Chapter 14

14.  I Make a Name for Myself
As days passed it became apparent that the short fuzzy male teammate who had expressed an interest in me was becoming far more enamored of me than he should.  There were express rules against dating but I liked the attention I was getting and I didn’t want to be mean.  One day on the bus, I was leaning up against this boy and I heard a low voice from behind me say, “Angel, you better guard your heart.”  I turned around and rudely responded, “it’s none of your business”.  The voice had been Mario’s, the obnoxious trumpet player who had stayed with my family during the summer.  He calmly responded, "you're making everyone on this bus feel uncomfortable and I care enough to confront you about it. Stop flirting with [him] or you'll have bigger problems." I was amazed that he would dare to correct me when I had never spoken two words to him before.  Here he was chastising me and not the other person involved?  How rude, I thought.

I was so angry with him, I resolved to never speak to him as long as I lived (very mature).  Meanwhile, the other guy just put his arm around me and cozied up to me even more.  As the weeks went by, the attention being given to me by this boy became quite unbearable and very, very unwelcome.  I finally spoke to my director but instead of telling him that the feelings were not mutual (I was still trying not to be "mean"), I downplayed it and we were both allowed to continue to minister on the same team.  I regret that decision but I was still struggling with my health and with my own insecurities.  If I shut this guy down completely, would I ever feel loved again?

I have very few memories of ministry time in India due to my extreme health issues but some of what I do remember is quite amusing.  We traveled by bus for ten hours from Calcutta to reach a mountain city in Mizoram.  The trip proved to be too much for me and I relapsed into a feverish state with severe abdominal issues.  Leaving me in my room with another girl who had an injured back but would check in on me from time to time, the team headed off for a grueling day filled with 3 concerts.  When my roommate (Rachel*) returned, she found that in between bouts of sickness, I had done all of our laundry and it was hung up throughout the room to dry.  She told me all about the day’s adventures and then we turned out the lights after praying together for God’s healing and protection.  Because of the fever and chills, I had requested a space heater for it was very cold during the night in Mizoram.

As we fell asleep, I dreamt in that place between waking and sleeping. In my dream I saw that the curtains caught on fire and I barely had the strength to put them out.  In my sleep I heard a loud “POP” and then a “Ssssssssssssss”.  My eyes popped open and I stared down at the end of my bed, heart pounding and senses struggling to wake up.  I saw a smeary orange ball at the end of my bed.  Putting on my glasses and turning on the light, I found that the space heater was on fire and smoke was billowing up toward the ceiling.  Thinking quickly but not coherently, I decided I better turn on the ceiling fan to get the smoke out.  Or, for those who have already thought ahead, maybe to add oxygen to the flames.  I have to say, it wasn’t one of my best moments.  

Turning the fan back off, I crawled across my bed, reached down near the heating unit and quickly unplugged it.  If you think this is taking a long time to tell, it took just as much time to put it into action.  The medicines and the fever had taken all my “quickness” and turned it to mush.  Meanwhile, pretty brunette Rachel was sleeping soundly.

Calling her name, I picked up the house phone and dialed the front desk.  Answering with a thick accent, the operator asked for my room number.  I calmly told him and said, “and there is a fire in our room.  I think you’ll want to come and do something about it.”  Now, had I been healthy, I would have put the fire out myself with a thick blanket.  It wasn’t at a dangerous level and was only very smoky.  But, as I said my thoughts were mush.  Rachel was sitting up in bed by this time and had apparently decided….actually I don’t know what she was thinking.  She said later that she had no thoughts at all, she couldn’t snap out of her deep sleep. I told her, "don't worry, the maintenance guys are coming....I think."

Then I gathered my pillow and a blanket and left our room.  I knocked on the door of the room next to us, where my friend Leigh was staying.  When she answered the door, she peeked out at me and slowly said, “Yes?” with a raised eyebrow.  I replied, “can I stay in your room tonight?”  Thinking my request was very odd, she opened the door and said “sure” wondering if Rachel and I had had a fight or something.  I told her, as if it were the most commonplace thing ever, “naw, we didn’t fight.  There’s just a fire in my room.”  And then I went and lay down on her bed.  Her jaw dropped. When she collected her thoughts, Leigh exclaimed, “what?!” and raced out the door just as the maintenance man from the front desk ran into my former room with a fire extinguisher.

Somehow during the mayhem, it was decided that my roomie and I should probably be relocated into a non-smoke-filled room.  By now, all the girls from the team were out of their rooms and excitedly reacting to my newest adventure.  Our squeals and giggles carried upstairs and were heard by some of our teammates, including the guy who chastised me before, Mario.  Mario told the director, “I’ll go down and see what’s going on”.  Safely ensconced in my new bedroom, I heard his voice down the hallway interrogating my friends. I giddily shouted for him to come and see me.  He later told me that he knew then that I was really quite ill because I had actually requested his presence.

By the time he arrived by my side, Rachel also arrived.  She stood in our doorway covered head-to-toe in the white stuff that comes out of fire extinguishers.  Blink, blink went her big, brown eyes.  The maintenance man took one look at her and began apologizing as he hit her over and over again with a rolled up towel.  Puffs of white bounced off of her and I began to giggle.  I couldn’t stop, she looked so funny standing there as she thanked him repeatedly for beating her with the towel. Plus, everyone had all of our dusty clothes and underwear gathered in their arms.  I laughed so hysterically that it was catchy and eventually everyone else joined in too.  Shaking her head as she tucked me into my new smokeless bed, Leigh said “only Angel.”  And that is how I became known as the “Queen of Adventures” (sarcasm included).

Chapter 13

13.  Adventures Continue
In December 1996, I went to my college advisor to sign up for graduation.  I was told, “but you still have 8 more credit hours to complete”.  I not-very-calmly replied, “WHAT?!”  I had all the paperwork from my fall planning session stating that I would be done in December. It mattered not to the powers-that-were at the college and because of program changes I needed to complete an additional 8 hours.  

But I had already begun fundraising and had purchased non-refundable airline tickets to California to join the ministry full time in January.  I asked my professors one by one to work out another set of independent study classes for me but was turned down by each.  I was crushed.  How could this be what God wanted?  I prayed about it and went to the dean of my school.  

He approved my proposal, was very impressed with my plans for the winter and said that I could write the reports overseas and fax them home to my mother. She would then type them up and send the files directly to him for grading. God's favor was surely upon me when I met with that dean.

With that decision made, I was finally going to be on my way.  During the holidays that year, I gathered all my study materials. I also raised funds by hosting and performing at a talent show, as well as writing letters or making personal appointments with everyone I knew.  As soon as the holiday season was over, I packed up my bags and in mid-January was off to rehearsal camp in California to join a team that had been ministering together for an entire year already.  Although they'd been together for a year already, I had been able to bond with a few of them each time the team came through Michigan. So, as scary as this whirlwind of decision was to me, it was past time for me to escape the trap I’d made for myself at home.  God had miraculously opened up a door to me, quite possibly to freedom and redemption from all of the heartache and sickness in which I had recently been immersed.

On the 5 hour flight, I relaxed and reviewed my path to this point. I remembered hitting it off with several the team members when they ministered to me that past summer. One guy in particular had stayed at our house in the family travel trailer after one of the concerts.  He was a big Hispanic guy who played the trumpet on the team.  He was an amazing instrumentalist and a natural leader. Everyone seemed to love him but personally, I thought he was pretty cocky and obnoxious.  Still, you can’t like everyone all the time, can you?

This tour would turn out to be drastically different than all the others, in part because I would be a part of this team for the whole year.  I would come home for a two-week break in April and one in August.  I was going to be busy ministering while simultaneously studying so that I could complete my schooling while I was gone. Something none of my teammates had ever attempted to accomplish.  I knew that it would be incredibly hard work but I felt in my heart that I was ready for it.

After rehearsal camp we had a few concerts in California to get us ready for the big trip and then we were off to India!  After being briefed on what to expect from others who had gone before us, I was a little nervous but felt that it wouldn’t be much different from my previous trips or what I had studied at college.  I’m overcome by laughter just writing that.

The 18-hour flight and subsequently smooth landing in Sri Lanka to catch our connecting flight to Trivandrum, India was uneventful.  But oh, the events afterward.  Something happened with our paperwork and only half of the 30-person team was approved to enter India.  I was part of that half. The others, including the obnoxious Latino trumpet player stayed behind in Sri Lanka for the night while the paperwork was evaluated.  Our half of the team landed at a teeny tiny, only-one-person-working-there airstrip.  

We crossed the steaming tarmac and watched through a gaping hole in the wall as our bag was unloaded.  Oh, I know what you just read. That’s not a typo. There really was only one bag.  "Where is the rest of our luggage?", we demanded.  Back in Sri Lanka with the rest of the team, we were informed.  “Well, whose locked bag is this?” we asked each other.  Someone checked the luggage tag....Oh. Of course. It belonged to one of the girls who was still in Sri Lanka for the night.  Fan-stinkin-tastic.

On our way from the airstrip we stopped in a town and bought sleeping clothes and toothbrushes.  At our place of rest somewhere in the jungle (I was enthralled actually), we ate chicken soup without using any spoons, in addition to bananas and coconuts right off the trees. I felt like I had suddenly landed smack in the middle of the book, Swiss Family Robinson (Johann Wyss) and I was enchanted. Even finding bones and feathers and other parts which I didn't even know a chicken had in my soup didn't sour my excitement.

However, sweating out the night sleeping on coffee-table sized beds with about an inch of cotton padding did give me a kink in the neck and a second thought about my "calling" to minister.  But then I shrugged and chalked it up to more of my learning curve. This certainly would be an adventure!  The next day the rest of the team and our luggage arrived (thank You, Lord) and the tour really started.  We wound our way up the eastern coast of India, sometimes playing two or three concerts a day.  

There was a young, short, fuzzy man on our team who expressed an interest in me. In fact, he was pretty sure I was "the one" for him (how sick I already was of that over-used phrase). I was still feeling incredibly vulnerable from my last debacle of a relationship. I freely and with bowed head, admit I liked the attention and encouraged it even though he was not someone I would have ever dated.  I mention this now because he plays a significant role in upcoming chapters. But since relationships were strictly forbidden on tour (due to instructions received at rehearsal camp which we all called "the Law and the Prophets"), I figured it was safe to be satisfied with what I called harmless flirtations.  Harmless flirtation…that is definitely an oxymoron.

In Madras, now known as Chennai, we spent a few days doing concerts and then were planning our route to Calcutta.  The director decided to send the ladies of the team via airplane as it was reportedly much safer than the 24-hour train ride the gentlemen of the team would be taking.  That morning, we ate breakfast together.  Juice, bananas, over-easy eggs.  Then the guys left for the train station and we girls loaded up the equipment and luggage into a truck and headed for the airport.  

Once there, several of us started feeling badly.  I went into a restroom to try to induce myself to vomit thinking I would feel better if I could just do that once.  Once I said. Unfortunately, once it started it didn’t stop.  Not for me, not for anyone.  Leigh was the only one who wasn’t sick. At that point, it was pretty obvious what caused the illness because she was the only one who hadn’t eaten the eggs that morning.  We still managed to board the plane and after that....well, I remember things only in bits and pieces. I do recall noticing the masking tape that held the seals on the walls of the plane's interior together. I remember because I thought, "if only they had used duct tape. I'd feel much safer if it were duct tape."  

But those lucid thoughts quickly became random and separated. Because I had been anorexic the past year and only weighed 105 pounds at my 5’7” height, I became violently ill. On the approximately 40 minute flight, I filled up 8 airbags and practically arm-wrestled other passengers at the doors of the restrooms due to distress from my "other end". At some point, I finally just gave up and slouched against my seat partner.

I'd never fainted before or since and don't know if there's usually any element of consciousness. I could hear my friends talking over me and about me. I had a vague sense of a man's voice telling me he was a doctor. We were still in flight and I don't know why but I couldn't respond to them. I was so very exhausted and weak. It was bizarre. When we finally landed, there were four of us on the team that were sick enough to have an ambulance meet us on the tarmac at the Calcutta airport. Someone took a picture of the 4 of us in it.

Somehow though, we ended up not in an ambulance but in a taxi which rushed us to the Assemblies of God Hospital in Calcutta.  Eventually I was checked into a room with another woman from the team.  I didn’t know her well but at that moment I really couldn’t have cared less.  The pain and violence of the illness was vicious.  I heard that the guys arrived in Calcutta some time the next day and the director sped to our sides.  He was distraught that we were so ill and that it was especially me.  He felt responsible for me in many ways and was so upset that he couldn’t do anything for me.  

He later told me he couldn’t find an international phone until the third day and then they couldn’t figure out what to do.  Mom didn’t have a passport or visa and they knew I couldn’t fly home in my condition.  I guess it was pretty bad for a while there.  All I knew was that the medications the hospital gave me were “out of sight”.  My roommate said I was so far gone from the medicine that I didn’t care about anything at all.  I hazed in and out for hours which turned into days.  I saw all kinds of colors each time I threw up (which was often). I was high as a kite. My roommate, we'll call her Katie, was so mad that I was medicated and she wasn't (they thought she might be pregnant - don't worry she was married).

Katie said that once she asked me to pass her the box of kleenex. I swear I heard her say, "please pass me my dress, Angel." In my mind, we were preparing for a concert. I gently passed an object to her that I saw, felt and believed was her dress. Katie says, "no. It was a box of Kleenex and you threw it at me. Whipped it hard at my head." Yikes.

All I knew was that my I.V. pole appeared to be made from cast iron and one morning as I dragged it across the room to go to the rest room my roommate was vehemently pressing her call button to tell on me.  I guess we had been instructed to let them know when a trip to the potty was required.  Apparently they just ignored the button because I was back in the bed before anyone ever came to check on us.  Katie, my sweet partner in illness and I wondered when we’d be released and what sort of disease we had.  I couldn’t understand a word the nurses said to me but when I finally asked in frustration, “well, am I going to die from this?” they were startled into replying with a simple, “no”.  Satisfied with that response, I fell back asleep.

After the third day, they released the two of us to go to the Salvation Army compound where the rest of our team was staying.  The other two girls hadn't been admitted to the hospital and were already there recuperating. It was far too early for me to be released but there was no way on earth I was going to stay in a hospital so far from home all by myself, without my new best friend, Katie. Nothing unites two people more than puking together, you know.  

So I rested the next few days at the compound while the rest of the team did concerts.  That was okay because usually there wasn’t enough electrical power at the concert sites for me to be able to play the keyboard anyway (for this tour, I only had to play one keyboard).  I prayed for all of us while they were gone, went to my follow-up appointments at the hospital and slept.  Throughout the rest of the India tour (6 weeks in total), I would rally for a few days and be able to do some concerts and then I’d be down for the count again for several days.  I missed meeting Mother Theresa on one of those days when the team was invited to sing for her, something I have always regretted.