesman for the group.

Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine in Los Angeles Risen Magazine: What has happened for the group since you won the world title this year?

Kenjohns Serrano: Well a lot of things have been taking place for us. First, you guys are here interviewing us, that’s amazing for us. It’s a real blessing to get the exposure. And tomorrow we’re guest-hosting on MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew. Crazy, right? Which is really cool, because coming from the Philippines, this is one of the biggest things for our people. We’re going to be on MTV! And I have to give it to the “man upstairs,” you know? God is the one working on ahead of us everywhere we go and we see His hand in it all. We’re so blessed.

just hanging out, enjoying some music and dancing for fun. It’s really as simple as that. We just started hanging out and dancing; there was so much energy with them. I was halfway through recording my first album, but I was really enjoying this group of friends. So, I wondered out loud a bit about trying to get us all together. Everybody seemed cool with it, but I decided I would try praying about it. Right after that, things just started coming together for us.

RM: You stopped what you were doing with the recording career and formed a dance crew? That seems kind of random, doesn’t it?

KS: Well, we’re all stars in our own ways. I’m not trying to brag, but we got mad talent in the group, you know? There is a lot to be proud of with each of us. Before we were formed as a dance crew, each one of us had our own careers.

Each one of us was on our own. We have painters, writers, musicians, rappers, business professionals, models, and actors in the crew. We really are a collection of the best of the Philippines; we’re an All-Star crew.

KS: Well, no, not really. Because after praying for a while about it, it just seemed pretty clear that doing something with others would mean more than simply doing something for myself. Helping others and spreading that kind of energy around made more sense to me. You know, taking the focus off of yourself and giving that focus to others gets a lot more accomplished. That’s what I think, at least. Dancing is the one thing that brings us together, right? But as we each put energy into helping us all be the best as a group, opportunities are opening up for us to develop our own things we specialize in too. All that energy going into the group just keeps coming back to us all for our own dreams too.

RM: How did you find each other if you were in such vastly different career paths?

RM: What kinds of things inspire you personally?

KS: Well, one day I found myself in a studio with ten to twelve other people

KS: OK, this one might sound kind of funny, but you know the movie Kung

RM: There is a lot more to the Philippine All-Stars than just a hip-hop dance crew. How would you describe the All-Stars?

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Fu Panda? Well, that movie moved me to tears, for real. I was watching it and there is a point in the movie about how yesterday is the past, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift and that’s why the call it the “present.” When I heard that it really hit me hard [Taps his chest], you know? Today inspires me, for real. It’s Christmas today. Our future is bright, but today is the best part of it. I am with the world champion dance crew, but the best part of it all is I get to share the present with each one of them. Each of the All-Stars inspires me.

Their very presence in my life is a gift to me, for real. From a competition point of view, every dance team we meet on the road is an inspiration.

I feel like we’re always competing against way better crews and with more creative styles. They inspire me too.

That’s why the All-Stars have to be grounded and recognize where this all comes from. It all comes from God.

RM: All-Stars have been a mega-hit in Europe, Asia, and even on YouTube. Is there a bit of “rock star” identity that comes with this job?

KS: Well, there are things that come with being known for something like world champion of anything, you know? People see you perform at a concert or competition, maybe see you on the Internet, which is pretty cool; but they always expect you to be that thing they see you doing. That’s a pretty big deal to always try to live up to and can create a lot of pressure. But we have to be careful to be humble. We have to keep grounding ourselves, for real. When great opportunities come our way, we have to let it go through one ear and out the other and keep our hearts focused on God. This is what I’m telling you.

Anything else would be filling up our head and get us all big headed. If that happens, we might start believing it all.

RM: Believing what?

KS: You know, that you are the best—ever. Cuz that kind of thinking gets you nothing tomorrow. You know, whatever is cool today ain’t cool tomorrow. That’s why the All-Stars have to be grounded and recognize where this all comes from. It all comes from God. He is our daily provider. We won the world title in 2006 too, you know? But we didn’t repeat in 2007. I think we all got distracted a little bit. And it wasn’t our time. We had to put our focus back to where it should have been the whole time, back on God. We tried to make it happen without Him and we didn’t win in 2007. But we all got focused back on God and recognized it’s His story and God can write history with or without us pretty easily.

RM: It sounds like there is a specific approach or formula to your success: just believe in God and it will all come your way. Is that what you’re saying?

KS: No, not really. You have to remember, it’s His story [Points to the heavens] and God can write it however He wants to write it. But I would rather be a willing player in the story than try to make something happen on my own. Cuz when you start thinking you got it figured out, it all comes to an end. Make sense?

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RM: OK, but how do you know when you’re doing the right thing?

KS: Well, you gotta talk to God. Pray to God. You gotta take time to listen.

He will tell you. He will show you. You just have to be patient and always listen. That’s how it all starts.

RM: Have you ever doubted what you thought God was telling you?

KS: There have been plenty of times we moved with a lot of faith. Borrowing large sums of money from friends and business leaders just for plane tickets, fees, and hotels, only to arrive in a city with no money to eat. Yeah, we have had times made us all think, Was this really a good idea? But even in those situations, things just worked out. Maybe a Filipino family would offer to make us dinner or get us some food. Or like the hotel we were staying at one time: they let us set up our tables and sell our t-shirts and CDs in their lobby. And the money just came in through sales. And then all the sudden we have more than enough. And we’re like, How did it all happen? [Laughing to himself ] I’m telling you, yo—it’s His story and we’re just blessed to be a part of this chapter! God always has our back in these situations. We just gotta listen to Him and go forward in faith. Every time we have stepped forward and gone through something, it makes the next steps easier. Cuz you know God got you covered back there [in the past events] so you know He’s already gone ahead for the next thing too.

RM: How do you separate yourself as something different and not just a part of the “All thanks to God, yo!” performer who lives a lifestyle counter to that, like we see so many hip-hop celebrities do?

KS: It really comes down to being not just what we say, but how we do it.

Does that make sense? Yeah, a lot of people talk about God and even some dance crews are starting to catch on to the whole “give God praise” thing. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I believe God is going to use those words in somebody’s life too. But you gotta remember that’s just a starting point too. So, the Philippine All-Stars try to encourage that talk, but we also try to live in a way that is more than just a thing we talk about too.

RM: You guys are like missionaries to the hip-hop dance scene.

KS: I don’t know about that, but we’re definitely trying to live something out in a way that speaks with actions to the people that we hook up with. Like this cat I met from Trinidad-Tobago. He is such a great dancer and he came up to ask me for choreography tips. We started chillin’ and I was just trying to give him everything I knew. And after our relationship took off, he kept coming back to me and asking me why the All-Stars were so successful, especially cuz we weren’t controlling our content from other dance crews. It became an opportunity to tell him what God has given us all and how God didn’t keep that from any of us. So, I just told him that’s why we are the way we are, cuz it was given to each of us freely from God to share freely. Now that guy is really on his way to pursuing God. His life has changed. His crew’s attitude has changed.

Now when they are on stage, they let everyone know that God is the reason they are where they are now. Crazy, yeah?

RM: Every team has bad days—do you guys fight or argue? If so, how do you resolve it and keep focused?

KS: Do we fight?! [Laughs] We’re family, bro! Of course we fight and argue.

There are days we come to the studio to practice and it ain’t working. Everybody starts bickering, grumbling or something, and then it just gets ugly for a moment. But that’s when you can’t force it. Sometimes I just have to say, “Stop!

Everybody just chill for a minute.” And we sit down and try to get at what’s

Left to right: Deo, Jhong, Madelle, Reagan, Sheena, Laurence, Chelo, Kenjohns, Lema, Kyxz, Pat, Maya, Michelle

buggin’ us. Maybe a person is having a bad day, missing their family, or just simply tired and needs a break, you know? Whatever it is though, we have to get at it and work it out right then. There is too many of us to be carrying little issues over this or that. We gotta get it out and be straight with one another.

We’re family like that. We work hard as a dance crew, but we have to work harder as a family. We each have to take the lead in trying to support the one to our left and right in dance and in life. And when things get too out of hand, we all have to deal with Lema, our manager! She will keep us straight, for real!

[Laughter] RM: What kinds of dreams do have about your future?

KS: Wow. What kind of dreams do I have? [Pauses in thought] Here’s one: The Filipino people are some of the most talented and artistic people in the world. They’re tops in business, arts, running corporations, starting up companies and stuff. A long time ago, our people became like an exported product for the world as our country financially struggled. Filipino people went all over the globe to work. They started new lives and embraced new countries and cultures.

For example, I grew up in Canada. My family moved there, they are a part of this example. Meanwhile, the Philippines suffered. It’s a third-world country with a lot of social issues that gotta be addressed. My dream is to see Fil-Ams [Filipino-Americans] to just come back for a visit and see how they can give back to their country. Give something back that will make it a better place.

Your magazine talks about faith, love, and hope. Well, I want to see some of our own around the globe discover their faith, love, and hope for their country, the Philippines.

RM: That’s a pretty big dream. How do you think that dream can be achieved?

KS: Well, I think just getting the word out to the Filipino people everywhere we go is a step. We meet so many that haven’t been back in years—maybe never. We want people to know they can be a part of a new generation of Philippines and the country needs their help. Also, there is GK or Gawad Kalinga, which means “to give care.” It’s a real ministry that wants to bring an end to poverty, violence, and the slums in the islands of the Philippines. It’s a real movement for change. It’s a great place to start and see the needs of the country.

RM: What is one lesson you would like to see the Church learn today?

KS: [Without hesitation] Barriers. There are so many barriers in churches today. It’s whack, really. I grew up in the Catholic church and it seemed so bound up in who’s Catholic and who’s not. I stopped going. I stopped reading the Bible. I stopped praying for a long time. So much hatin’ on one another, you know? You see people all upset because this person believes it should be prayed this way or this person believes people should look this way, on and on and on . . . you know? Totally whack. The church has to start listening to people right where it meets them.

There are a lot of good people out there searching for someone to listen to them.

The church should start getting past its barriers and listening to people. Understanding where they are coming from and then after a relationship is started, start showing them God by their actions.

We gotta get past the barriers, for real. Start meeting the good people right where they are and showing them they are stars in God’s eyes too. We’re all stars in God’s eyes, for real! It took a long time for me get back into relationship with God. I had to work it out so much on my own. And God still has a lot to do within me too. But I know this: God has changed me forever and it is the one thing that humbles me every day. It humbles the All-Stars every day too. And now we’re blessed to be dancing for the Best. That’s what we want to share with the whole hip-hop community.

The church should start getting past its barriers and listening to people.

The Philippine All-Stars continue to dance and work on their upcoming documentary, His-Story, detailing their incredible journey. For more information, check out www.philippineallstars.com. For more information on the ministry and development initiatives of Gawad Kalinga, check out www.gawadkalinga.org. www.risenmagazine.com

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Oh my Gosh, it’s Me! Writer: Dean Nelson Photos: Bil Zelman

atching Molly Jenson perform in a club feels like you’re watching her at a family reunion. Her music is personal and her quirky comments between songs are the kinds of things you’d say to people who have known you forever. She’s relaxed, amused, happy to be making music, happy you came to hear her, assuming you’ll love her. And she’s right, especially about that last part. The lyrics, the melodies, the emotion, the humor, the love, the wonder, all connect with the audience. She’s a mix of Joni Mitchell and Bette Midler. She hates the first comparison, but she’s flattered by the second. She has toured in Japan, Europe, and the U.S., and her album Maybe Tomorrow will be released in March. In addition to hearing her in clubs, you can hear her on the television shows Grey’s Anatomy, Knight Rider, and Privileged. Teen Vogue Magazine called her one of the stars to watch on MySpace and compared her to Norah Jones and Sheryl Crowe.

Full disclosure: I was Molly’s writing professor when she was in college. She did the assignments (I don’t remember what grade she earned), but in conversation back then, she told me that writing stories wasn’t her passion. Her passion was making music. She was right on both counts.

We met recently at a coffee shop that happened to be across the street from a site where she was supposed to get married a few years ago, but she and her fiancé broke it off at the last minute. I swear, I didn’t know that when I suggested the location.

She didn’t realize it until we sat down to talk.

Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine at a Starbucks in San Diego Risen Magazine: So how bitter are you right now that we’re looking across the street at the place where you didn’t have your wedding?

Molly Jenson: I’m good. I’m not bitter. [Laughs] Just surprised!

RM: How old were you when you knew you wanted to make music?

MJ: I was raised with a lot of Christian music around me, some of it pretty cheesy. I wanted to be the next Sandi Patti. I remember leading worship at a camp one night and saying to a guy, both of us with tears in our eyes, [Gets breathy voice] “I could lead worship for the rest of my life.”

RM: Did you say it in that same Marilyn Monroe voice you just used with your eyes closed?

MJ: I’m sure I did.

RM: Is that still true?

MJ: No. Absolutely not. It was true then. I did that sort of thing for about nine years. I was in a Christian band for a year called Everybody Duck. It was a great experience.

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RM: Do you want to talk about that breakup?

MJ: We were going to get married and he asked me what kind of ring I wanted. I drew him a picture, and the next week he broke up with me.

RM: You obviously drew the wrong kind of ring.

RM: What’s the difference between a good Christian song and just a good song?

MJ: Most Christian songs don’t relate to most people. They only relate to Christians. They play favorites. My goal is to write music, and if it hits somebody, no matter where they’re at, awesome. I want anybody to be able to listen to my music and relate.

RM: Maybe it’s a maturity thing on your part. The Christian music was fine for when you were living at one level, but then you experienced something that plumbed something deeper and more painful, and the Christian music didn’t address those issues.

MJ: Totally. I haven’t done worship music in a long time.

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RM: I disagree. When I have seen you perform, sometimes the club takes on a very worshipful atmosphere during your songs. It’s even better than going to church.

MJ: OK—thank you—let me rephrase that. I haven’t done music with a congregation in a church for a long time. I remember leading worship at a church and afterward a guy said how great it was, and started to buy one of my CDs, and he said, “So, it’s a worship CD?” And I said no. Then he said, “Well, is it a Christian CD?” and I said, “I’m a Christian, but the songs aren’t really about God. He’s interwoven in it, but it’s more about boys and stuff and issues.” And he said, “Well, you’re going to make a worship CD, though, right?” And I said, “Probably not.” And he said, “Wow, that’s too bad. Too bad.” And he walked away.

MJ: I am no longer an extrovert, though. I’m an introvert now. I go to movies and eat alone a lot, and I like being alone. Maybe because of how much time I have spent with people. It’s probably a safety thing, too. I’m great with strangers, but it’s hard for me to cultivate relationships. I love having the right people around me. People in my band are my really good friends.

RM: How old were you when you thought, This works for me.

MJ: I knew that I could sing, even when I was little. That’s when I was in my first band, called GALS. RM: That has to stand for something.

MJ: It stands for “Get A Life, Sistah.” I was twelve.

I was the weirdest kid. I was always entertaining, always up on a stool showing off, always dressing up and dancing around.

RM: Eugene Peterson says that any time a story has been well told, or a song has been well crafted, the Gospel has been served.

MJ: I think more people are starting to see things that way, which is refreshing, but a lot of people don’t. My best friend’s dad just died, and we were all around him when he took his last breath. A man came over to visit during those final days and saw me playing my guitar. He told me about his son who was trying to make it in music—the son is laying tile to support his music career. But the music is secular, the guy said, and he said he just wished that his son would make music that God was blessing. I said, “Don’t you think God is blessing your son’s wanting to make music even though he’s not writing songs about God?” The man said no. And I thought to myself, I’m so glad you’re not my dad.

RM: Speaking of parents, were yours OK with your switch from doing overtly worship music to what you do now?

MJ: Oh my goodness yes. Totally. They are 100 percent supportive. There was never even a question.

RM: You’re not rejecting anything.

MJ: No, I’m not. My parents want me to do what I want to do.

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RM: So much creativity in the world comes out of an experience of suffering, but that’s not really your experience, is it? Comedians, for instance, often come from backgrounds of great pain, except for guys like Will Ferrell, who grew up happy.

MJ: I have pain, but not because of my family. They always let me be creative.

I was the weirdest kid. I was always entertaining, always up on a stool showing off, always dressing up and dancing around. I was a really happy child trying to make people laugh. My parents encouraged it.

RM: What would change about you once you become Molly Jenson “the brand”?

MJ: I would probably have a personal chef and a personal trainer. I feel a little soft these days and need to get in shape.

RM: Need to tone it up a little?

MJ: Yeah, and feel a little healthier. I’m not very self-motivated. But if I became very famous I hope not a lot would change. It’s important for me to be personable with fans.

RM: That is one of your trademarks.

RM: And the story behind this band?

MJ: I was in a very small school, and we had eight girls in our class. We were all in the band. I sang the solo on the theme song. Wanna hear it?

RM: More than I can tell you.

MJ: [Closes her eyes tightly and sings in a sassy tone] “Get a life, don’t want to be left behind now/ Get a life He has for you an eternal one/ Get a life cuz there might not be a next generation.” That was followed by a rap. We were pretty conservative.

RM: That was catchy!

MJ: Catchy is a good word for it. I don’t want to leave the impression that I was the lead singer for GALS—it was just for our theme song. I don’t want the other members to read this and say, Oh, she totally sold us out, that b—ch.

After that I started singing in churches. People encouraged me as a teenager to try out for the worship band, so I did and I made it. But then I went to college and tried out for the choir and didn’t make it.

RM: You got cut from the choir?

MJ: I think it was because I had a bad attitude. My mom really wanted me to try out but I didn’t want to be involved in choir in college.

RM: Are you associated with a cause, like clean water, eradicating disease, prison reform, whatever?

MJ: A friend of mine committed suicide a few years ago. He was bipolar. His parents wanted to do something to remember him by, so they had an event where people could grieve and ask questions. There was music and art, and it was so good that we decided to do it once a year. We’re under the umbrella of Yellow Ribbon, the suicide prevention agency. My grandfather also committed suicide. There are so many people who have issues with mental illness, and people don’t talk about it very much. Going to Africa and adopting children is the popular thing to do, but there are a lot of people around us who are dealing with mental issues, suicidal thoughts, and it’s like a taboo subject. That’s something I’m passionate about.

RM: What are the Molly Jenson vices that no one knows about? www.risenmagazine.com

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MJ: I don’t bite my nails. But I have to keep them short or they gross me out.

Vices? Forever 21 is my favorite store, even though the new sweater I’m wearing right now is from there and it has a hole in it. And I’m a big Disney fan. It’s my dream to write a song for one of the Disney girls. I know all their names.

RM: Maybe you could appear in the next High School Musical movie?

MJ: There aren’t any more. They’d have to do a “College Musical: Freshman Year,” and that would only get dirty. I love High School Musical. I loved Hairspray. I love musicals. And hip-hop.

RM: Will you start doing hip-hop in your show?

MJ: It’s not too personal of a question. Let’s let people know! I don’t make a lot of money. I got an advance with my record deal, and I’m happy with that.

I used to play whether I got paid or not, because I had to get out there and get my name known. But I can’t do that all the time and can’t afford to bring my band some places. Sometimes I will pay the band out of my own pocket, because I know that what we’ll make won’t be enough to pay everyone. Sometimes we play at a club and the band gets it all. I pay them before I pay myself.

It means that much to me to have them play with me.

RM: How do you stay off the streets?

MJ: I have other jobs doing Photoshop work for clients that pay the bills. I am also doing some voiceovers. I have a great British voice—someone who sounds like she’s on the BBC. It is my dream to be the voice of a Disney cartoon.

There are a lot of things that I’m trying to figure out about God, but one thing I believe is that He puts desires in our hearts.

MJ: No. It’s on my workout mix, though.

RM: Any secret tattoos?

MJ: I have one. It’s just a star on my wrist.

RM: And the significance is . . . ?

MJ: Does it have to have significance? I was with a friend one day and said, “I want to get a tattoo,” and she said, “So do I!” So we went straight to the tattoo parlor. I’ll have to give a lot of thought to whether I get another one.

RM: Maybe a quote from High School Musical?

MJ: Or an etching of Corbin Bleu. He’s a hottie. I’d love to do a song with him.

RM: How cool is it to hear your songs on television?

MJ: It’s pretty incredible. When my song played on Knight Rider, it was playing on a girl’s CD player really quiet in the background. On Grey’s Anatomy I heard it in the background and said, “Oh my gosh, that’s Greg Laswell!” And then fifteen seconds later I said, “Oh my gosh, it’s me!” I loved it. I was with my neighbors and my brother to watch Privileged when my song was going to be on it, and just as the song got a couple of seconds in, the picture switched to Barack Obama giving his acceptance speech. It was election night. And I was like, “I know this is a really important event and everything, but did his speech have to be on EVERY channel?” I’m just kidding there, by the way. I understand what’s important.

RM: Are you going to write about the death of your friend’s father?

MJ: Probably. I played my guitar a lot while he was dying. Some things came together as I was playing for him—something along the line of, It’s OK to go.

No doubt someone will use it as a breakup song. But I’m not a super-emotional person. A lot of musicians feel things very deeply, are up and down a lot and melancholy, but I’m just not that person. Dealing with this death was hard, but my goal for being there was to keep my friend up and smile and cry with her. I don’t write to vent. Sometimes I wish I was a little more emotional or brooding, but mostly I’m glad I’m not.

RM: Brooding might be overrated.

MJ: You’re right.

RM: Can you make any money doing what you do? Or is that too personal of a question?

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RM: Who would you travel a long way to see in concert?

MJ: I’m not a super-fan of anyone’s, and the thought of traveling far for anything sounds like an inconvenience. But I would probably go far to see Rufus Wainright. Or Harry Nilsson. But he’s dead. I’d be traveling a long time for him.

RM: What’s your best concert experience?

MJ: I played at a benefit for Habitat for Humanity, and it was sold out, and I opened. It’s always an honor to be the only girl in a lineup of all guys. It was a great, quiet, responsive crowd. The sound was amazing, I was the funniest I’ve ever been, and everyone laughed at my jokes, and everyone thought I was on. It was amazing.

RM: You really are funny in your shows. Can you keep that up as you keep playing bigger venues?

MJ: If there is a night where I didn’t feel that I did all that well in my performance, but I made someone laugh between songs, I feel like I had a great show. I don’t want to get on stage and just play for people. I don’t think people want to just hear me sing. I think they want me to interact with them.

RM: What’s your worst concert experience?

MJ: I was playing at a Saturday Night Live–type event, and every time I got up to sing the people in the audience started talking to each other in full voice.

They didn’t talk through anyone else’s acts—just mine. I ended up saying something like, “Excuse me, can I have your attention? Hellooo?” I had to say it a couple of times. “You haven’t listened to me at all, but could you listen to this one song, and maybe even sing it with me?” It sounded so snotty and diva-ish, and so not what I want to be, ever. Some listened, and many still chatted in full voice. I haven’t been invited back.

RM: Were you ever at a show and said to yourself, That’s going to be me.

MJ: I have. It was Jonatha Brooke. I saw her for the first time at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, when I was about twenty. I thought, I’ve gotta do that.

RM: Is making music a vocational call from God for you, or is this just the most obvious thing for you to do?

MJ: It’s just the most obvious thing. There are a lot of things that I’m trying to figure out about God, but one thing I believe is that He puts desires in our hearts. Growing up, some of us were told to pray, and that God would then give

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you the desires of your heart. But I think He already gave them to you when you were born. I had a friend who was obsessed with Australia. It’s all she would talk about, and she’d always say, “I want to go there, I want to go there.”

And I said, “What are you waiting for? Why don’t you just go?” And she said, “I’m waiting for God to just tell me what to do.” I’m thinking, Are you kidding me? The desire is God saying, Hey, go do it. Waiting around for God to tell you what to do is so silly. I mean, I understand that there is a place for waiting, but not when the opportunity is right in front of you. I’ve always wanted to sing, and be a musician and entertain, and I’m doing it. This is a gift God gave me, and I would be doing a disservice to Him and to myself it I didn’t go for it.

RM: When you’re writing, do you get the sense that you’re tapped into some-

MJ: It’s always different.

RM: Do you have a routine before each show?

MJ: I do some warm-up exercises, and have to be careful because I have nodules on my vocal chords. I don’t have a certain diet I follow. I try to stay away from tea and alcohol right before a show. I had a pint of beer before one show and I found out after the fact that I was sort of rude to my band. I didn’t really notice it. But they brought it to my attention. So I drink a lot of water.

RM: What does the word success mean?

MJ: It means doing what you want to be doing, whether you’re making a lot of money or not. It means you haven’t been pushed down so hard that you stopped doing what you wanted. Success is when you do something even though people tell you that you can’t. When you’re doing what you are meant to do.

RM: So is Molly Jenson successful?

MJ: Yes. I feel successful. I still have a couple of parttime jobs, and it’s still a struggle, but I’m doing what I want to do and making it happen. Not in the most conventional way, maybe.

Success is when you do something even though people tell you that you can’t.

When you’re doing what you are meant to do. thing bigger than yourself—where something transcendent happens?

MJ: No. How’s that for a short answer?

RM: Some people do have those moments and say they’re just pencils in God’s hands.

MJ: That’s ridiculous, there is no way that is true.

RM: I was quoting Mother Teresa there. You just insulted Mother Teresa.

MJ: Shoot! I’ve been to her place, too! Shoot! But people who say things like that are usually more emotional than me. I’ve tried to feel like that, and have spent the majority of my life trying to feel like that, but I’ve never felt like that.

RM: I don’t know that I’ve ever heard you swear before.

MJ: The first paper I ever did for one of your classes had some swear words in the title. It was a satire piece on girls who cuss in order to sound cool.

RM: Sorry, I don’t remember it. What grade did I give you?

MJ: You gave me an A, and said you were proud of me.

RM: Why do you like the “Chronicles of Narnia” so much?

MJ: It’s a lot easier for me to picture Jesus as a lion than as a human. I’m not sure why. I love the “Lord of the Rings” books. Loved “Harry Potter.” I also read the “Twilight” series. I loved them. I read the second one, which is about 560 pages, in a day. She’s not a great writer, but she’s a great storyteller.

RM: You paint in your spare time?

MJ: I love to paint. I like to use acrylics, I like to paint collages, robots. If I went back to school I’d probably want to study art.

RM: What’s the writing process like for you?

MJ: I start writing a new song almost every time I pick up my guitar to practice. My problem is follow-through and finishing it. I also have a voice recorder in my purse or on my phone. So when I get ideas I record them wherever I can.

RM: Does the phrase come first or the tune?

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RM: What is failure?

MJ: You know that dad who said that God wasn’t blessing his son’s music because it wasn’t all about God? If his son gives in to that, then that’s failure. Giving in to people’s closed-minded ideas of things.

Not searching, not asking questions, just doing what people tell you to do.

Giving in.

RM: What moves you to tears?

MJ: Kindness. Compassion.

RM: What makes you happy?

MJ: The TV show Friends. That makes me laugh out loud. My family, my dad, always does silly stuff to make me laugh.

RM: What would it take for you to say, “I’ve made it.”

MJ: I would feel that way when I am making enough money to buy my parents something like a house or a car. Money is one of my biggest stresses. I would feel like I’ve made it when money isn’t a stress and I know it won’t be.

And also if I was headlining my own arena tour. Or had a bus to tour in. And a personal chef and a trainer.

Molly Jenson is an award-winning singer/songwriter with a new album, Maybe Tomorrow. Check her out on MySpace or at www.mollyjenson.com. She is not planning on getting married any time soon.

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Writer: Trish Teves Photos: Estevan Oriol

young man in his physical prime, who packed a winning punch in the professional Mixed Martial Arts ring, made a verbal threat that would change the course of his life. His physical strength and rank could not save him from the journey in which his words took him. Seven years ago, Rick Slaton picked up the phone and threatened to kill someone who owed him $5000. The man on the other end was recording the conversation, which sent Slaton to prison for four years. His time at Donavan State ruined his marriage and nearly ended his professional fighting career. However, it was in a prison church service that Slaton heard the words that "saved my life," as he tells it. They were words that spoke the gospel truth, the message of Christ’s love.

Today, two years out of prison and working his way up the MMA ranks with a 9 win, 1 loss record, Slaton is still contracted by the power of words. “Thug Life” clearly tattooed across his forehead makes it difficult for Slaton to assimilate into mainstream life, or hold a regular job. The tattoo is a remnant of his past, the life he used to live and paid a price for. It’s a debt that keeps a running tally. “I got this tattoo because that was the life I was leading. I was a street fighter and a gang member. I would go out at night hoping to get in a fight, sometimes two or three. But now it is hard for me to get work because of the way I look.”

Slaton finds himself, like many professional athletes before their big win, in no man’s land. Maintaining a twice-a-day gym schedule makes it difficult to keep a job. A sponsor would be the cure-all to survive life beyond the gates of Donavan. “I was really depressed in prison. It took a lot out of me. But my worst day out here is better than any day inside.” Slaton has begun to give his testimony and speak words of encouragement to at-risk youth. Listening to one of his messages at a nearby youth center, only months after he exited prison, I was struck by the brevity of his message. “Make good decisions and give back to the community.

Know that God has a plan for your life.” Words simply spoken, yet if lived by, more powerful than any punch.

Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine in Los Angeles Risen Magazine: You said you were seventeen when you started getting into trouble. Was that when you started street fighting?

RM: Why do you say that Donavan State was the worst and best thing that happened to you?

Rick Slaton: I was seventeen when I started having problems with my family. So I picked up and moved from Hawaii to San Diego. I was lonely in school and wanted people to like me. So I started picking fights everywhere I went— sometimes a couple fights in one night. I beat people up so my friends would like me. I realize now it wasn’t that they liked me, so much as they were scared of me. They didn’t want to do anything to make me mad.

RS: Prison was miserable…especially in the beginning. I was married and I missed my wife. It was hard for me to be away from her. I didn’t want to be alone and I was afraid I was going to lose her. One day I got into a fight with some skinheads and it escalated into a full-blown war for two years. I was fighting with them all the time as well as dealing with issues with my wife.

RM: How’d you get into Mixed Martial Arts?

RS: I had a friend who, at the time, was one of the best fighters in the world.

He, along with Tito Ortiz and Team Punishment, were putting on an amateur fight. They asked me if I wanted to fight, knowing I had never trained for a professional fight. I lost that first match, but was called back to do more amateur fights. I suppose the rest is history.

My cellmate at the time, Billy Phillips, was really into the Bible and God. He was always preaching to me and finally convinced me to go to a meeting called Kairos. It is a church group where a bunch of guys come in from the streets, talk to you, and love on you. They also feed you food that you don’t get in prison, like cookies, lasagna, and meatloaf. I had so much fun hearing God’s Word there that I couldn’t get enough.

RM: So the physical and mental suffering in prison was worth the spiritual renewal? www.risenmagazine.com

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RS: Now that I’m out, I’m thankful. Prison did mess me up. It wrecked my marriage. It messed me up mentally. But then I look back and realize that if I didn’t go to prison, I never would have gone to church. I would never have read the Bible and I wouldn’t love the Lord like I do now.

RM: What is it like to fight another human being while thousands of fans cheer you on?

RS: That’s hard to describe. I fought so often as a street fighter that it was easy to transition. At first, it was weird fighting in front of people, but it was also exciting. It was hard to fight in front of friends and family. I never wanted to lose in front of them. I never wanted to lose in front of my wife. That was nerve-racking. That’s a hard question.

RM: I’ve always wondered what it’s like to fight another person, to have my fist come into contact with another person’s face. Most people don’t know what that’s like.

RS: In a professional sense, it’s a cool feeling. I never intend to kill someone or even injure them. But it’s a good feeling to know that I’m the better one and I’m the one that came out on top; that I’ve succeeded and I’m making my dreams come true. When I’m winning, I think about everything I’ve trained for and fought hard for has paid off.

RM: What’s the difference between street fighting and fighting in a pro ring?

RS: Street fighting is easy. It just happens. There is no time to think. Most street fighters don’t know anything, so it’s easy to fight them. With an MMA fight you have six weeks to prepare and you know who your opponent is. A couple days before the event you’re at the hotel with the guy, you see him at the Jacuzzi, at dinner, and at weigh-ins. You know he is training to fight you and your weaknesses. It’s way more mental.

RM: Do you have any pre-fight rituals?

RS: [Laughs] Actually I do…but a lot of people laugh at me for it! To take away stress I do crossword puzzles.

RM: Crossword puzzles?! [Shocked and laughing] RS: Yeah, I listen to my iPod and do crossword puzzles.

RM: What are you thinking about as you walk to the cage, right before you enter the ring?

RS: A lot of times I’m thinking about what 23 across is, or 17 down is. Those are the things I think about. (Laughing again) I don’t think about what I’m going to be doing to my opponent, or how the fight is going to go. In reality, 038 RISEN magazine

you can have a game plan for the fight, you can train for a certain fighter and anticipate what they are going to do. But once that first punch is thrown, the context of the fight usually changes.

RM: Some people say that professional fighting is inhumane. What are your thoughts on that?

RS: I think they are wrong. It’s a sport. We’re not out there trying to hurt or kill each other. We’re just trying to win. Most people don’t know that we all hang out after the fights. We’re all friends and some of us even train together. Fighting is just a different type of sport. It’s not even a real dangerous sport. The referee is there to stop a fight before it gets bad.

More people get hurt playing football then they do in MMA. RM: What have been some of the most difficult challenges in your life?

RS: I think the biggest challenge was trying to make my marriage work. I love my wife more than anything in the world. We’ve been separated for over a year. In fact, I hear she’s getting married in a few months. That is really hard for me. Paying my bills is another problem. I don’t make much money doing this.

RM: Television usually portrays the glorified side of MMA fighting. I wouldn’t have guessed that a professional MMA fighter struggles financially.

RS: Yeah, most people only see the top levels of fighting, like the UFC. Those fighters are making bonuses. But even some of those fighters don’t make that much money. I have a good record and I’m ranked pretty high, but I still don’t make that much money. I haven’t fought in a year. A lot of my fights get cancelled or my opponents back out. When that happens I don’t get paid. I don’t even have medical insurance. I get my nose broke all the time. I had my ribs broken last week. A couple weeks ago I had my jaw dislocated. When that happens I can’t go to the doctor, I just have to live with it. Even though I should be training twice a day, I have to have a job. Or get a sponsor.

RM: Do you have a secret kryptonite?

RS: [Chuckles]…I hate needles!

RM: How’d you survive all the tattoos?

RS: Tattoos are different than getting blood drawn. Tattoo needles are just scratching you as opposed to needles that draw your blood. They are scary to me!

RM: When you speak to kids you tell them to give back to their community.

How are you giving back?

RS: Actually, I’m opening up a gym for kids who need a place to go. We want to get kids off the streets and also make it free for them to train. We’d even like to bring the kids in with their parents so they can train together and nurture that parent-child bond. We’ll have other fighters and athletes speak to the kids once a week, to show them that they can succeed if they put their mind to it.

A lot of these kids just need encouragement. They don’t feel they are good enough. They just need to be told that they are.

Rick Slaton continues to improve his professional record in the ring. For more information on his next fight, visit www.myspace.com/rick_slaton.

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Writer: Chris Ahrens Photos: Bil Zelman

hen I first heard that twin teenagers had written a book, Do Hard ings: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations, I cringed, thinking it was going to be a Christian version of Jackass where nice little Christian boys and girls bungee jump from Notre Dame Cathedral and free climb the Wailing Wall. These were certainly hard things. Significant? Well, that’s a different matter.

As it turns out Brett and Alex Harris, the brothers come authors, are nothing like Knoxville’s merry pranksters. The twins prefer to keep their tasks G-rated and make sure that their final inventory will add up to more than a mass of hangovers, scars, and broken bones.

Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine in San Diego

Risen Magazine: What’s the advantage of doing hard things? I mean, what fun is it to be reading a book while your friends are playing video games?

Alex Harris: It’s about a longer-term perspective. Doing hard things is about growth. It’s only when we stretch ourselves that we grow. If we’re just looking in this moment, especially in the teen years, it’s all about having fun.

Brett Harris: If you view responsibility as a weight, it makes sense not to pick it up in your teen years. If you view it as a muscle to be trained and strengthened by exercise, you’re cutting yourself short. You’re going to get to a point and not have the strength to lift the heavy object. You can’t really avoid doing hard things. Are we going to do hard things early, or wait? Are we going to change the tire when it looks flat or have the tire bust out on the freeway?

AH: It does not mean that we’re the fun police. But is your fun a break from doing hard things and what God called you to do, or is doing hard things just an interruption from your fun?

RM: It seems like youthful energy, which I think is the greatest source of energy in the world, is going up in smoke, sometimes literally. There seem to be two schools of thought. One: Let a kid do whatever they want. Two: Make them all into good little Republicans.

BH: We don’t fall into either of those groups. We’re challenging young people and their parents to get into the right kinds of trouble, the kind of trouble you get into when you decide to obey God, even when it’s going against the flow.

AH: Doing whatever you want is really a recent phenomenon. The word teenagers itself was first documented in Reader’s Digest in 1941. Since then, we have a whole culture centered around that word.

RM: Certainly expendable income had something to do with that.

BH: When young people went from producers to consumers, they had to be

entertained and kept occupied. There was a lot of money that they controlled.

The problem with some of the suit-and-tie good kids is that they’re known simply for not doing any bad stuff—they’re not sleeping around, they’re not doing drugs. What are they doing? You can be above average–you can be exceptional–simply for avoiding all of the typical teen stuff. We’re not calling them to keep their suit and tie clean, but to get dirty for the right things, doing hard things. That’s a whole different approach.

RM: What types of trouble have you guys have been in for doing right?

AH: We did a modesty survey, which sprung from a fifteen-year-old girl who wanted to get an opinion from Christian guys on the ways girls dress. It seemed a little awkward at first, so we decided to do it anonymously. We gave her the green light and within a week she had 365 different questions submitted from college and high school girls all around the country. We realized that we couldn’t post that many questions, so we had to craft an entire survey system. We had a nineteen-year-old man from Canada who programmed the whole thing from the ground up. We were hoping for at least a hundred guys, and our dream was that a thousand guys would take it. We had seventeen hundred in the first two weeks. We had to close it off cuz there was too much data to go through otherwise. The day it launched we received half a million hits.

That was all buzz generated word of mouth, cuz we didn’t promote it.

BH: A lot of people took it wrongly, like guys were telling girls how to dress.

What it really was were the guys asking girls for their input.

RM: So you haven’t been in any big trouble.

BH: Part of the reason for that is we’re two teen guys who are actually doing something. Because of low expectations, we can get away with quite a bit more than someone two years older. In a lot of ways we avoid it, but the criticism will definitely come. We’re hoping that as we take a stand and do what’s right, that www.risenmagazine.com

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that muscle will be built up. Obviously, it’s His grace that allows us to stand for Him, but part of that grace is that He gives us opportunity every day to do that and to strengthen that muscle, to see that He’s faithful. I think that down the road, especially as we get involved in politics more, that we’ll be criticized more. An example of that are martyrs who are killed for their faith. We were on a show the other day where the host was talking about a group of young people who had lived behind the Iron Curtain. They came and sang Christian hymns in front of the capitol building, and after being repeatedly told to stop, they were actually shot. It started revival in the country and contributed heavily to the Curtain coming down. That would be the ultimate example of taking a stand. We talk about five different kinds of hard things. Taking a stand is the last one, the hardest one, and can include the ultimate sacrifice. We’re speaking at a conference this year called “The Purpose Driven Death.” It’s not calling you to die, but what does it mean for your death to have a purpose?

RM: How does a person know they’re an adult other than by birth date?

AH: We talk about that in our book. John Piper, a pastor from Minneapolis, calls it a holy ambition. He defines holy ambition as something you want to do that God wants you to do also. He says that the primary mark of a Christian passing from a child to an adult is getting a holy ambition. Once you have that, you’re a man or a woman, go pursue it.

BH: The message to the adults, who often have low expectations of a young person, is not to say, “That’s not possible; you can’t do it.” God puts a passion in a young person or chooses a young person: David, Mary the mother of Jesus, the prophet Jeremiah . . . You end up on the wrong side of history if you try to keep that from happening.

AH: Zach Hunter was twelve years old, and he thought, Man, if I lived back during the Civil War, I would have done something to help free the slaves.

When he found out there were more slaves now than then, he started an organization called Loose Change. He was the spokesman for the Amazing Change program to end slavery. He’s spoken to over half a million people; he’s spoken at the White House. He has two books and is working on his third book now. He’s sixteen, now, and he’s the most unlikely hero. He suffered from severe anxiety attacks, had to be taken out of school, cuz he couldn’t cope with it. Had no self-confidence. Then he got a holy ambition, and it was bigger than his fear.

RM: Holy ambition may be the key to the whole teen dilemma.

AH: That’s what we’re so excited about. There are so many stories like Zach’s, it blows our minds. Our next project is an event we’re tentatively calling “The Hard Conference.” We want to create an event: three days, twenty-five speakers, eighteen minutes to give the best talk of your life to a thousand of the most dedicated young people in our country. They’ll have that time to share how the world opens up to them in all its broken beauty.

BH: Taking it to young people who say, I want to be a revolutionary; what am 042 RISEN magazine

I supposed to do now? Give them an opportunity to be bombarded with all the opportunities . . . problems too. Through technology, young people have an opportunity like no other time in history to see what’s going on in the world and also to reach out and touch those problems in a real way. Alex and I wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t started a blog when we were sixteen.

RM: Temptations must be abundant for you guys. How do you handle that?

BH: Slap the other twin. [Laughter] AH: We are blessed to be twins. We travel together, share the hotel room. A lot of those temptations happen when you’re isolated and don’t have that backup. That’s a Biblical principle: one man falls; the other can help him up.

RM: Does ego tempt you?

BH: You have the temptation, you catch yourself and have the temptation to be proud that you caught yourself. Our good friend [best-selling author] Randy Alcorn says we’re like ball boys at Wimbledon, surrounded by greatness, but it’s not about us. That’s our mind-set.

RM: Have you ever rebelled against your upbringing?

AH: We haven’t. The whole idea of rebelling as teenagers is not present outside of Western societies, and it wasn’t in the United States prior to about a hundred years ago, when we began to change our ideas about the teen years.

Part of it was this theory that you relive the stages that the embryo goes through as you grow. That’s something that’s completely archaic now, but at the time the teen years were viewed as your caveman years. So the expectation is that every teenager rebels.

RM: But you guys are rebelling.

AH: When we were eleven or twelve, our mom came to pick us up at school and we hugged her and kissed her on the check. Our teacher said, “Just wait until they’re teenagers, you won’t be getting any more of that.” That’s just one example. Type in the word teens in Firefox and Teens and smoking, Teens and drugs will come up. It’s not true that every teen rebels–it’s true that everyone expects them to rebel. So many young people have come to us and said, “My mom thinks I’m sleeping around, or doing this or that and I’m getting in trouble for it anyway, so why not just do it and have the fun of it.” I just saw a TV commercial where the mom is saying to her son, “I don’t want you going out tonight, I don’t want you hanging out with that girl, but if you do it, use a condom. Here’s one.” There you are. We’re rebelling against rebellion, that’s what the revolution is. There are some negative connotations with rebellion, but the true definition is of renouncing allegiance. So, by definition rebellion is not bad, it’s only as good or bad as what you’re rebelling against. In this case we’re renouncing allegiance to cultural expectations and switching our allegiance to God’s Word and His standards for the teen years.

RM: Is it a lot of pressure on you guys?

AH: It’s a real burden, but not in a bad way. It’s very sobering and we try to make it very clear that we’re not the leaders of this. We’ve come up with a name for it and we’re trying to spread it to as many people as possible, but if we go down in the dust, it doesn’t at all mean that what we’re talking about isn’t true; it only means that we weren’t practicing what we preached, maybe. So we’re very careful. We have each other, we have our families, we have our friends. The Bible says that teachers will be held to a higher standard for what they teach. That’s something that we really have to be mindful of.

RM: Is there a Christian responsibility toward the environment?

BH: We believe that there is. For us it’s a matter of stewardship, regardless of where you come down on the global warming debate or things like that. I think that all Christians should care about being good stewards of the environment, leaving it better than when they came to it.

AH: On the one side you have the radical environmentalist who views this world as a wilderness, where it would be almost better if humans just died so that nature could fulfill its essence. The Christian view of the environment is that the earth is a garden. Wilderness versus garden, a garden has a place for man. Someone has to tend it, to cultivate it so it bears fruit and is prosperous.

It sustains him and provides for mankind. We view it as a garden and we don’t want to get into a place where we’re sacrificing man for nature, which almost seems like what some of the more radical environmentalists are saying.

RM: Have you ever had anything prophetic spoken to you?

AH: I don’t know exactly when it was—twelve to fifteen years ago—where the vision was that we would be like young lions in the kingdom of God. There wasn’t a whole lot more detail than that. That was long before what we’re doing now.

RM: What would you like Oprah to know that you know?

BH: I doubt they would really have us on, because there’s a passing reference to our stand on abortion. If we were on, there’s a side of our message she would agree with—self-empowerment, that teens can do great things. Still, we would want her to know where we were coming from, that even though we believe that anybody, Christian or not, can do hard things, but that our culture hasn’t always been this way. At the same time we would want her to know that the reason we do hard things is because Christ has done the ultimate hard thing.

That’s something we couldn’t do no matter how hard we tried, that is to reconcile us to Himself by dying on the cross.

RM: Many teens identify themselves as Christians; what do you say to them?

BH: We feel that young people are able to slip through as nominal Christians, Christians in name only, even though they’re not really born again. At our conferences, we ask questions with wireless keypads, so the young people can interact with us. At the end of the session we ask the questions: Do you read 044 RISEN magazine

your Bible because you believe it’s the Word of God, or because your mom’s gonna ask you if you didn’t? Do you pray because you believe someone’s gonna be there to hear you? Do you obey God because you believe that His will is the best thing for your life? They answer anonymously with wireless keypads. What we’re getting at is that it’s easier for a young Christian today to just go along and get along rather than to say, I don’t believe any of this, I would be better off without it. You don’t see the fruit of the Spirit in a lot of young people’s lives, but the fruit of supportive circumstances. Parents and youth pastors and anyone, we can lie to ourselves, cuz we see what we want to see. When they go off to school, when nobody checks on you to see if you’ve gone to church, read your Bible, or prayed—that’s the test, that’s the real evaluation. We talk about the difference between a mammal and a reptile [which] takes on the temperature of the environment, where a mammal has an internal heating system.

You have an apple tree or a crabapple tree—all the pruning and maintenance in the world isn’t going to make an apple tree a crabapple tree; you have to have your nature changed. A crabapple can do what’s called fruit stapling, taking fruit and stapling it to your limbs to look good. We have an altar call and ask, “Do you see evidence of God’s grace in your life? Yes or no?” This is at a Christian conference and 131 people say they see no evidence of grace in their lives. Then we asked those who said they see no evidence if they want to be born again. And we had 127 from the 131 say yes. Usually people raise their hands while nobody’s looking. We ask you to do a hard thing, with every eye open, every head up. If you can’t stand here with those who are going to be overjoyed for you, how are you gonna stand out there in the world? It’s amazing; we had 127 young people stand. A lot of them thought they were Christians because they were going to youth group and reading their Bibles whenever they thought of it. A lot of them were very emotional, but we made it clear that it’s not the standing that saves you.

We’re constantly emphasizing the fact that if you’re feeling anything, it’s God working, bringing you to life. We’ve had young people say, I didn’t stand, but I couldn’t sleep all night. There are millions of teens in our churches that are not saved yet. If they were, real evangelism would be taking place. We’re not saying that’s the number one thing churches need, but that’s what we’re seeing is effective. Are you willing to obey God, even when it’s hard?

RM: Where do you see yourselves in 10,000 years?

AH: Our bodies will be in the ground, but we’ll be up on heaven.

BH: Yeah, I’ll be there too.

Do Hard Things can be purchased in bookstores or online.

www.risenmagazine.com

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Jay Adams Freedom

I

Writer: Chris Ahrens Photos: Estevan Oriol

first became aware of Jay Adams in the early ’70s through still photos published of him surfing and skateboarding. He excelled in both sports and was an innovator to the extent that surfers and skaters around the world often cloned his reckless and casual style. He had so much charisma that many believe that without Adams, international skateboarding would have taken another decade to catch on.

I first met Jay at Swami’s in the late ’70s where we shared small waves together and talked of the North Shore, where he was moving later that year. Next thing I heard he was in prison on a manslaughter charge, stemming from a drunken and angry outburst on the streets of Hollywood. For many years after that, when I heard Jay’s name it was either associated with skateboarding, surfing, drugs, or trouble with the law.

In 2006 I met Jay Adams again in La Jolla, through our mutual friend, skate legend Christian Hosoi. Adams had spent most of his obligatory rebellion by then, and he was speaking enthusiastically about his recent conversion to Christianity and his desire to stay away from drugs and alcohol, the twin demons that had led him into all his troubles. A few days later, Jay returned to Hawaii with his new wife, Alisha. He called from time to time, just to talk about surf and sobriety and the married life he was enjoying. Then I heard that Jay had been

arrested, again. Seems that he had said the wrong thing to the wrong guy, and told him where to buy drugs. “If you make anything, kick me something back,” was what he said into a concealed wire. Nothing much more than that, but it put Jay at the bottom of a list nobody ever wants to be on. His charges would have been dismissed, had there not been a string of violent actions in his past. The judge sent him away, and for months I only saw Jay in Santa Ana Jail, when he was seated behind glass, and we spoke through a telephone. I would visit him with his old friend, skater Dennis Martinez, who spoke to him about God and skateboarding. When it was my turn Jay and I spoke about God and surfing. Leaving together, Dennis and I would feel sick that he couldn’t drive home with us. Then we saw Jay on the day he was sentenced, wearing a chain, accompanied by two guards. The sentence was a year and a half, followed by a stint in rehab. On the day of his release, I accompanied Martinez, Dogtowner Billy Yeron, and the legendary Christian Hosoi to the LA airport to pick him up. Christian then drove him to a rehabilitation facility in Orange County.

Night and day, Jay works hard on staying sober. From nine to five, he works at the Hurley warehouse, sending out clothing to fuel a culture he helped to create. We stopped in for a visit. He had a lot to say.

Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine at Hurley International in Costa Mesa, California. www.risenmagazine.com

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Risen Magazine: [Looking at the Hurley half pipe] When you were a kid looking for empty pools with Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta, did you imagine there would be skate parks?

Jay Adams: Not really at that time, no.

RM: At twelve years old, Venice must have seemed like paradise.

JA: Well, I didn’t consider Venice paradise. I was looking at Surfer Magazine and Hawaii was paradise. Venice was just home. My stepfather was born and raised in Hawaii and he always told me about it. The waves you see on the cover of Surfer Magazine now are the types we would draw on our folders as kids, some 100-foot barrel or something like that, unthinkable back then. Everything has progressed so much since then; look at Danny Way, jumping further than Evel Knievel, on a skateboard.

RM: Do you think you would have been one of those extreme types, if you were eighteen years old now?

JA: Who knows? I could be some sort of extreme dope fiend or something like that. I’d probably be abusing whatever I was trying to do, whether good, like sports, or . . . You know, kids get caught up in it.

I was just lucky that I was brought up surfing and skateboarding. That’s all I wanted to do.

JA: I pretty much based my whole life around surfing and skateboarding. If the waves were gonna be good, I wouldn’t really go too hard that night. Surfing was more important. After those things happened in my life, my brother getting killed, my mom dying . . . the final straw was when I caught my chick in bed with that dude. I kind of snapped. I went to jail for a couple weeks, got out and started slamming dope. Eventually that completely took over, and heroin became my number one thing. That’s all I was interested in for a couple of years.

Before that, it wasn’t in control, but it wasn’t completely out of control.

RM: A functional addict?

JA: Semi-functional. There were still hangovers and all-nighters and stuff, but I wasn’t putting needles in my arms every day, or depending on that drug just to feel good.

...I like ?wak ing up early and not de ? pending on putting something into my arm or my body

RM: A surf kid’s biggest worries are getting good waves, having the right board, and having enough money for lunch. Where does the dissatisfaction come from that makes someone want to do drugs?

JA: Wow, I don’t know if it was a feeling of dissatisfaction, or just wanting to party with my friends. It’s hard to really think of where it comes from, but I know you grow into it. It becomes normal.

RM: Do you remember feeling angry about anything?

JA: In the punk rock days I was kind of angry, but I was only angry cuz everyone else was saying we should be angry. It was like, we’re punk rock, we’re pissed, cuz everyone’s a longhaired hippie and we don’t like that. I think that I was just going along with it, rather than actually being pissed.

RM: But there was a lot of pain from things like deaths in the family at the time, right?

JA: That was afterwards. There wasn’t a whole lot of pain before that, except for, maybe, my stepdad and my mom breaking up. I had a good childhood and teenage years. I wouldn’t say pain was a reason I turned to drugs. Everybody smoked weed and drank when I grew up. Alcohol gave you liquid courage, you could talk to chicks more, maybe be more aggressive toward guys, and it helped to build your reputation as far as being a crazy person. It’s all temporary and stupid, but it really changes you. If you’re basically a little bit shy to begin with, it’ll take that away.

RM: Were you shy as a kid?

JA: At times, probably, until I really got to know people, crowds of people I didn’t know, yeah, a little bit.

RM: When did drugs go from hanging out with friends having a good time, to a big problem?

RM: What has drug addiction cost you so far?

JA: Probably more things than I know about. It’s cost me relationships, it’s cost time, it’s cost more things than I can put into words. Man, I’d have to think about that, cuz I could go on and on about that. Most of all, it’s cost a lot of pain, and a lot of good memories that I don’t have.

RM: Have you ever thought what your life might be if you hadn’t gone that way?

JA: I don’t think about that. I mean, I could own five houses, and . . .

RM: How do you stay sober?

JA: Last weekend, one of the little Southsider kids [at the rehab facility] relapsed. That was on a Saturday and he died Sunday. He was twenty-four years old. Stuff like that helps keep me sober, and the fact that I like waking up early and not depending on putting something into my arm or my body in order to feel good. You can get amped out just running around.

RM: You’re kind of naturally amped, aren’t you?

JA: I guess so.

RM: Energetic.

JA: There’re times, yeah. I like to be.

RM: But you need to burn it off, right?

JA: I think I prefer movin’ around to layin’ around. It’s good to be out doin’ things. I like to be tired at night, like last night I got home at 9:30. I was asleep by 10:00, woke up at 5:00, ready to go again. Right now we’re sitting on a couch. That probably won’t happen again until tonight.

RM: Do you work hard here?

JA: There’re times when we work hard here and other times we get to kick back. We just work at whatever needs to get done and we work pretty hard at gettin’ it done.

RM: A lot of kids see the movies and get an idea that prison is a pretty cool place. What’s prison really like?

JA: Prison is lame. You can’t make your own decisions; people decide everything for you, pretty much. You’re in a controlled environment. There’s nothing cool about being around a bunch of guys all the time. Stuck with a bunch www.risenmagazine.com

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of angry men? That’s not anything cool. It’s not the end of the world, either.

It’s what you make out of it. You can decide if you want to be bummed out in there, of if you want to be happy. Not that I can say what they [Lifers] feel, but it’s a lot better if you’ve got a date where you can walk out that door.

RM: When I watch the Dogtown movies, it makes it seem like you guys invented everything.

JA: That’s something I didn’t agree with in the Dogtown movie. We weren’t the first guys; we were just among some of the first. And we weren’t the first guys to ride pools, that’s for sure. The Hobie guys were doing that ten years before us. Because of urethane wheels we helped step it up to a new level.

And we had guys like Stecyk recording us. There were other kids around us doing it too.

RM: Dogtown and Southtown was portrayed as this big rivalry, but it seemed to me that most everyone got along.

JA: I got along with everybody, but some of the guys in my group didn’t. There was a lot of ego and stuff involved.

RM: How many times do you think Tony Alva got punched in those days?

JA: Couple times that I can remember. His ego was pretty out of control at the time. That’s what helped me keep my ego down. I didn’t want to be like that.

I saw things in some of my friends that I didn’t want any part of, as far as ego goes. I always thought that ego was really ugly and made people look really bad.

RM: You’ve been clean now for three years. Do you sense a change in your thinking?

JA: Oh, there’s been a complete change in my thinking. I used to be so brainwashed by drugs. I remember one time in Hawaii when I was in the middle of my addiction. I asked myself, What would I do today if I wasn’t going to get high? Would I walk on the beach or something lame like that? Now I think a walk on the beach is actually pretty cool, especially when it’s taken away. You need to learn to wake up and be sober. It takes time. Your addictions don’t go away overnight. Mine didn’t. I got married, and I wanted to be sober, but was still slippin’ some. It wasn’t because I didn’t love my wife. It was just that I hadn’t taken the time to feel good about myself without drugs in my body. That’s definitely changed.

There was a time when I really didn?t care if I lived or died, and using dope

RM: The movies made it seem that your primary motivation was to hang out with your friends, skate, ride waves, and take care of your mom. It seems you turned away from the whole financial gains in skateboarding.

JA: First of all, my mom was taking care of me. I was just trying to get what I could and help us along the way. My mom was just a really cool lady. She was like my best friend. As far as turning my back on the money, the real opportunities never really came to me. I didn’t want to put on a Pepsi suit to get paid, but nobody came to me and said, “Here, you want a Hobie skateboard and a $100,000 contract?” So I wasn’t the guy saying, No, I’m not going to do that, it just never happened for me.

RM: In Lords of Dogtown, Emil Hirsh, playing you, turns down the Slinky commercial.

JA: That’s true. It was a Band-Aid commercial. They wanted me to sit in a Band-Aid and sing, [Singing] I’m stuck on Band-Aid, cuz Band-Aid’s are stuck on me. I was like, I ain’t doin’ that.

RM: What would you tell a twelve-year-old Jay Adams right now?

JA: Sing the commercial. [Laughter] I guess. Put the Band-Aid on and get paid.

RM: Do you think wanting to be cool is a trap?

JA: A cool guy; isn’t that the nice guy? Or the guy with the cool car?

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RM: Yeah, the hip guy that everybody wants to be like, doesn’t try too hard, surfs good, has the best looking girlfriends.

JA: I don’t know any of them guys. [Laughter]

RM: What are your natural highs?

JA: Well, there’s surfing and skating and just having fun, being around friends, without drugs.

RM: In the past certain problems would have been a trigger to use drugs, right?

JA: Oh yeah, it would have been a perfect excuse to use.

RM: So you look at it as an excuse rather than a trigger.

JA: It’s an excuse. I go to AA and NA meetings, but I don’t think I buy into the whole disease thing. I don’t mean that for everyone; I mean it just for me. I think it’s more of a personal choice than a disease. Alcoholics, when they’re all tweeked out, or a heroin addict, maybe it becomes a disease to them when they need it, but I still think it’s a choice. I’ve been pretty addicted to heroin before, and I think for me it’s always been a choice.

RM: You told me that you would use toilet water, gutter water to shoot up, and that you didn’t care if you lived or died.

JA: There was a time when I really didn’t care if I lived or died, and using dope was really important. I was at a friend’s house once, and I knew that his lady had HIV, and I’m guessing he could have too. They had a needle filled with dope on their counter, and I just used it without even thinking of the consequences of whether they had used it or not. I don’t really care; I just want to get high right now. So, I was basically willing to have HIV, or whatever. I was lucky I didn’t get HIV, or hepatitis C. RM: Did you get sick kicking?

JA: It wasn’t too bad for me. It wasn’t like guys in the movies, wiggling around on the ground, throwing up out of both ends for a week or two. It wasn’t like that for me. It was bad, it was uncomfortable. I didn’t have any energy, but I would lie down for a couple days. It was cold and hot, cold and hot, but it wasn’t the worst experience . . . well, it was a pretty bad experience. Most of the addicts I know really want to get off of heroin, but they’re too afraid to go through that sickness, especially in Hawaii. They don’t have detox over there. You have to do it yourself, or come to California to a detox place. Or, the best way to do it is to just go to jail. Then, you’re stuck in that cell and their ain’t nothing coming

Photo: Grant Brittain

through there for you, at least where I was.

RM: Do you get to the point in drug use where you use not to get sick and you’re not getting high anymore?

JA: That’s completely true, especially with heroin. You just want to use enough to maintain . . . a lot of people use just enough to be well and maintain and be normal. The fun of getting high in the first place was to feel good. It evolves into having to do it so you don’t feel bad. Even cocaine, if I did cocaine now I would feel paranoid and edgy and weird. So, you need alcohol to take that away. When I was caught up in my addiction I would do it anyway, even knowing I would feel like that, just because I didn’t want to feel sober at the time. Even with speed, or whatever, I would do it anyway, just because it was something to do. It just twists your thinking.

RM: You’re going to do a speaking engagement with Christian Hosoi and Dennis Martinez, both ex addicts, on drug addiction.

JA: We need to clear it with my place [rehab facility] and figure out how we’re going to do it. I think we’ve got a good opportunity to help some kids not follow in our footsteps. Hopefully we’ll figure out what to tell ’em and what they need to hear.

RM: Are you still a regular skater?

JA: No, I haven’t been skating, cuz my foot’s been hurt.

I bruised my heel, or something in my heel three or four months ago, and it still hurts. I’ve been too stubborn to go to the doctor. I wait till I’m bleedin’ or need stitches or something to go to the doctor.

RM: Do your tattoos mean anything to you?

JA: I don’t know, they probably mean like, here’s a bathroom wall, take a marker and scribble on it. [Laughter] They don’t really mean much.

RM: Do you remember when you tattooed “Menace to Society” on your neck?

What were you thinking?

JA: Uh, I was thinkin’, man, my life is kinda crazy, all I do is sell drugs and do dope. I’d been to jail a couple times, and I was living like a criminal. I was surfing, but there was a lot of crime in my life at the time.

Mostly just sellin’ drugs. That’s one [tattoo] I could probably darken in. It was a statement of how I felt in the past, and it doesn’t apply to the present.

RM: Did you have some of them covered over?

JA: Some of the swastikas I had. [Points to tattoo on arm] I put a star of David and Jesus there. The swastika thing, when I put it there, it was basically about punk rock and the surf Nazi stuff, not like sieg heil, kill Jewish people.

RM: Has it ever been interpreted that way? Has anybody ever called you out on it?

JA: Well, whenever anybody would see me, they automatically would think that I was a skinhead, or a racist. No, I’m not and never have been. I grew up looking up to guys like Miki Dora who had that surf Nazi thing goin’, and I kinda liked that. When I was a kid, even in the Dogtown days, I used to put swastikas on my skateboards and stuff, just because of the shock value, to piss people off. I didn’t know, I was like, that little thing?

To have the guy with the numbers on his arm at the Jewish deli yell at me? I would go, whoa . . .

The first thing I do before I get out of bed is pray, and I pray dur ? ing the day

RM: When are you out of the halfway house?

JA: January, then I start a year of testing at a place called DTR. The first couple months are pretty intense, like once a week and then it tapers off. After that I have four years of probation.

RM: Are you learning why you became an addict?

JA: I have a meeting, every Wednesday night. It’s a continuation of the program I was doing in prison. That was nine months long, four days a week for an hour every day. Now I’m continuing that every Wednesday. We work on these workbooks and talk about our addiction and our faulty thinking, all that kind of stuff.

RM: Once you get off probation, what’s the first trip you’re going to take?

JA: I kind of like Mexico, Puerto Escondido and a little further down. I’d like to do a California run with a mini RV, and go from Oregon to Cabo, across the Mainland, and maybe to Texas, Florida, and New York. That would be kinda cool.

RM: How is your old friend Tony Alva?

JA: He’s doing good. He goes to meetings and is fully into the recovery thing.

RM: What about Stacy Peralta?

JA: Stacy was a really great skater. He was just the normal, sober guy. He was on our team, but he wasn’t one of us. I mean, he didn’t go to parties, he didn’t surf the Cove. He didn’t even go to Bay Street at night.

RM: Did you guys give Stacy crap for being the sober guy?

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JA: Not really. Maybe Alva and those guys did a little bit. So, maybe Stacy was really the guy who was ahead of his time, the smart one. [Laughs]

RM: When was the last time you punched somebody?

JA: That was years ago, in Hawaii. I was at a New Years party at the beach, and there were about five guys beating up this Brazilian guy. This one guy punched the guy like three times. He’d punch the guy and walk away, punch him and walk away. The last time he did it, I walked up to him and asked him if he thought that was funny, beating up on a guy like that with all the other guys. Before he said anything I just socked him and he went down and I kicked him in the face a couple times, cuz I didn’t like what he was doin’.

RM: Do you have any particular scripture that sustains you?

JA: I like the book of James a lot, and there’s lots of different . . . I don’t know.

RM: Do you pray regularly?

JA: The first thing I do before I get out of bed is pray, and I pray during the day and at night.

RM: Would you like to say a prayer now?

JA: Sure.

At the time of this interview, Jay Adams was working for Hurley and living at a halfway house in Orange County, California.

Jon Sundt

Escape to Reality Writer: Chris Ahrens Photos: Bil Zelman

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s a surfer coming of age in the 1970s, Jon Sundt heard all the stories of how drugs would take you to new and wonderful places. Like many from his generation, he buckled to the pressure, but when the “experiment” went wrong, ending in a desperate nightmare rather than the promised dream, Sundt said goodbye forever to that dark world. The oldest of three brothers, Jon had learned a quick and relatively painless lesson, while his younger brothers Steven and Eric apparently never saw the train coming. Burying young family members as a result of their drug use stimulated Jon in a way no chemical ever could, and it was this pain that launched the Sundt Memorial Foundation, whose stated mission reads, “To influence the hearts and minds of kids by inspiring them to live their natural high and to reject drugs.”

Jon, who knows the horrors of drug abuse better than most, nonetheless wanted to do something more than retell tragic stories. A lifelong love of surfing made him realize that he, along with everyone else, had the ability to get high without ingesting anything stronger than food, air, and water. Sundt initiated a video campaign he termed Natural High.

The fourth in a series of these powerful videos, which feature world-class athletes touting the merits of a drug-free life, hits public schools free-of-charge with the intent of making a stronger impact than the drugs that invaded our culture decades ago.

Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine in La Jolla, California Risen Magazine: Most movies on drugs accent the negative; Natural High emphasizes the positive. Why? Jon Sundt: In order to say no to something, you have to say yes to something better. It is really clear to me that everyone has something better to do than drugs. I looked at how very smart people were marketing to kids. They don’t say, “Don’t wear these shoes whatever you do.” No, they put their brand of shoes on a kid’s heroes. So, I felt that the heroes of kids could speak out and say that a natural high is far better than drugs.

RM: You’ve got some big names in your videos, but why don’t more celebrities get involved?

JS: There’re a lot of wonderful people that kids look up to that live by and large clean lives. A lot of these guys are controlled by agents and handlers, and . . . there’s really no money in saying, I prefer to get my natural high over drugs.

RM: When I was a kid, marijuana was bad and cigarettes were almost considered good. Now it’s the opposite. It’s like society can’t handle too much goodness at a time.

JS: Don’t trust everything you read, or everything you see on TV. There’s a dark message in the system that suggests that drugs are cool.

RM: Not many people in the media say that directly.

JS: It’s the back current. Watch a music video channel for a while, or some of these reality shows. They’re glorifying something that’s going to kill you or

ruin your life.

RM: Someone saying that marijuana is an illegal gateway drug might not be enough reason for a kid to stop.

JS: There’s a lot of data that shows it’s medically not good for you. And it alters your perception of reality. What’s wrong with reality? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if you’re a stoner it’s going to take away from your achievements. In my world, the highly competitive business world, you wouldn’t hire a stoner. I think that’s true for athletics.

RM: So what makes a curious kid think about sobriety?

JS: If you put a cop in front of a kid and say, “I dare you not to do drugs,” a lot of kids will go out and do ’em. You’re an authority and you’re challenging their independence. Now, go to a kid and say, “You’ve got a skill and if you follow your dreams you’re going to go to a place that’s much better than where drugs could ever take you. In fact drugs will slow you down or stop you from ever realizing that dream.” That’s a powerful message, especially if it’s from somebody they look up to.

RM: How did drugs change your life?

JS: When I was in junior high in the ’70s, there was a message similar to today, that if you wanted to be cool you had to do drugs. We were lookin’ up to like Led Zeppelin, the Who, the Doors, and a lot of those people ended up dying. www.risenmagazine.com

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Like many young kids I experimented before I was enlightened. I saw what was happening to my brothers through drugs. I was seventeen or eighteen and I decided that I didn’t want any part of that culture anymore. I took a left-hand turn and my brothers took a right-hand turn.

My brother Steven was a full-blown addict in high school. It started with pot and ended with cocaine. He ended up dying in the back seat of a cop car on a stormy evening in Northern California. He was fighting for his life when he pulled over looking for help, cuz his heart was stopping. The cops were called and they took him away and he died in a jail cell. I remember getting that call at two in the morning, like it was yesterday. They said, “Are you Jon Sundt?” I said yeah. They said, “Are you related to Steven Sundt?” I said, “Yeah, he’s my brother.” The guy on the phone said, “He just died in our jail.” I fell on my knees and cried out to God.

...have a Natural High Day where kids have a chance to think about what their God-given talents are.

From his first toke of marijuana to using cocaine was a seven-year journey that ended in death for Steve. My other brother, Eric, had been getting deeply involved in drugs and he had committed a crime. Instead of being sentenced to prison, he got sentenced to Patton State Mental Hospital for robbing a McDonald’s with a pellet gun. His hand was shaking so badly that the guy behind the counter said, “That’s not a real gun.” My brother ran out and was arrested. He had been under doctor’s treatment for bipolar disorder. Thinking that the mental health system would be better than prison, we pleaded insanity. When you go to those hospitals there’s no determinate sentence. They interview you every six months and ask how you’re doing. And every six months Eric was doing a lot worse, cuz those places are hell on earth. He ended up being there eight years, for petty robbery.

After I buried Steve, I had to drive up and tell Eric that his brother had just died. That was a bad day. A few years later, Eric got out and took his life.

I feel very strongly that if Eric had never gone down the drug path, a lot of that stuff wouldn’t have haunted him.

RM: Since then you’ve probably seen that story played out a lot more times than you care to mention.

JS: Yeah, when you think about it, everyone is one or two degrees away from a story like that. Maybe not so dramatic, but how many of us know somebody whose life has been turned upside down because of addiction. How many young people have thrown away their lives, at the time thinking it was cool or the way to fit in.

RM: When you’re in junior high and high school, you only see the beginning of addiction. Sometimes you don’t see the results for years later.

JS: You think you’re indestructible when you’re that age. The long-term effects are well documented, but kids don’t think of long-term consequences. They think in terms of immediate gratification.

RM: We see photos of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison as young, handsome men. We never see the horrific images of their final hours.

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JS: Exactly. If you look at the fallen heroes of drugs . . . Elvis Presley’s estate doesn’t make a whole lot of money showing pictures of Elvis fat and OD’ed.

They make money showing pictures of Elvis in his prime, when he was drug free. They don’t want anyone to see those other pictures. A picture of Jim Morrison dead in his hotel room would be a great anti-drug campaign. Instead, all you see is this cool Jim Morrison.

RM: I recently saw a website about rock ’n’ rollers who had died from drugs.

We can all name four or five, but there were hundreds of bands that had lost members, while they were in the prime of life.

JS: It’s not just the people who died, but also those whose lives have been ruined. Those numbers there are even more staggering. Death by a thousand cuts.

Look at Celebrity Rehab, Dr. Drew, it’s just horrifying. It’s about time we got some prime time media showing what’s really going on.

RM: Doing a Natural High TV show right after Celebrity Rehab could be interesting.

JS: My dream and vision would be to someday have a Natural High day.

Rather than an anti-drug day, which I think is important, have a Natural High day where kids have a chance to think about what their God-given talents are.

We give ’em some tools to explore and excel in those talents. We teach kids about history and dangling participles; why not sit down with a kid and talk about what their natural high is?

RM: You say natural high, but each of us probably has far more than one.

JS: We all have multiple natural highs. It’s the feeling you get when you do something that improves your self-confidence . . . when your brain produces those chemicals from kicking a soccer goal or getting up on stage. Those are the best feelings in the world.

RM: In our cities, some of the natural highs for young men have been eliminated. There are no bears to try and outwit, nothing to hunt with a bow, no mountains to climb. On top of that, there’s often no dad to take you to the wilderness. With fewer options to getting high, no wonder so many young men turn to drugs and violence.

JS: Drug prevention is such a big issue, there’s no magic bullet. There are so many ways to approach it. One thing I know is that treatment is very expensive. Treatment costs tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars. It can be effective, but in many cases it’s too late. The side of the fence I want to be on is prevention. The message to kids has to be continual and repetitive. It can’t just be once. My goal is to get the Natural High videos into schools and get them used all the time, constantly.

RM: Yeah, as soon as they leave the classroom, they’re bombarded by the opposite message.

JS: Look at what the alcohol industry spends, and don’t for a moment think those ads aren’t targeting kids. The battleground is clear. The nice thing about school is that it’s the last place where a kid has his butt in a seat uninterrupted, not on a cell phone.

RM: In order, what are your natural highs?

JS: I would say love, giving and receiving, surfing, business.

RM: I know that some young teachers want to be cool with the kids and don’t tell them anything they don’t want to hear.

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JS: When I started this I was shocked by the lack of powerful, impacting content being delivered to our kids. It’s [Natural High] nothing Hollywood would make.

RM: What about the war on dope?

JS: I don’t think you can fight a war on dope; I think that’s a waste. I think we need to be turning kids onto a better choice to win their hearts and minds.

Our Mission To influence the hearts and minds of kids by inspiring them to live their natural high and to reject drugs.

RM: Natural High is effective in showing great athletes getting high on accomplishment, but some athletes will use drugs for all sorts of reasons, including performance enhancement.

JS: What possible long-term benefit can drug use have on a professional athlete’s career? There are so many stories of athletes who have had everything taken away from them because they got involved in drugs. The Olympics do a really good job of dope testing. I can’t speak to someone who wants to get away with everything.

We speak the language of youth by using cutting-edge technology, such as DVD's and websites, which use icons, idols and peers to show kids that their natural high is better than drugs.

7817 Ivanhoe Ave. #304 La Jolla, CA 92037 (858) 551-7006 www.sundtmemorial.org

It’s like a slip ’n’ slide. If you get on it, you don’t know where you’re going to stop. That’s the danger.

RM: We base our lives on the avoidance of pain. From the time we’re children we’re told to take something for a headache, not figure out why we have one.

JS: There’s a lot of drug use happening through the parents’ medicine cabinets now. Kids know what Valium is, Percocet . . . Two hundred years ago if you had a headache, you laid down.

RM: We’ll never know the full effects of drug use. I don’t have the statistics, but there must have been wars fought because somebody was drunk or loaded.

JS: When you walk through life it’s a really fine line. Everyone’s given opportunities to blow it or step over the line. It’s like a slip ’n’ slide. If you get on it, you don’t know where you’re going to stop.

That’s the danger. Some people get away with it for a long time.

RM: Some people drink every day and die in bed at ninety-five.

JS: Yeah, but if you look at the long-term studies from excessive drinking, you do a lot of damage to your brain. The brain plasticity gets totally messed up. As you get older you have lower memory functions, lower cognitive functions. That’s just coming out now.

RM: People always say I’m going to have a drink or smoke a little pot. That usually doesn’t mean a little of anything.

JS: When I speak at schools, it’s so cool to see a kid focused on something that’s giving them a natural high. You know right away when they’re involved in something good. They’re in a group involved with something and they don’t need it or want it [drugs]. As opposed to the kid who’s kind of bored, maybe not very self-confident, trying to prove something to themselves, and they’re going out blowing their brains out. Nearly every time I’ve spoken to a school here in San Diego, afterwards a kid’s come up to me in tears. They have a story to tell, and it’s so sad—my mom, my cousin, my older brother. They have a story that’s been told a thousand times, but to this person it’s a nightmare. I told one girl, “A diamond has to be cut to shine. The story you told me feels like a cut, but it’s going to make you shine in life.” Drugs are somewhat of a silent killer. It’s shameful when you’re a child when someone you know dies of drugs or alcohol. Maybe it’s not death, but it’s shameful when somebody goes into an addiction spiral. They lose their job; they lose their family. Or, if it’s a young kid, they lose their future. That’s why at the end of the video I am standing over my brother’s grave. It has to be real; it can’t be contrived.

To learn more about the Sundt Memorial Foundation or to order Natural High, please contact www.sundtmemorial.org or www.naturalhigh.org 058 RISEN magazine

Donate: Gift by Telephone: 858-551-7006 Gift by Mail: Sundt Memorial Foundation 7817 Ivanhoe Ave. #304 La Jolla, CA 92037 Gift by Internet: www.sundtmemorial.org/donate

natural high

g n u o Y l u a P m Willia .. ’t the roof or the doorsLives What makes a house grand, it ain —Tom Waits The House Where Nobody Writer: Chris Ahrens Illustration: Annika Nelson

aul Young’s book, e Shack has been praised as a masterpiece and condemned as heresy but never ignored. The main objection comes from some Biblical literalists who object to Young’s playful portrayal of the Trinity. Still, most anyone looking should be able to uncover the heart of God in this fiction.

There’s another shack that Paul likes to speak about, that dilapidated hovel within each of us that we try to cover over with everything from toothpaste to Botox. Like many of us, Paul was ashamed of his shack, and ignored it until it threatened to destroy him. When he finally decided to look visit his run down soul [shack], it took all his courage to do the necessary work to fix it. Of course he had outside help (Let he who has ears understand).

After an eleven-year visit, Paul Young emerged from the shack as a friendly guide to the rest of us pilgrims, challenging us to look back and see that the place we grew up can be wonderful, if given proper maintenance. And, come to find out, it’s not the beachfront mansion, but our humble shack where the Son of Man, who had no place to lay his head, feels most at home.

Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine

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Risen Magazine: Do you feel that pain is necessary to give birth to something good?

Paul Young: It’s like when your leg’s been in a cast for a few months. When you take the cast off there’s some pain involved. I think for a lot of us, the pain that’s been inflicted on us is going to require some pain to come out. It’s not that God requires pain to mature a person, but He will use whatever colors we bring to Him. RM: You’ve talked about adultery in your past. Now that you’re famous isn’t adultery more likely than before? I mean, what do you do if you’re alone and some beautiful woman throws you her hotel room key?

PY: Oh, that’s easy; I take it down to the front desk and turn it in. [Laughs] Part of that question assumes you don’t know that I was in the shack for eleven years. My shack’s built out of some abandonment issues, some cultural inability to connect and sexual abuse as a child. Then, growing up with all the addictive behaviors that come from that. The process of coming to healing, those eleven years, I squeeze into a weekend for the main character in the book.

Those eleven years set me free. I have no illusions about self-centered independent choices and the damage it does to me, and the people I care about.

Also, I have walked into an understanding of the embrace of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That is so precious to me, and I’m not about to give that away for a room key.

I understand grace and I have freedom in my life. I have everything in this life that matters to me. By the time that I came out of the shack, I didn’t ever need to speak in front of anybody again. I didn’t need to write anybody. I didn’t need to do a great work for God. I live by the grace of one day at a time. As long as I do that I’m fine. Everything else is an imagination. A room key is an

imagination of something that can give you something to fill the emptiness inside. I’m sorry, but I’ve got a God who loves me. I’ve got a wife who adores me.

I’ve got children where I’m in the center of their great affection, and I’ve got grandchildren, which is like outasight! I’m a healed person not a coping person.

RM: Why do you think so many good church people trade the peace of God for adultery?

PY: A lot of times we try to control the environment around us, rather than open our eyes to the uncertainty of faith, cuz faith grows in uncertainty. Another piece of that answer is that we invest in the façade that’s outside the shack. The shack is the inside, the heart, the soul of a person that has been damaged and ruined and has been abused. The choices, the secrets, the lies, the addictions are all those things inside the shack. We are so ashamed of that that we build a façade and we hope that God will give us either a blue or a red pill, so that we don’t have to deal with the stuff in the shack, not realizing that it is what’s firing our motivations. That façade is what we want people and even God to believe in. If we lose that all we’re left with is the shack, the shame.

When a situation comes up and that person offers you an alternative to your shame, it’s an imagination of unconditional love, which is so much of what adultery or infatuation is. It’s a way to love yourself through that person. We see this person, we see this reflection of our own need, but it’s ultimately not them that we’re loving, but our own pain through them, to try and find a way to redemption. So often adultery is false redemption.

RM: Some of your healing involved therapy. There are some Christians that would take exception to the idea of therapy helping to heal a Christian.

PY: There are some perspectives in the faith that expect God to communicate with us in narrow ways. I have the perspective that God communicates with www.risenmagazine.com

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…if there’s love in a house, it’s a palace for sure. us all the time. Even people who don’t have an intimate relationship with God reflect the Father, Son and Holy Spirit nature of relationship that they’re made in. They’re made in the image of God; you can hear it in their music. I was talking to a pastor who said he became a believer in God through Godspell,

and that he was a believer for three months before he met his first Christian.

A lot of people would say that God doesn’t communicate that way, but if He can communicate through mute, brute creation, He can communicate through a person made in His image, even though they’re not in relationship with Him. The healing process is unique to the person, because every person’s unique. Not only is every person unique, but the damage done in every person’s life is unique, because it’s tied to the uniqueness of that person. The shack or the soul is kinda like a ball of string that’s been knotted up and all these knots are inside of other knots and tangles. Religion just wants to take a knife to that mess and slice the whole thing and say, I can fix this. Yeah, you’ll lose part of your heart, but we can fix this. You bring this whole mess to God, and He says, No, I know how to untangle every knot in the right order that will set you free and not break the string.

RM: It seems that cultures outside of the U.S. don’t separate God into little compartments.

PY: Again, that’s because we’ve split our world in two. Part of that is fear.

We’re afraid that if we allow Him into that part, He might ruin our sense of control. And we’re probably right. The economy’s gonna shake, things are gonna come down. The world is full of uncertainty and at some point when you’re over there in the spiritual part of your life, you were saying, God heal me.

Set me free. We say these dangerous prayers and sing these dangerous things and our life moves toward uncertainty, cuz that’s where faith will grow.

RM: It’s a wonder that everyone’s not schizophrenic.

PY: Sexual abuse will break people into a bunch of little pieces. It will destroy boundaries, the things that God has built inside a human being just get trampled on through that kind of abuse. The same with abandonment, the same with not being able to please a parent. Then you add chemical addictions, and whatever. All of those things break us into pieces. Wholeness, salvation, healing, all those words are about bringing us back and becoming whole people, integrated versus disintegrated.

RM: There’s an idea that having no boundaries is freedom.

PY: In our culture they say that independence is freedom. If you can just have independence, that’s where no boundaries comes in. The reality is that freedom equals dependence and you can’t have freedom without dependency. We’re created beings. When you declare that there is no creator, that there is no such thing as a creation, you can have independence, and no boundaries. The great062 RISEN magazine

—Tom Waits The House Where Nobody Lives

est disillusionment comes when you finally achieve that which you thought would fill you and it doesn’t deliver.

RM: So, we may end up building more than one shack.

PY: The shack’s the same all the way through. What you’re trading is the façade, to get the approval of the Father, which we don’t think we have. In the book there’s a phrase: “If anything matters, everything matters. It’s an attack on nihilism, which says that nothing matters. That’s independence, where nothing matters and death is the end. Even science is having trouble with that, since people who are brain dead are remembering things after they’re brain dead. If one thing matters, the door’s wide open to everything. That’s the care of God; He says you matter. He’ll leave the 99 to go find the one. You’re the one, he’s the one, I’m the one, she’s the one. Everything is now embedded with meaning. The beauty of that is that God never did anything by Himself. It’s always been the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We’re designed in the image of God, which means that we’re not designed to do anything by ourselves.

RM: Does anyone have a problem with the Trinity being multicultural?

PY: Only in the West, cuz we’ve got God in a box, right. When I wrote The Shack, I wasn’t writing a systematic theology, but a story for my children. I just wanted to describe them in relationship and it started to make so much more sense. The imagery that I used, God is not male or female. I’m on good theological grounds here. God is spirit. He’s not like 51 per cent male and 49 percent female. Every image of God as a male is inadequate. All of the imagery used is incorrect. God is not a burning bush or a door. All of those imageries are there to help us understand the heart of God. I’m very glad I didn’t know what I was doing. The Holy Spirit emerged from the story as a person. We’ve always talked about the Holy Spirit as a person, but we’ve treated the Holy Spirit as a force or a ghost. To have the Holy Spirit as a person has been hugely healing to some people. Other people have said that I’ve taken His holiness and demeaned Him. God is not afraid of our stuff. He climbs right into the middle of it. I don’t want my children thinking that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit set the bar so high that nobody could ever achieve it. I believe that everything God does is an expression of His love. You don’t need God when you have certainty, even though certainty’s a myth.

RM: When’s the last time you wanted to punch somebody?

PY: I think the last time was when Kim’s mom was dying and one of her sisters had a boyfriend. Kim and I were talking to the doctor and he was saying that Kim’s mom was brain dead. We walked back into the waiting room and this young man is telling the family that they don’t have enough faith. I wanted to take him out. What I did instead was ask, “Is this a majority thing? Does one of us have to have enough faith?” He said, “yeah.” And I said,” Good you’re it, if she dies, it’s your fault.”

RM: Where do you see yourself in 10,000 years?

PY: I’m so thrilled at what the rest of today holds. If the presence of God means this kind of joy and laugher, creativity, all I can do is shake my head and wonder. It’s about His presence. You only live for things that are real. It’s this adventure of today. My whole life has led up to this conversation.

RM: I hope you’re not disappointed.

PY: No, I have no expectations, just expectancy. After you read the book you’ll understand that better.

The Shack is available in most bookstores. Multiple copies of The Shack can be ordered at Theshackbook.com

Dept:Miracles

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

- Hebrews 11:1

Larry Brown

The Price of Humanity Writer: Chris Ahrens Photos: Rob Springer

A

fter five years as a Naval officer, Larry Brown decided to call it quits. A recent convert to Christianity, he then entered Bible school. But his real purpose in life was not revealed until he began to travel to some of the world’s most remote and impoverished countries: Africa, India, the Philippines. There he found people hungry for literal and figurative Daily Bread. Larry worked ceaselessly to deliver both, as the Gospel was spread in his wake. Wherever he went, the Word was poured out with equal parts passion, love, and joy. Many times, signs and wonders, or what we call miracles, followed.

Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine at the Risen offices in San Diego.

Risen Magazine: Fill us in on the past ten years of your life.

Larry Brown: Actually December 8th will be our ten-year anniversary of being full-time in our own ministry, Turning Point [not to be confused with David Jeremiah’s Turning Point in San Diego]. That’s the name the Lord gave us, because many times there will be turning points in churches and individuals’ lives.

RM: What have been your turning points?

LB: When I gave my heart to Jesus, 1978. I was at the Naval Academy and I went on an Easter weekend retreat, March 24th, 1978. My friend Allan [Risen publisher Allan Camaisa] invited me there.

RM: Was your walk straight up from there?

LB: It’s a commitment issue. How strong of a commitment are you willing to make for God? Just before I went to the prep school, my dad, who was a retired Naval officer, offered to take me to the Bahamas, along with his girlfriend. Next thing you know I was in the Playboy Club. Within a minute I was thinking, What am I doing here? But I didn’t know how to stand up to my father. He was one of those idols, or those crosses that you lay at the foot of the cross. I said, Lord, if you get me out of this, I’ll never do anything this stupid again. It was a setup from the Enemy. Obviously, he was trying to pull me off the path immediately.

RM: Even most Christians would consider four days in the Bahamas as a blessing.

LB: I saw the path it would take me on if I gave into my father’s pressure. He was eggin’ on the Playboy bunnies because he knew I was a virgin. Back in high school, he would threaten to take me to the prostitutes in D.C. I didn’t go, but I was always terrified when I went to visit him that he would bring up that question again. From the time I was young I didn’t want to sleep around, 064 RISEN magazine

I wanted to wait. I didn’t understand my dad’s agenda at the time. He didn’t think you were a real man unless you slept with several women. He had volunteered for Vietnam on river patrol boats, he was a boxer, just a real tough guy.

Fought hard, worked hard, partied hard, and I was really different.

RM: Has your experience with God changed your father?

LB: It took years. He used to say that anybody who believes in God is weak, ministers are stupid, and religion is an imaginary emotional crutch. I know different Christians have different convictions on drinking, but for me, if I’m going to be influenced by God, I don’t need other influences in my life. I’d had a year of partying at the prep school, and I saw myself do things that I wouldn’t normally do. I had made a quality decision to stop drinking. Then I went out with my dad to a club and he asked, “Are you gonna have the regular?” I said, “No, I’m gonna have a Coke.” He said, “Why you havin’ a Coke?” I knew the Lord wanted me to tell him that I was a Christian. When I did, he was so taken aback that he didn’t have another word to say at that time. That was another major turning point for me, standing up to my dad.

RM: When did you first go to Africa?

LB: After five years in the Navy, I went to Bible school. In 1994, five years after I graduated from Bible school, I went on my first mission trip. In November of 1993, God had said, I want you to go on a mission trip. I said, All right Lord, what about this Navajo mission trip, it’s only $300? He said, No, that’s not it. I said, What about South America, that’s only $800? He said no again. I said, What about these other ones with lesser fees? He said, No I want you to go to Sierra Leone, which was $2,000, the most expensive one. I said Lord, I don’t have that kind of money, He said, Write a letter. I didn’t have a computer or a typewriter. I was walking to work and the first person I saw on campus said, Hey I just got a new computer; if you ever want anything typed, let me know. The Lord not only inspired me to write the letter, but who to

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Dept:Miracles

send it to, Christian and non-Christian, my old track coach, even my dad.

When I went on that mission trip, I was like, This is it! I loved it.

RM: Are dangerous situations easier when you feel you’re in God’s will?

LB: Yeah, I think that’s part of it. You have faith that you’re in the will of God. You get in there and see God’s grace and His hand on things, and each time you do it you have more confidence. In Hebrews 11:1 it says, Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. That word substance means confidence. There’s something about knowing you’re in the will of God that gives you a confidence. When you’re in the will of God, there’s the peace of God. In 1 Corinthians 12, it talks about that extra measure of faith or special faith, but that doesn’t manifest until you’re in the situation.

wants prayer. We laid hands on her and immediately her color came back, her voice was back, she had energy and strength. She was delighted. I shared salvation with her and as her customers were leaving I asked her if she wanted to get saved. Big tears welled up in her eyes. Her body language was saying yes, but she said no. She ran from us, crying. Something was holding her back, but the Lord said, Don’t any of you leave this table until she comes back. Her name was Doris and she told us that she was a backslidden Christian, taking care of her mother, and an unwed mother herself. She said her waitressing job didn’t pay enough, and after she left she would go around the corner to the bar and prostitute herself. She said she didn’t think she could come back to God without being a hypocrite. We tried to encourage her that the same God that had healed her body would meet her needs. That night I was tossing and turning in bed and God said, Give her the rest of your Kenya shillings. I mentioned it in the morning to the pastor I was traveling with, Jerry, and he said that God had told him to do the same thing. We checked with Bishop Alex, so we wouldn’t do anything culturally offensive by giving money. He said that would be wonderful. I had to get him to the airport, so he offered to give her the money, which came to about twenty-five dollars. Two days later he found her and gave her the money, and she began to weep and sob. A year later I went back to Kenya and found she had quit her job and started a business and that God had prospered her. About two days after she quit her job the restaurant was robbed and everyone was killed. She would have been killed if she were still there.

We laid hands on her and immediately her color came back, her voice was back, she had energy and strength.

RM: Have you seen a lot of people come to Christ?

LB: My main focus now is the Bible schools, equipping the African nationals to go out and reach their people. In the early years it was the crusades, to see thousands saved and healed and filled with the Holy Spirit. After a while I realized that they have great evangelists, but they needed teaching. People get healed, devils are cast out and all that, but in a month or two, when they’re sick again, the people would go to the witchdoctor, cuz they don’t know any better. They need training and Bibles. Their ministers need training and Bibles. The last several years I’ve gone into Africa, my main focus has been training and going into Bible schools.

RM: Apparently you’ve seen a lot of miracles in Africa.

LB: The Bible says that signs and wonders will follow those who believe. The signs are like the advertising, the dinner bell. The people there have no problem believing in the supernatural. People have seen bizarre things that the devil has done, where the devil is more covert here.

But the signs are only the starting point. I have several friends who have had the dead raised several times, but they say that after those people are saved, it’s hard to keep ’em saved. They have tremendous preachers in Africa, they run circles around most American preachers. But they say they suffer in their teaching, they don’t know how to disciple anybody or train their leaders to do the work of the ministry. If I’m getting people saved, I’m only fulfilling half of the Great Commission. Mark 16 says go preach and reach. Matthew 28 says to make disciples of all nations. So that’s been more my emphasis.

RM: Maybe because there has been so much fraud, people in the U.S. have a hard time believing that there even are miracles.

LB: I was in Bible school and they had a course called “practical ministries.”

It was one of my favorite courses and they dealt with gimmicks and schemes and all these different things. They really hit hard on that cuz the graduates represent the school.

RM: Tell me about some of the miracles you’ve seen.

LB: We had just finished preaching in Keyna. We had preached a long time and it takes even longer with interpreters. Everyone wanted hands laid on them and a lot of people were healed. We were on our way to Nairobi and we were tired. We stopped in this restaurant and the waitress looked and sounded really sick, terrible. The Lord said, The next time she comes back ask her if she

RM: What’s the most spectacular miracle you’ve seen?

LB: I haven’t seen anyone raised from the dead, but I have friends who have.

I’ve seen legs grow out, the eyes of people who were born blind, opened . . .

RM: It’s amazing to me that someone’s salvation could rest on . . .

LB: Twenty-five dollars! My youngest daughter was in Thailand this summer.

She’s eighteen years old and has wanted to do a mission trip since she was in middle school. She worked in an orphanage in Thailand, kids who were refugees from a typhoon and kids whose parents were dead, kids rescued from prostitution, that kind of thing. She tells the story of one mother and father who had a lot of children. They lived in a rural area and were closed off from newspapers and television, with no idea of what goes on in Bangkok. They couldn’t afford to feed all their children, and a businessman approached them and said, Sell me your daughter, she will sell flowers for me and I’ll send money home to you. They thought it was a good deal; instead of their daughter starving to death at seven, eight, nine years old, she could work, but she ended up being a prostitute. They put these kids in cages that are a foot and a half high and not much longer, until they break their spirit and give into prostitution.

The director, who knew that the child would end up a prostitute, asked this woman how much the man had offered to pay for her daughter. She said eighteen dollars. She said, What if I give you twenty-five? Oh, you can have her, the woman said. She’s in an orphanage now, in a safe house, being trained up in the things of God. There are so many needy children.

To learn more about Larry Brown’s ministry or contribute to his work, please visit www.turningpointmin.org. www.risenmagazine.com

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Dept:F.H.L.

Ultima Thule:

n. an unknown and distant land

->

by Mathew Jon Marquez Oh Hope, how my muscles and tendons cry for relief ! My very joints beg me to stop now and quit this marathon hunt for you. But I can’t stop, can I? I must force myself to refuse temptation’s call to find comfort in this world. To give up on my dreams of you is to allow the darkness of this world to drink me into its abyss. And with every daybreak my weary mind recalls your gentle lift on my chin and your seducing call: “I’m just over the horizon, lover. Come for me.” Surely you know how such simple “forget-me-nots” stir the strength within me to seek you every day!

But as the days pass, I am overcome with shame and embarrassment at how you will receive me when I finally make my way home. After all, look at me! Those once gentle love lines you so carefully drew upon my frame have now been scarred over. What was once so good in your hands is now stained to the very grain of its humanity. So many times in my life I have chosen less for myself.

I have sold myself for empty pleasures, to mere vapors and shadows of your real substance. I have squandered the gifts you have given me! My treasonous, selfish heart has diminished the very image of you my soul was meant to reflect. I fear that a thousand years of excuses and apologies will never cover the shame and guilt I feel for what I have done to myself. Oh Hope, how can you ever love these damaged goods?

And yet either I am lovesick and surely insane or I know I still hear your gentle whispers to me in the wind: “Chase after me. I am just around this turn.”

Everywhere I go, I find your messages to me. You’re in the park playing amongst the children and filling their laughs with your songs, “Dance with me.”

I see the work of your chemistry as young lovers walk hand-in-hand on a beach, “Be with me.” You even sent a butterfly passing through my open car windows while I waited for the light to change, “Enjoy my creation with me. I love you.” Oh Hope, if I am wrong then please release me from your gossamer grasp for I have tangled myself in disillusionment!

Until then, I pass my nights dreaming of our union. For only you can lure my soul with your sweet, rapturous fragrance. You know you are the ultimate seducer of my spirit. Even just the faintest memory of your presence in my mind causes me to rush through the dusty chambers of my heart to search you out. Until my days with you, I must search out every brush stroke you left behind in me.

Nothing quenches my passion to search you out.

Oh Hope, how I long to drink every bit of your presence. Fill this dry well! Bathe me in the warm waters of your wellsprings and quench what no other thing can quench within. I dream of you leaning into me and whispering your sweet divinity into my ears! Oh to feel that Breath of Life against my callused skin! I am crazy with the thoughts of your warmth flowing into me as you unfold your promises of eternity into my heart. Oh Hope, when will I lie in the comfort of your arms?

My heart races and my weary muscles twitch at the thought of your healing touch caressing me.

I pray that you will knit me new and restore what was broken by my own reckless regard. You call me lover and I want to love you wholly, renewed in your radiance. So will you? Will you restore me and make me strong enough to dance through endless

sunrises arm-in-arm with you? Oh how I want to be good again! But can you truly love such a scandalous soul? Your words and songs tell me yes, but shame and doubt continually creep up the walls of my weak heart and convince me I will never be good enough to be your lover again. Oh Hope, continue to give me songs and signs! Unlock the mysteries of your words and reveal to me more promises of how you love me. I need these little moments to encourage me along the way. Without you, without your dreams of your love for me, I cannot stand. I will cease to live!

Will it be today? Will it be tomorrow? I know, I cannot concern myself with the when, but I must remain vigilant for your signs along my path. Oh Hope, I promise to chase after you to every vista’s edge, across every mesa, from continent to continent living on the simplest of signs and lover’s notes you leave for me to find. I will let the mere kiss of the morning air against my face remind me how much better it will be when I finally stand in your presence. I just plead that you keep me on your trail. For I know when I see you were there, I am in your land. And until that day finally comes, I can rest well for another night knowing you have lured me to a place of security.

Oh Hope, how I love you!

Dept:Expressions

JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD Writer: Chris Ahrens Art: John Van Hamersveld

Like most of the surfing world in the 1960s, I first became aware of John Van Hamersveld through the now iconic Endless Summer poster he created. And I now realize that resting my impression of him there would be like thinking of Bob Dylan as merely a ’60s protest singer. Van Hamersveld, like Dylan, is difficult to categorize, since he has experimented with so many styles over the years. Album covers for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones link him with another era. But he has moved and morphed over the years, rolling with the times as well as influencing them to a certain degree. There’s something about the artist and the ever-changing world around him that keeps looking, wondering, designing, and now, revisiting.

*Duke Wall Hanger 2006

Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine Risen Magazine: What are you working on currently?

John Van Hamersveld: The direction is titled John Van Hamersveld: Ten Years Back. It’s about my 1964 to 1974 adventure, revisiting themes of the period and creating new work from 1996 to 2008. The Endless Summer poster image pulled me back into the surf culture in 1999 with new success. Then I redrew the 1968 Hendrix drawing, revisiting and creating a new drawing as a collectable fine art print. So I republished the Endless Summer, Hendrix, and Johnny Face images from my ’60s and ’70s career and they sold out. Now twelve years later, I’m creating more images like the period is still happening.

Eric Clapton wanted a Cream poster and it sold out. That became a DVD and CD packaging campaign that communicated around the world.

I traveled 36,000 miles in a Jeep, stayed in sixty-eight hotels signing and creating more posters. In March there will be a retro-like show at Shepard and Amanda Fairey’s [Subliminal Project Gallery] with a coffee table book published by Santa Monica Press, coming out in the September market about the concept above.

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*Curso Car

*Hendrix Poster www.risenmagazine.com

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Dept:Expressions

*Mozart Gallery Master Print 2007

*Beethoven Gallery Master Print 2007

RM: Do you think artists are different than other people?

JVH: In the theory of left and right brain people, most artists are right-brained, and seem to be dreamers. They are usually dyslexic and think spatially like Einstein or Disney...the different philosophy promoted by the “Plato’s Cave” idea about an artist type who leaves the cave to see the outside world and returns to tell a different story. The people still in the cave were in disbelief. We watch TV as if we were in the cave, and those who do the opposite have a different view of the world, so maybe pop culture lives in the cave.

RM: How would you define art?

JVH: If television is a social mirror about the instant moments of the global culture, then the artists and their studios are placed where the unconsciousness of the artist is in the thinking of making symbols of images for the moment.

RM: How would you define your own art?

JVH: As an art student I was focused on the Dylan idea of change, from beatnik’s and abstract expressionism, to Warhol’s pop art, to conceptual art, and minimal art movements within my art education at Art Center College of Design and Chouinard Art Institute in the ’60s. I saw my position with the art and entertainment business as my gallery and museum for the products I designed. Warhol understood the view of art through communication in books, magazines, film, and video. That made sense to me.

RM: What new trends in art are interesting to you?

JVH: Every large American city is raising money to have their own contemporary art museum created by renowned architects. This fact has created the idea of more demand for traveling shows created by artists and their ideas in 072 RISEN magazine

* Chouinard Logo ORG 2007

Dept:Expressions

*Hippie Nation Poster

*The Chief Revo

*Cover Of Post-Future Book

www.risenmagazine.com

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Dept:Expressions

*Butterfly

different mediums, methods, qualities of social ideas asking what art is about, or what is now art in our culture.

RM: Graphic design seems to be essentially rearranging the pieces we all have to work with.

JVH: Art seems to be an outcome as conceptual tension between two opposite points of view. The artist makes a collage-like idea or symbol creating an ironic conclusion as an answer.

*The Next Wave Postcard

RM: With the rise of the personal computer, everyone is an artist. What’s your feeling about that?

JVH: Computers are machines loaded with shareware for everyone to communicate with digitally. The computer is the tool, but the biggest change is to digital data properties as everything from everywhere is controlled with computers. Art is different; art may always be created in analog, or by human thinking and not thought out by a computer.

RM: Tell me about the magazine you’re working on.

JVH: The idea of a magazine is to communicate, but what I am trying to do is more like an underground newspaper you would find around the art scene area. I have 75 drawings I wanted to make visible by communicating in black and white with large drawings to show my progress of the past forty years.

RM: You’ve met many of the most influential artists and musicians of our time—do you have any stories you can share about them?

JVH: Each individual became an idea I would meet in the new culture. Each artist or musician was like an experience with an artistic outcome. Meeting them was like an encounter. A new view, a new meaning would be created at each moment. All of my images are stories. I don’t think we have enough space here to tell a story, so you can show images.

To see more of John Van Hamersveld’s work, visit www.post-future.com.

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*Digital Indian

*Endless Summer

Dept:Expressions

www.risenmagazine.com

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Dept:Pulse

Common – Wanted

>> What Keeps Him Focused I believe God is my source of everything, to be honest—from that all the other things come. I stay focused and in tune with my spirituality and just, you know, connected with God. Then I just focus on doing the music, doing the films, doing the children’s books. I’m inspired as an artist. I like to do things that inspire me so when I see a good script, I’m fighting to be a part of the movie . . . when I hear some good music, I’m going out to write, you know.

Will Smith – Hancock

>> When He Knew Entertaining Was His Calling Probably two to three years into The Fresh Prince and a guy came up to me and he said, “Hey man, my mother was sick and she only watched The Fresh Prince for hours and hours.

Man, I’m telling you that’s why she got better,

I’m telling you.” I was like, Oh my goodness! To start to connect entertainment, and comedy, and all that . . . and be able to actually start to connect it to people’s lives being better.

Mike Myers – Love Guru

>> On His Success Matthew McConaughey – Surfer, Dude

>> How He’s Adapted to Fatherhood It does change you, but I think one of the things I’ve noticed is it’s not 180 degrees, like your life is turned upside down . . .

People said, “Oh, you can’t do what you used to do.” Yeah you can—there’s just a lot more preparation time! You’ve got a lot more luggage. It takes a lot longer to get ready to go . . .

Momma’s got to be able to feed him, and then to get ready to come back from where you’re going takes a lot more prep time.

We’re just doing it as a family—me, Camilla, and Levi—we just travel for three now.

Everything I have done has been a fantasy—it’s kind of hard to believe. I was a little kid in Toronto, feels like seconds ago, kinda going, God, I’d love to do comedies, I’d love to be on Saturday Night Live . . . And it’s kinda a dream come true.

It’s gone much better than I would’ve ever imagined. It’s very out-of-body a lot of the time.

It’s been unbelievable great. I can’t believe it most of the time. I always have about twenty ideas . . . that just wait for its right time. I can’t even describe the process, but you can kinda feel it when it’s right.

Miley Cyrus – Bolt

>> On Influencing Others and Staying Grounded Knowing that you’re being influential . . . you want to influence them on a positive level and only want them to want to learn more about you, not because of the things you see all the time, the movies and all that kind of stuff, but they want to get to know you because you’re a good person and you make them happy. I get so in my work-mode, and my 076 RISEN magazine

work ethics are pretty intense, I just keep going and don’t really think about it—just keep going, keep going—and I think the times I get really tired, and the times I’m with the people that really love me, I realize that’s what’s important, that’s what keeps me strong.

Dept:Pulse

Maggie Gyllenhaal – The Dark Knight

>> On Wanting to Pursue Acting I think I’ve always kinda known that it was the best way for me to have an effect on the world. I believe that if you have the luxury to choose what you do, then it’s your job to choose to do something that will help to make the world a better place. So I think the most effective way for me to do that is as an actress.

Russell Crowe – Body of Lies

>> 15-Year Prank Pulled on Leonardo DiCaprio The preparation for the torture scene started way back in ’99. I used to wait in the makeup trailer until he had his eyes closed. And you know those little atomizer bottles of Evian, I used to hold one in my hand and walk past him and sneeze and squirt it at the same time. So once a week, he

would feel the fine mist of what he thought was my mucus on his neck. And he was only young, so he didn’t say anything, but you could just see it was getting to him week after week. I finally let him in on the gag on the first day of this film [Body of Lies], fifteen years later!

Maria Bello – The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Shia LaBeouf – Eagle Eye

>> Her Biggest Adventure

>> On Technology

I went to Africa on my own for like six weeks and met up with these guys in the middle of Tanzania, that I didn’t know, who were driving for a couple of days to go meet these Bushmen in the middle of nowhere. And I went with them, and we stayed in these seethrough tents with lions outside at night . . . and in the morning George shot off the gun and the next thing you know these Bushmen came with poison arrows and we hunted all day—killed an animal and ate the heart!

I fear it actually. Big Brother is very apparent in my life. I’ve invited him in and I’m not the only one.

Most Americans, and people in the world in general, have allowed this crutch to become like a monster. Things that used to make our lives easier, now cause less human interaction. Cell phones were created to bring us closer together, and now people are getting further apart. That’s scary. The less human interaction you have, the less community you have. The less community you have—things just get really weird, really fast.

Kelli Gillespie A veteran of both broadcast and entertainment journalism, Kelli Gillespie travels regularly to both U.S. and international locations interviewing the biggest names in the entertainment industry.

Talking one-on-one with top talents, she uncovers what drives these celebrities—their hopes, passions, fears, and of course, their current projects. With the world at their feet, what impact, if any, are they leaving?

John Travolta – Bolt

>> On Being a Role Model I try not to get too self-conscious about it, because what I’d rather do is do what I know best . . . to inspire others. If creatively I can inspire another person, whether it be in my lifestyle or it be in a film—as a character, a performer, song, or dancer, whatever—I’d rather have it be just that, an inspiration, as opposed to a role model.

Because leading a life is so personal . . . you don’t tell a person how to lead their life, but you can inspire them to do creative things. www.risenmagazine.com

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Dept:The Well

Writer: Chris Ahrens Illustration: Zela

e couldn’t believe the luck. “Give us Barabbas,” was shouted, before the words, “Crucify him,” could leave their mouths. And so he was free to go, to rob and kill and do what criminals do, again. His first stop, an execution. “Look, it’s him up there, dying in my place,” he said, laughing to himself. He thought about having a drink to celebrate his own good luck, and, maybe, offer a toast to this man’s bad luck. A drink, but first the show. I saw him yesterday and he looked at me, not with anger or condemnation, but with the eyes of a lamb about to be sacrificed. At first I glared at him and wanted to hit him, to spit at him, like the others had. Then, I looked away. But now I can see him and he’s dying and I doubt that he can see me through his own blood and the thick hatred of the crowd. Tough luck, Yeshua. It should have been me, but such is life . . . and death.

Is that an earthquake?

The shaking was not so bad, really. But the screaming, it comes from a place beyond terror.

There’s sadness and pity in it, but I have no pity, not for fools. He could have said something in his defense at the trial. Anyway, I have won again, this time with no trial of my own. But that man, the man on the cross. What of him? Why is he any concern of mine? Is it my fault that he wouldn’t open his mouth? He whom they say spoke of paradise so eloquently. I have been pronounced not guilty, so what is this I feel? Quiet you, there’s nothing to scream about. You say I should have been up there. Okay OK, and what about you? Are we any better? You have a nice job, nice clothes, a nice family. I have none of that. The difference between us really is that you were never caught. You never had the courage to cut a man’s throat, but you stole and swore and lusted and hated and killed, performing crimes in your heart far worse than mine. Look at you. Look at him. Look. You belong there, with the nails 078 RISEN magazine

through your hands and feet. Go on, look if you have the courage. What’s he saying? Why is it so dark?

The screaming is coming again.

The liar Peter, the doubter Thomas, the greedy Judas, the coward Pilate, the arrogant Herod, the tax collectors, the whores, the hypocrites, the zealots, the Pharisees, the high priests, the lawyers, the soldiers, the politicians, the lepers, the money changers, the sellers of sacrificial lambs, the slayers of those lambs--—all here to see this man die so that they can be spared. Cowards, get up there and take your punishment. No, it’s too easy to blame me, or to blame somebody, blame the Romans or the Jews. So turn away and . . . He’s been up there for a long time and he’s barely breathing. Cruel joke, giving him vinegar to drink. With all that blood, I can’t recognize him as a human being anymore. I’ve seen butchered lambs look more human. For goodness sake, won’t someone take him down from there? Please, somebody take him down!

He’s no king this man can’t be Doesn’t look like royalty Just a simple man with a broken heart Sound the charges Start the trial Fill their mouths with filthy guile Silence them if they can’t see Death won’t bring you liberty Darkness Now it’s black as night Something falling in the night Striking earth to rise no more Flightless angel on the floor It is finished someone’s crying Darkness fills the dead and dying Weather’s strange the newsmen say

Thanks to the compassion of a soldier taking his spear and pushing it into his side. A little blood trickled out, followed by water. They say the man’s heart was broken. He hasn’t said a word the entire time, now he’s shouting something. What did he say? It is finished? What is finished? I heard that the soldier confessed to killing the Son of God. It should have been him up there and he knows it. It should have been you. It should have been me. It should have been me. I am guilty. We are all guilty.

Sin is guilty. Somebody please stop the screaming.

Bury evil far away

King on Death Row

Blood still streaks his hands and face

What’s He done

Death has lost the final race

Claims to be God’s only Son

King and lord of every race

Where’s His crown and where’s

King on Death Row

His kingdom start

Took your place

Blood on sand and skin and skull Voices that can not be still Golgotha that holy hill Brutal murder Father’s will Ancient chains and locks on cages Dragon seed deceives the ages Broken magic black and dead David’s son will take thy head

Inspired br Barabbas Road Church